Warner’s Log Cabin Remedies (Part I)

By 1887, H. H. Warner was hitting his stride as his patent medicine empire was flourishing around the world. Grover Cleveland was in his first term in the White House and the coming Panic of 1893 was but a spectre on the distant horizon. In that year, Warner introduced a new major line of medicines that he dubbed “Log Cabin Remedies.”  Undoubtedly, these Log Cabin Remedies were designed to appeal to an American public smitten with westward expansion and the apparently limitless possiblities for America’s manifest destiny.

The Log Cabin Remedies came packaged in a colorful red, white, blue and yellow container and included Log Cabin Sarsparilla, Hops & Buchu Remedy, Cough & Consumption Remedy, Extract, Rose Cream, Hair Tonic, Scalpine, Plasters and  Liver Pills. The pills sold for 25 cents, the Rose Cream for 50 cents and the remaining large sized Remedies for $1.00. In addition, the Cough & Consumption Remedy and Extract came in a small size for 50 cents. The base of the amber bottles bore the embossing “PAT’D SEPT. 9 87″.

I have included two back covers from the 1890 and 1892 Warner’s Safe Almanacs that featured Log Cabin Remedies. It is interesting to note that Warner makes the explicit disclaimer that “We Do Not Cure All Diseases From One Bottle.” That would appear to suggest that the consumer should expect to invest in more than one bottle and perhaps more than one variety of Log Cabin Remedies. Also, take a close look at the detail of the Hops & Buchu Remedy label. It says:

The Most Radical Opponents of

Alcoholic Beverages

 Can Use This Remedy as it is a

 MEDICAL PREPARATION

NOT A BEVERAGE

Sounds like Warner was even making a play for those confirmed teetotalers in the market. He never missed an angle.

Warner’s Safe Promotions: Safe Dominoes

If there was one overriding theme that unites what Atwater has called Warner’s Perfect Pitch, it was his ability to get his product name into every facet of the American home of the late 19th and early  20th Centuries. This type of marketing took many forms and included both items distributed at no cost (free samples, trade cards and almanacs) and those distributed at minimal cost (cookbooks, thermometer, prize map). These items provided the potential consumer with helpful information, including what proported to be health information to allow the public to diagnose and treat themselves with a little help from H. H. Warner.

One popular Warner promotional item was a box of dominoes. The simple wooden box contained 28 dominoes imprinted with the names of Warner’s products including his Safe Cures, Log Cabin Remedies, Tippecanoe, Safe Yeast and Rose Cream.  One half of the front label stated:

Compliments of your Grocer

—

WARNER’S SAFE YEAST

ALWAYS KEPT IN STOCK

The right side of the label urged:

BUY OF YOUR DRUGGIST

Warner’s Safe Remedies

ALSO

Warner’s Log Cabin Remedies

LOG CABIN SARSPARILLA

Yet another ingenious way that Warner kept his name in front of the public. As you can imagine, the dominoes are highly collectible and sought after by Warner’s collectors. This is especially true of sets that are in good condition. Often, the dominoes have become separated from the wooden box or some of the domino tiles are missing. If you have a complete set with the original box, consider yourself lucky.

“RARE” Warner’s Safe Cure??

I really try to check my opinions at the door when writing this blog, but every once in a while, I feel the need to hop on my soapbox. Now is such an occasion.

I am consistently troubled by the fact that with some frequency, sellers on Ebay and other auction sites refer to a particular Warner’s bottle as “rare.”  Indeed, there are rare Warner’s variants to be sure and I have taken a stab at providing a list of the ones that I  (and others with whom I have consulted) consider “rare.”  See The Rarest Warner’s and The Rarest Warner’s: The “A” Lists.

Just this afternoon, I was looking at one of the auction sites and noticed that someone had listed an aqua Safe Remedies Co. bottle as “rare.” Poppycock. While that bottle is a staple in any Warner’s collection, it is by no stretch of the imagination “rare.” Even with a full label, contents and orginal box, it would be considered “scarce.”

