Fizz (11 page)

In 1905, a few years after the Poison Squad's creation, a freelance reporter named Samuel Hopkins Adams contacted Wiley asking for help with his current investigative assignment. Adams had been hired by
Collier's
magazine to probe the patent medicine business, and he wanted Wiley's help in identifying what substances and so-called medicines were of greatest concern. With Wiley's support, Adams dug deep into the world of the nostrum makers, discovering the poisons lurking in popular medicines and the lies they used to sell their products. On October 7, 1905,
Collier's
published the first article in Adams's ten-part “The Great American Fraud” series. It became one of the most significant pieces of journalism ever written. It ripped away the curtains hiding the pathetic truth of this Wizard of Oz industry. The articles picked apart the bogus claims of the health-giving pills, shamed the newspapers that had turned a blind eye to their shameful practices in order to feast on their ad dollars, and exposed opium-addiction and alcoholism “cures” that were themselves packed full of liquor and opiates. In December 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt responded to the resulting clamor for government action in his annual address: “I recommend that a law be enacted to regulate interstate commerce in misbranded and adulterated foods, drinks, and drugs.”

The man who would write that law was Wiley, and when the Pure Food and Drug Act passed in June 1906 he became its enforcer. The act didn't destroy the patent medicine business, but it blew the legs out from under it and ended a century of nostrum mania in America. But the snake oil salesmen were not the only ones who needed to worry about Wiley's law, for the campaigning chemist already had soda, and Coca-Cola especially, on his hit list.

Wiley disapproved of soda. He believed that people should “be contented with water, which is the only real thirst quencher and the one beverage for which you can safely form a habit.” He had heard the rumors about the cocaine-laced soda of the South but was too busy fighting nostrum makers to focus on it. Then in spring 1907 the US Army banned the sale of Coca-Cola from its bases after receiving complaints that it contained alcohol and cocaine. Coca-Cola was, understandably, horrified by this decision and sprang into action. Coca-Cola lawyer John Candler contacted the
War Department to inform them that these claims were false and the ban unjust. The War Department responded by asking Wiley to investigate the claims. Wiley already viewed Coca-Cola with suspicion, but his concerns about this southern menace only deepened when his deputy Dr. Lyman Kebler returned from a tour of the South with wild tales about the popular soda. Kebler painted a vivid picture of Coca-Cola fiends hanging out in Atlanta soda fountains, of soldiers driven wild by mixing whiskey and Coke, and of four-year-old children drinking it from beer jugs. Kebler's tales fueled Wiley's determination to use his new powers to stop this dangerous beverage.

The summer came and went without word from Washington, so Candler caught a train to the capital and find out what was going on. On arriving he was informed that Wiley had completed his tests and found Coca-Cola to be free of cocaine and that the tiny amount of alcohol in the syrup was acceptable as a preservative. But instead of reporting his team's findings to the War Department, Wiley had homed in on the caffeine content of the drink and was using the Poison Squad to test the toxicity of the stimulant in the hope of proving that its presence made Coca-Cola harmful. Wiley believed caffeine was a dangerous, habit-forming drug. In speeches he talked about “tea and coffee drunkards” and once claimed: “In England, I have seen women who, if they were denied their tea at four o'clock, would become almost wild.” Wiley figured that if he and his Poison Squad could build a case against caffeine, then instead of giving Coca-Cola the all-clear he could attack the southern menace on a new front. All he needed was enough time to show that the government should be concerned about the beverage's added caffeine.

Having learned of Wiley's intentions, Candler secured a meeting with Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and urged him to force Wiley to issue his report on the cocaine and alcohol content of Coca-Cola. Six days later on October 16, 1907, Wiley's report was released. It confirmed that the claims that Coca-Cola was an alcohol and cocaine laced beverage were nonsense, but the government chemist used the opportunity to publicly moan about how he and the Poison Squad were not given enough time to investigate the caffeine content of the drink. Despite his objections
American troops were once again able to buy Coca-Cola for their canteens that November.

Wiley seethed at having his hand forced by the soft drink company, but rather than give up, he became even more determined to continue his fight against Coca-Cola and its caffeine content. He hatched a plan to charge Coca-Cola under the Pure Food and Drug Act for adulterating its drink with caffeine and failing to say so on its labels. All he needed to do this was permission to seize a shipment of Coca-Cola syrup that had crossed a state border. That, however, was going to be tricky.

