Chicle

Jennifer P. Matthews, 2009.

Ridiculously short one-page description: The history of chewing gum in the Americas, from the ancient Mayans to William Wrigley.

Rudolf of Habsburg

I have had some wonderful reading experiences when I've chosen books somewhat randomly, based on a momentary pique of curiosity.  When I was younger, before the era of massive brick & mortar bookstores, and online ones of near-infinite scope, I used to go to libraries.  Sometimes I would walk the aisles at random, flitting about the shelves until I found just the right book--interesting, readable and with just the right level of obscurity.  I recall getting one such book at the St. Petersburg Library--a biography of Rudolph of Habsburg, the 16th-century Holy Roman Emperor and part-time alchemist, which I was reading late at night when I was interrupted by Rebecca's laboring with the birth of our first daughter.  But this has nothing to do with chewing gum.

I didn't choose the book Chicle at random, but it seems like I did.  I was doing research for a book I never finished writing, but once I started reading Chicle, I couldn't put it down.  Here's one of my favorite stories in the book:

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was born in 1794 in the Mexican state of Veracruz to an upper-class family of pure Spanish heritage--a criollo.  His parents wanted him to be a businessman, but he entered a military academy instead, and at 16 joined the Spanish army and fought against the liberation of Mexico from Spain. In 1821 he switched sides and joined the Mexican army, rising to the rank of brigadier general.  When Mexico was liberated from Spain he became governor of Veracruz, and later President of Mexico, a position he would hold for eleven terms.

In 1836 he temporarily resigned his presidency to lead an army of 1500 soldiers to defeat the Texans at the Alamo.  It turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory, suffering heavy casualties, inspiring the Texas rebellion and followed a month later by an attack led by Sam Houston which resulted in 400 Mexicans killed, 200 wounded and 730 taken prisoner, including Santa Anna.  In 1837 Santa Anna signed the treaty giving Texas its independence, and was released back to Mexico in disgrace.  He regained his popularity by fighting and losing his left leg in the Pastry War with France in 1838, and was re-elected to president, serving six more terms.

So what does all this have to do with chewing gum?

In 1855, during his eleventh and final term, the Mexican economy was in shambles and the country had suffered the loss of enormous territory.  Realizing he could be exiled, Santa Anna fled to the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean.  There he met U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, who was scouting for an island to buy to install a naval base.  (In 1867 Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska for two cents an acre, which at the time was derided in Congress and the press as "Seward's Folly.")  Some men used Santa Anna's connection to Seward to swindle him, forging a letter from Seward inviting Santa Anna to come to New York and prepare to lead an expedition against Maxmillian, the Emperor of Mexico, who was backed by France.  Santa Anna invested and lost 40,000 pesos in the fake venture and and wound up broke, living in a modest house on Staten Island.

Getting closer to the chewing gum.

Thomas Adams

Through a mutual friend, Santa Anna was introduced to Thomas Adams, a former Civil War photographer who owned a store as a glass merchant.  Adams was also an inveterate inventor, having developed a new bag for horse feed and a burner for kerosene lamps.  Santa Anna had brought with him some chicle, which is a rubbery sap from sapodilla trees in the Yucatan Peninsula.  Santa Anna had hoped to get rich by finding someone to develop chicle as an alternative to rubber, a booming new industry. Adams--the inventor and entrepreneur--took Santa Anna's chicle and tried to replicate the vulcanization process developed by Charles Goodyear in 1839.  Despite Adams spending $30,000 on the venture, it was unsuccessful.  Santa Anna had returned to Mexico (he died, senile and impoverished, in 1876) and Adams was ready to put the whole chicle fiasco behind him.

Now for the chewing gum part.

While in a store, Thomas Adams overheard a young girl ask to buy some paraffin wax gum.  Paraffin, beeswax and other products had been introduced as substitutes for spruce chewing gum, which had been chewed by Indians for centuries for health and recreational purposes, and had become a minor industry in the U.S., only to dissipate due to the demand for spruce trees in the lumber industry. Adams recalled hearing how the indigenous people from the Yucatan chewed chicle, so with his sons they boiled the leftover chicle in a pot, rolled it into small gray balls and sold it at their store.  It sold out in hours.  They made more.  By the late 1880's, Adams and Sons was employing over 300 workers at a plant near the Brooklyn Bridge.  They produced five tons of chewing gum daily, including their best-selling Tutti-Frutti and Black Jack licorice gums.  Adams is generally recognized as the father of the modern chewing gum industry--thanks to Santa Anna.

Related points of interest: Thomas Adams invented the first chewing gum machine in 1871, which he placed in drugstores, and in 1888 commissioned the first penny vending gum machine, for subway platforms, They introduced Chiclets in 1900.  The family grew rich, and Thomas Jr. and John Dunbar Adams had a double-residence mansion built in Brooklyn (across the street from the Feltman mansion, owned by the German-born Charles Feltman, who first turned a frankfurter into a hot dog and sold them at his shop on Coney Island). The Adams mansion featured the first elevator in New York City.  One year, when the Adams' returned from a six-month stay at their coastal home in Bay Shore, New York, they discovered four servants who had gotten trapped in the elevator and perished from starvation.

In 1919, now the American Chicle Company, the Adams' spent $2 million on a massive five-story 550,000-square-foot building on Long Island. It was producing five million packages of chewing gum a day.  The company survives today, through Black Jack licorice gum, Chiclets, and Cadbury-Adams LLC.

So chew on that.

In 2017 I'm revisiting 50 books I've enjoyed over the years.  This is 7/50.