In their Warner’s Reference Guide, Ojea and Stecher define “RARE” as “seldom found,” which is a similar definition to that offered by Webster’s Nineth Edition Collegiate Dictionary, which defines it as “seldom occuring or found.” I suppose that the watch word for such listings is caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware’). If you are starting a collection that includes Warner’s Safe Cures, do your homework and know what it is that you are buying. For those who insist upon listing Safe Remedies Co. and Kidney & Liver Cure bottles as rare. Shame on you.

I’ll try to stay off my soapbox, unless absolutely necessary.

Warner’s Foreign Offices: Toronto (3 Cities) (1882/3 – 1939)

In the same year that Warner opened his office in London (or perhaps 1882), he also opened an office in Toronto, Canada. The bottles produced by that office have become know as “3-Cities,” because they bear the names of all of his foreign offices operating at that time: Rochester, London and Toronto. Unlike the London and Rochester Offices, there seems to be precious little information on the Toronto Office. If anyone has more information about the Toronto Office or any papers related to it, I would love to hear from you. Wayne Harris in Australia has been doing research on it and is helping me to put together the puzzle.

What we do know about the Toronto Office is that it produced some very desirable bottles. The “3-Cities” bottles as they have become known included a Safe Cure (pint), Safe Diabetes Cure (pint) and Safe Nervine (pint and half-pint). To my knowledge, all of the 3-Cities bottles appear in amber only, which may be the most diappointing aspect of these variants. Also, for whatever reason, no 3-Cities Rheumatic Cure has ever surfaced. Needless to say, if one ever does, its value would be considerable. Of the known 3-Cities variants, the half pint Nervine is considered the rarest and prized by Warner collectors. Both the Diabetes and Nervine pints are also very difficult to find.

Several years ago, an interesting variant appeared. It was a 3-Cities Safe Cure, but with an interesting twist. Instead of having the countries of England and Canada spelled out, this variant abbreviated both as “LONDON-ENG” and “TORONTO-CAN”. This variant also has a blob lip as opposed to the double collar that graced the Canadian 3-Cities. It has been suggested that this variant is not from Canada at all, but rather from either the United States or England. The example in my collection came from England, so I tend to subscribe to that country as the point of origin and I refer to the variant as the English 3-Cities. The counterpoint to that conclusion is that the 3-Cities Animal Cure also abbreviated England and Canada, so you are left to draw you own conclusions.

As I find out more about the elusive Toronto Office, I will let you know.

NOTE: In light of information recently provided by Wayne Harris in Australia, I have revised the closing date of the Toronto Office from the 1920′s to 1939. [10/2/08].

Warner’s Safe Wooden Boxes

In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, there was no plastic and cardboard had not become as widespread as it is today. Instead, manufacturers relied on wooden boxes to ship goods from the factory to the marketplace.

Although this packaging was undoubtedly considered trash and promptly dispatched to the dump, we are fortuate that some examples of Warner’s Safe wooden boxes were preserved. The example most frequently seen is the box for Safe Kidney & Liver Cure from Rochester. Much rarer is the wooden box for Warner’s Safe Remedy. In my years of collecting Warner’s, I have only run across one. The Safe Cure box from Melbourne pictured is also rare. Finally, examples of wooden boxes for both the large and small sizes of Safe Yeast have surfaced, but would be considered scarce.

I have never run across wooden boxes for Safe Diabetes Cure, Safe Nervine, Safe Rheumatic Cure, the various Safe Bitters or Tippecanoe, but I would love to see an example of one. I am sure they existed, but, perhaps, because they were produced in smaller quanities than the ubiquitous Safe Cure, few have survived.

The Rise and Fall of the Warner Empire: Business Setbacks (Part VII)

 If Warner had a fatal flaw, it was, perhaps, a restless spirit for new ventures. He was not satisfied with success in the fireproof safe business and turned to the patent medicine business. Success in the patent medicine business did not satisfy his appetite and pretty soon, he was throwing himself into other ventures. Unfortunately for him, success would not attend these ventures.

His first financial failure came as he was just beginning to make his mark in the medicine business. Warner partnered with other Rochester businessmen, including Arthur G. Yates, a self-made coal magnate, for the organization of the Rochester Grape Sugar Company in Kansas CIty. The company was formed to produce glucose. It failed. Moreover, Warner and Yates agreed to act as sureties for each other’s debts.

