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Cereal and Consumer Goods
 Outside of the automobile industry, products long associated
with Michigan have included a wide range of items, from cereal to paper. The Growth of
Manufacturing Gallery includes a consumer industries exhibit, seen here, and an exhibit
about the cereal industry born in Battle Creek.
Cereal
 Innovators in the city of
Battle Creek in southwest Michigan brought tasty new grain products to the dining table,
first as health foods and later as breakfast cereals.
 In 1876 Dr.
John Harvey Kellogg became chief physician of the Western Health Reform Institute,
originally formed by the Seventh-day Adventists and later commonly known as the Battle
Creek Sanitarium. The Institute encouraged vegetarian diets, fresh air and exercise. Dr.
Kellogg made small, whole-grain corn, oats and wheat biscuits as early as 1877. Named
"Granola," the biscuits became so popular with patients that they were sold
outside the sanitarium as a breakfast food. Then Dr. Kellogg, along with his brother W. K.
Kellogg, discovered that rolling the grains into thin flakes made their product easier to
chew and digest. He also experimented with coffee substitutes and products made from nuts.
William Kellogg's marketing expertise transformed the health foods into a typical American
breakfast by the early twentieth century.
 Charles W. Post, a patient of Dr. Kellogg's at the
Sanitarium in 1891, became interested in Kellogg's products and his success and started
marketing similar foods of his own. Postum, similar to Kellogg's coffee substitute, became
a widely-accepted beverage. Grape-Nuts likewise resembled Kellogg's first cold prepared
breakfast cereal. By about 1900 these two products generated net revenues of $1 million
annually.
Tobacco
Michigan once packaged and sold great amounts of tobacco, primarily in the form of
cigars and chewing tobacco. Detroit, known as "Tampa of the North," led the
nation in the production of chewing tobacco. By 1880 tobacco products were the single most
valuable manufactured item made in the city. John J. Bagley, a governor of Michigan, built
his fortune in the chewing tobacco trade with the Mayflower brand. Daniel Scotten &
Company, another leading manufacturer, produced the Hiawatha brand. Brewing
 At one time most larger communities had their own breweries.
Bear brewing was often a family or cultural occupation, often associated with the German
population. By 1874, Michigan had 148 breweries making nearly 218,000 barrels of beer
annually. The Stroh Brewing Company became a famous regional label, as did the P. H. Kling
Brewing Company and others in the Detroit area.
Paper Products
The Kalamazoo area became a national center for the manufacture of paper products. The
Kalamazoo Paper Company, formed in 1866, was a leader in the manufacture of numerous
items, including newsprint, specialty printing papers and heavy tobacco paper. Samuel
Gibson, superintendent of the firm, led the company's efforts to improve its products and
output, doubling its business by 1879 and doubling it again by 1885. Other paper-making
firms sprang up in the nearby communities of Plainwell and Otsego and elsewhere to
manufacture office forms, labels and a wide variety of other paper goods. Pharmaceuticals
Excellence in pharmaceuticals was carried on by firms such as the Upjohn Company in
Kalamazoo and Parke, Davis & Company in Detroit. Upjohn became an innovator in
"friable" pills, pills with a dissolvable coating that could be easily crushed
and digested. The firm of Parke, Davis & Company emphasized the nonsecret character of
its drugs
and was recognized as the largest pharmaceutical house in the world by 1890. Druggist
James Vernor mixed soft drinks in his drug store and concocted a ginger ale. Soon his
ginger ale business overshadowed his drugstore and grew into a favorite Michigan beverage
for years to come. Chemicals
Based in part on the abundance of brine water from the numerous salt deposits in
Michigan, the chemical industry flourished here. Dow Chemical Company, Michigan Alkali
Company and the Solvay Process Company were just a few of the prominent firms established
in Midland and the downriver area of Detroit. Herbert H. Dow came to Midland to rent a
well to test a process for obtaining bromine from the brine water. Out of these beginnings
grew the Dow Chemical Company, formed in 1897. Captain John B. Ford sank a test well into
a rock salt formation near Wyandotte in order to obtain a source for the soda ash used in
his glass-making operations. His son Edward made the firm into a prosperous endeavor,
incorporated as Michigan Alkali Company in 1894. The same firm heavily invested itself in
the growing cement industry. Chemicals shipped from Michigan found their way into
products all over the world.
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