In 1906 Wiley had fallen out with Roosevelt after lecturing the president about the dangers of saccharin, an artificial sweetener discovered in 1879. For the president this was a rant too far. “Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot,” Roosevelt thundered, pointing out that his own doctor gave him the sweetener every day. Wiley found himself excommunicated. The president refused all of the chemist's subsequent requests for meetings and appointed a committee of scientific experts to keep tabs on Wiley's activities. Wilson began refusing to approve any case Wiley wanted to pursue unless two or more officials from the Bureau of Chemistry also supported the action.

In March 1909 Wiley requested permission to confiscate a shipment of Coca-Cola syrup headed for New Orleans. Roosevelt's experts blocked it. Wiley tried repeatedly to get permission to seize various shipments of the soda syrup but time after time he was blocked. Eventually Wilson, probably thinking the obstinate official needed the message spelled out to him, wrote a letter telling Wiley to leave Coca-Cola alone. Unknowingly the agriculture secretary had just given Wiley the stick of dynamite he needed to explode the political roadblocks holding him back.

Wiley leaked Wilson's letter to the
Atlanta Georgian,
an antiestablishment newspaper that had it in for Coca-Cola chief Asa Candler. It had already threatened to expose the dire conditions at the Decatur Orphans' Home, where Candler was a trustee. The newspaper contacted Wilson and told him that if he did not give Wiley the green light for his Coca-Cola investigation they would publish his letter. The agriculture secretary relented on the condition that the case was not heard in Washington, DC,
but somewhere in the Coke-friendly South. He and Wiley settled on Chattanooga, Tennessee. “It is remarkable what the fear of publicity will do,” Wiley remarked afterwards.

On the evening of October 20, 1909, a team of federal agents gathered on the Tennessee-Georgia border and laid in wait for a truck that was making its way from Atlanta to Chattanooga loaded with Coca-Cola syrup. When the truck crossed the state line into Tennessee, the agents pounced and seized its cargo of forty barrels and twenty kegs of the soda syrup. Earlier that day Kebler paid an unexpected visit to the Coca-Cola syrup plant in Atlanta and, despite the plant manager's pleas, began poking around. Howard Candler, Asa's oldest son and vice president of operations at Coca-Cola, returned from lunch to find federal inspectors combing the factory. The inspectors said they had come to collect a sample of Merchandise No. 5, the coca leaf and kola nut extract used in the drink. Unsure what to do, Howard gave them the sample and told them to leave, before going to find his father. Asa ran to the scene, catching the inspectors as they were heading out the door. Furious at the intrusion, he demanded they give the sample back, but the federal inspectors refused and left for Washington to start analyzing the secret Coca-Cola ingredient.

The seizure of the syrup at the border and the Merchandise No. 5 sample from the plant was followed by a lawsuit filed in the federal court in Chattanooga. It charged the Coca-Cola Company of breaching the Pure Food and Drug Act by failing to declare that caffeine was added to the drink and by calling itself Coca-Cola when coca and kola were barely present in its product. The second accusation was especially worrying for the company. If it lost the case on that count, its trademark would be lost, and with it the entire business. Coca-Cola was now in a fight for its very survival.

For one Texan rival of Coca-Cola, this situation was fabulous news. Dr Pepper was born in a Waco pharmacy and soda fountain called the Old Corner Drug Store in December 1885, five months before John Pemberton created Coca-Cola. Back then Waco was the epitome of a Wild West town with its dusty streets, saloons, and gunfights. Cowboys and outlaws would come from miles around, attracted by its legal brothels, which would remain in operation until 1912. Charles Alderton, the Old Corner Drug Store's Brooklyn
born pharmacist, invented the drink that became Dr Pepper after noticing that customers were growing bored with the soda fountain's usual favorites of sarsaparilla, lemon, and vanilla. Keen to revive interest, he started experimenting with new flavor combinations, eventually settling on a unique combination of twenty-three flavors mixed with the popular tang of phosphoric acid. The result tasted unlike anything else available at America's soda fountains. Impressed by his pharmacist's creation, the Old Corner Drug Store's owner Wade Morrison agreed that they should offer his unusual fruity soda to customers. The city's soda fountain loafers loved it and, since the drink had no name, they began to ask the soda jerk to “shoot a Waco.”