Undeterred, Warner joined another venture in 1881, when a group of seventeen Rochester businessmen formed the Horseshoe Silver Mining Company with $1 million in capital. The Company was organized to mine silver on the western slope of the Continental Divide near Denver. With ownership of 24,200 shares of stock, Warner was elected as president. It appeared that the Company would benefit from another syndicate organized to construct a tunnel for the Union Pacific Railroad in the vicinity of the mining company’s property. Despite a flurry of positive publicity touting the collaborative benefits, no payoff was realized. According to a column in the June 22, 1893 New York Times, Warner also invested $191,000 in the Genesee Gold Mining Company, $28,000 in the San Jose Mining & Canal Company and $57,000 in the Sareno Mining Company in Mexico.

Nothwithstanding his prior mining failures, in 1892, Warner purchased the Hillside group of mines from John Lawler and Edmund W. Wells for a staggering $450,000 (about $10.5 million today). He dubbed the venture the Seven Stars Mining Company and agreed to pay $50,000 down with the balance in a year. By the time that Warner’s finances began to unravel in 1893, he had mustered only $235,000 toward the balance due. Under the agreement, the mining property reverted back to its former owners, who also kept Warner’s deposit. Ironically, between the time the mine was discovered by Lawler in 1887 and its closing in 1951, it produced gold and silver worth barely $300,000.

Whatever the reason, Warner sacrificed his considerable fortune on speculative mining ventures. Despite his undeniable business acumen, Warner failed to appreciate that he was producing all the gold he needed (albeit brown in color), from his Safe Cure business. Perhaps his downfall was inevitable. Despite his personal financial failures, his medicine company continued well into the 20th Century, albeit under the control of others.

As well shall see, Warner was not whipped. The pluck that made him a success in Rochester continued to drive him. Although he was out of the Safe Cure business, Warner was not out of the patent medicine business.

 

 

Warner’s Safe Pills

  Warner’s Safe Pills were one of the original five products that H. H. Warner introduced in 1879. In addition to being one of his first products, his Safe Pills were one of his most enduring products, surviving into the 20th Century. I have included a portion of one of the Artist’s Albums from 1888 that featured the Safe Pills. According to that, “[t]hey are compounded on the formula of a successful British army physician in India, and are the best and safest pills in the market.”

The Safe Pills were packaged in a small, clear glass vial with a paper label and inserted into paper packaging. Sealed and opened packages of Safe Pills appear from time to time on Ebay. However, because the packaging would not survive exposure to the elements, only labelled examples can be verified as Safe Pills.

I have included two pictures of Safe Pills containers. One is clearly from the 1880′s and the other from the early 1900′s. If you look closely, you will see that the first has a plainer appearance. The Safe on the packaging includes the word “Tippecanoe” across the top, which means it dates 1883 or after. The second package is much more cluttered. The Safe on the package includes the words “Warner’s Safe Cure” across the top rather than Tippecanoe. More significantly, it includes “Guaranteed Under the Food and Drug Act June 30, 1906″. It also includes the word “Sugar” along the side of the package possibly to suggest wholesomeness.

The description on the package suggests that Safe Pills were designed to treat constipation as well as diarrhoea. Warner later introduces Log Cabin Liver Pills and Cathartic Pills. The picture of the tin suggests that he provided free samples of his pills to the public.

H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd.

On the heels of my last post on the Mebourne and Dundein foreign offices, it seems appropriate to take a bit of time to focus on the entity known as H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd.  In a week that has seen the passing of one of our great sportscasters, Jim McKay, it seems appropriate to think in terms of one of the catch phrases that McKay made immortal on ABC’s Wide World of Sports: “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” Without trying to stretch the cultural reference too far, Warner’s Safe Cure business experienced both of those extremes and H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. lay somewhere in the middle.

