Business & Finance: N. B. C--Shredded Wheat

To National Biscuit Co. there came last week Shredded Wheat Co.; to Uneeda Biscuit and other famed National Biscuit products was added Shredded Wheat. Holders of Shredded Wheat stock will be offered one share of National Biscuit for two shares of Shredded Wheat. Shredded Wheat had been for some time a rumor centre, one story being that the breakfast food company would be acquired by Gold Dust Corp.

It was 35 years ago that the idea of Shredded Wheat was first conceived. At that time (1893) one Henry D. Perky, a dyspeptic lawyer, was trying a lawsuit in a small Nebraska town. Breakfasting one morning at the community's only hotel, Lawyer Perky noticed a fellow breakfaster eating what looked like a saucer of whole wheat grain. He would take a large spoon and break up the cooked whole wheat, add milk and cream, and consume. Curious, Lawyer Perky asked questions:

Perky: What are you eating there?

Wheat-man: I am eating boiled whole wheat.

Perky: Why are you eating boiled whole wheat?

Wheat-man: It is the only food I can digest. It seems to agree with me and give me a lot of strength.

Interested, Lawyer Perky tried the boiled wheat, liked it, found it readily digestible. He realized, however, that the average breakfaster would not find boiled wheat particularly palatable, would not go to the trouble of breaking it with a spoon. So he consulted a machinist and worked out a process for drawing the cooked wheat into shreds, forming the shreds into loaves, and baking the loaves in coal ovens. After peddling his biscuits in baskets around Lincoln, Neb. and Denver, Col., Mr. Perky acquired some money, moved to Worcester, Mass., started a Shredded Wheat factory.

By 1900 Shredded Wheat had progressed from a Nebraska hotel to a Worcester factory; the next step was the move to Niagara Falls. This transition resulted from the enterprise of William B. Rankine, who had built power houses on the Niagara River but had no factories to utilize the power of the Falls. Mr. Rankine visited Mr. Perky, persuaded him to move to Niagara. Here Mr. Perky built a two million dollar plant, which, however, got him into financial difficulties. Thereupon Mr. Rankine interested various capitalists from New York City, Buffalo and Niagara Falls in the formation of a ten million dollar stock company, one such capitalist being Mr. Alexander J. Porter, now Shredded Wheat President. Mr. Perky subsequently retired from the business, which had become a Big Business, bought a farm in Maryland, near Baltimore, and started establishing a "boys' and girls' republic." The "republic" was to have an agricultural college and a school of domestic science. But Mr. Perky died before his Maryland Utopia could be brought into being. Meanwhile Shredded Wheat continued to expand, has now five factories—two in Niagara Falls, one in Canada, one in California, one in England.

It would be difficult to trace National Biscuit Co. back to a saucer of wheat, though its' original baking companies presumably started with a loaf of bread. The company was formed in 1898, from a merger of three already large baking companies.*