Morrison decided the drink needed a name and opted for Dr Pepper. The inspiration, he told his customers, was Dr. Charles Pepper, with whom he had worked in Rural Retreat, Virginia, before moving to Texas in 1882. While working for the Virginia physician, Morrison fell in love with the doctor's daughter, but Dr. Pepper believed their romance was premature, so Morrison left. The drink, he explained, was named in honor of his lost love. What Morrison's wife, Carrie, whom he married while working as a pharmacist in Round Rock, Texas, thought of this romantic yarn isn't recorded, but she need not have worried, because the story was just that: a story. There was a Dr. Charles Pepper who lived in Virginia, but at the time when Morrison headed west, he was working in the town of Bristol, not Rural Retreat. What's more, his daughter, Ruth, was just eight years old at the time. But it was a good romantic tale to spin at the soda fountain when people asked about the drink's name.

As word spread of Alderton's creation, other soda fountains around central Texas started asking to buy the syrup. Morrison and Alderton began cooking up the syrup in the cramped basement of the Old Corner Drug Store but found themselves unable to keep up with demand, so Morrison turned to Robert Lazenby, the clever but hot-headed founder of the Circle “A” Ginger Ale Bottling Company.

Born in Johnson County in 1866, Lazenby grew up in Waco and launched his soda business there in 1884. His Circle “A” Ginger Ale quickly found success, and by the time Morrison asked for his help with Dr Pepper he had a second bottling plant in St. Louis, Missouri. Together with Alderton they
formed the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, named after the artesian water wells that were once common in Waco. They promoted Dr Pepper as a drink of purity, strength, and discretion, adopting the slogans “Vim, Vigor, Vitality” and “King of Beverages.” Their advertising presented proud lions, the stoic King George V of Britain, Native American chiefs on the hunt, and curvaceous nude women reclining as the sea waves swelled around them to preserve their modesty. Alderton and Morrison would quit the business before the century was out but under Lazenby's stewardship, Dr Pepper entrenched itself in Texas and began reaching out into other states. By 1901 Dr Pepper had even put in an appearance at a stall in Rag Town, the Oklahoma encampment where thousands of people had gathered to bid for 1,126 lots of land near Anadorko that were being auctioned off by the federal government. On the day of the auction an estimated twenty thousand people had gathered. When the sale was over, they and the Dr Pepper stand selling them bottled soda vanished.

As part of his efforts to take Dr Pepper beyond the Lone Star State, Lazenby exhibited the drink at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in St. Louis. Even by the grand standards of world's fairs, this was a biggie. It cost $50 million to put on, and the site for the seven-month event packed 1,500 buildings into 1,240 acres. By the time the fair ended in December 1904, around twenty million people had visited the site. The exposition popularized the concept of convenience food, with visitors treated to an enormous selection of sweet drinks, instant hot snacks, and sugary treats. As well as Dr Pepper, Coca-Cola, and Hires Root Beer, many visitors got their first taste of iced tea, peanut butter, Jell-O, ice cream cones, and cotton candy. The event also popularized hot dogs and hamburgers as we now think of them. Most of these products existed before the event, but the coming together of these sweet beverages and handy snacks in St. Louis showed them in a new light. Instead of being a collection of disparate products, they could now be seen clearly as part of a new all-American cuisine unified by common traits of being quick, tasty, instantly satisfying, and rarely, if ever, demanding the use of a knife or fork. It was the moment that fast food was born, and soda was clearly an integral part of this culinary revolution.

Dr Pepper also sought to widen its appeal by emphasizing its lack of caffeine, cocaine, and other “injurious drugs.” One ad showed the heroic Roman centurion Horatius fending off the armies of Clusium accompanied with the words: “Dr Pepper stands alone on the bridge defending your children against an army of caffeine-doped beverages as the great Horatius defended Rome.” So when Wiley got his claws into Coca-Cola, Lazenby wrote him an opportunistic letter offering his full support for the caffeine crackdown and presenting him with a copy of the Dr Pepper formula to show that his drink was free of such drugs. Lazenby's opposition to caffeine wouldn't last. In 1917 he changed his mind about caffeine and added the stimulant to the drink's mix.