In my earlier post on Going Public and the Panic of 1893, I talked a bit about how H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. came into being as the result of Warner’s sale of his Safe Cure business in 1889. It is amusing that you frequently see the purchasers referred to as an “English Syndicate,” which sounds like something out of a sleazy novel. That 1889 sale was, perhaps, the high-water mark of the Safe Cure empire. It may have been the last time that Warner had total control over the business. Although he ultimately reacquired the business from the syndicate (with the exception of the Melbourne office) and subsequently offered stock to the public, it can be persuasively argued that he was controlled by events and by bad business decisions. Indeed, by 1889, the thrill of victory was waning and the agony was close on its heels.

As mentioned before, the H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. embossing appears on bottles from Melbourne and, according to Wayne Harris, marks the point at which Safe Cure bottles began to be manufactured in Australia and bear the embossing “AGM” on their base for Australian Glass Mfgs. Later variants of the H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. bottles appear without the AGM. These bottles were far more efficient, because they allowed the company to fill them with whichever variety of remedy and simply slap a different label on the bottle.

Both of the bottles pictured above are embossed H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd; however, one has a Safe Cure label and the other a Nervine label.

Warner’s Foreign Offices: Melbourne (1887-1915) and Dundein (1891-1900)

When I originally wrote my post about the Warner Foreign Offices, it was my intention to profile each of them in future posts in the order in which they appeared on the scene. I held to that plan for one future post about the London Office.  Well, following that logic, you would now be reading a post about the Toronto Office. Oh well, you know what they say about the best laid plans. When I started drafting my post about the Toronto Office, I realized how little I knew about it. Unlike the London Office, Toronto remains somewhat of a mystery, except, of course, for the 3-Cities bottles which are familiar.

In my effort to learn more about Toronto, I was introduced to Wayne Harris. Wayne is a Warner’s collector who resides down under in Australia. Wayne knows lots about the Melbourne and Dundein, New Zealand Offices and, through a chance encounter, was able to purchase a wonderful collection of documents from the Melbourne Office. Wayne has been researching Warner’s foreign offices, including Toronto and hopes to publish a book in the future. He has provided me with some interesting information about Melbourne and Dundein.

According to Wayne, the Dundein Office was, at best, a local agency, if it existed at all. He has failed to find any evidence of it at all. The 4-Cities bottles identified with Dundein were widely used in Australia and, indeed, for some period of time the bottles for both Melbourne and Dundein were manufactured in the United States and shipped down there. Wayne suspects the Melbourne bottles were also available in New Zealand. Because the Australian glass industry was in its infancy, it did not have the capacity to meet the demands of volume manufacturers like Warner. So, when you pick up a Melbourne or 4-Cities bottle that’s embossed with the familiar Safe, chances are it was made in America (at least until the English Syndicate that purchased the company returned it to Warner). The later Melbourne bottles embossed with “H.H. Warner & Co. Ltd.” were manufactured in Australia and bear the glassworks mark on their base.

Thanks again to Wayne for his insights and I’ll keep working on Toronto. Also, photo of Melbourne Safe Cure with box and label courtesy of Jack Stecher.

Warner’s Safe Advertising: Trade Cards

Perhaps one of the most impressive things about the Warner’s Safe empire is that he had such presence in the marketplace. In future posts, I want to focus on his array of inducements to buy his products; however, for now, I will start with the simple. Like most merchants of the day, Warner distributed an untold number of trade cards depicting his products usually along with a caricatured Victorian scene on the front and some bit of wisdom on the reverse. Trade cards were the direct mail of their day and whole websites are devoted to collecting them.

Most of Warner’s trade cards were designed to sell his Safe Cure and his Safe Yeast and most are generally available to interested collectors on eBay or at shows and range in price from $5 – $20. The exception would clearly be the Battle of Tippecanoe cards that fetch well in excess of that price, if you can find them. On occasion, you will see someone attempting to sell the front or back cover of a Warner’s Safe almanac as a trade card. Whether intentionally or merely as the result of ignorance, such offerings are dishonest. Not only are these clippings not trade cards, they are scraps of a damaged almanac or pamphlet. So, caveat emptor.

Warner’s Safe trade cards are a great addition to any Warner’s collection, because they illustrate a part of what made Warner successful in his business. That is, the ability to reach into the homes of Victorian America and convince them that his products were essential to a life well-lived.