Medicine: Two Kelloggs

Two grown brothers took to scrapping a score or so years ago. They were quite alike, these two Kellogg boys, of Battle Creek, Mich.—both alert, energetic, farseeing, both good publicists. One, John Harvey—Dr. John Harvey— had recently invented his famed ready-cooked flaked cereals as a new form of food. Both knew the huge money possibilities of the new idea. But they differed inalterably on the disposition of earnings. John Harvey, a young doctor full of altruistic educational plans, considered the private accumulation of such gains unethical. Not so, Brother W. K. This one foresaw for himself independent wealth, private estates, gentlemanly diversions. They went to court. For almost a quarter-million dollars Brother W. K. bought from Brother Dr. John Harvey the rights to commercialize certain flaked foods already devised. John Harvey Kellogg slapped the sum into the funds of his various educational works, for which he has become world famed.

Last week the press brought news of Brother W. K. Kellogg out of the quietude of his life. He is Chairman of the Board of the Kellogg Co., huge foodmakers with a working capital in 1925 of $2,384,527; successor of the old Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Co.; owner of the Battle Creek Toasted Flake Co. of London, Ont.; builder in 1924 of a $400,000 plant in Battle Creek; owner of plants in London, Ont., and Sydney, Australia; recent buyer of a plant of the Quaker Oats Co. and another of the Purity Oats Co.; owner of interests in the Kellogg Co. of Great Britain. And he has an estate, out in California, near Pomona, where among other activities he breeds Arabian horses. Last week he was reported about to send an expedition to Arabia to bring back a herd of 9 to 15 horses, which he will attempt to reproduce in native strains. Through the administration of another Kellogg, Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg, he was arranging the safe-conduct of his party.

Such private activities Brother Dr. John Harvey Kellogg glances at in his quick, comprehending fashion, then looks aside to his medical, surgical, educational, inventive, publishing and research organizations, of which he is the driving force.

Some 63 years ago this small man, now stocky with his 73 years of alert living and thinking, was squatting, a puny, untutored boy, on the back stoop of his Battle Creek home. Chin cupped in hands, he was pondering on what to make of himself, and as the kaleidoscope of boyish day dreams passed across his fancy, he pictured himself standing in the open door of a schoolhouse, beckoning to enter a long file of dirty, unkempt children. This vision, he has said, "gave me the idea of my life work. I must prepare to give a chance to children who had no chance."

This ideal of education and welldoing, as all the world knows, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg has followed with rare assiduity, with an amazing versatility of means. The retelling of these sounds like the staccato popping of a high speed motor.