Little .Fellow's Baby

Little Fellow's Baby

At the NRA convention in Washington last fortnight both President Roosevelt and General Johnson had much to say about the "little fellow" who found himself and his business painfully pinched by code provisions. On General Johnson's desk last week lay a complaint from a business man in Columbus, Ga. which was typical of the little fellow's troubles. Tom (not Thomas) Huston was asking to be relieved from the operation of the chewing gum code. Tom Huston has not always been a gummaker. He used to be in the peanut business. Last year his gum salesmen spent so much time explaining the change that Tom Huston finally wrote a booklet : What Happened to Tom Huston -- The Whole Story in a Peanut Shell. Son of a Texas peanut planter, he started to toast peanuts in a small shack in Columbus about 1925. By 1930 Tom Huston's Pea nut Co. had a big factory, was earning $400,000 per year and its stock was listed on the New York Curb Exchange. "My sun was shining brightly," wrote he. "The desire to conquer new fields was running in my veins." The field he picked for conquest was Georgia's excess peach crop, which he planned to quick-freeze and market in the off season. As Depression deepened, how ever, Tom Huston's market for quick-frozen peaches froze almost as quickly as Tom Huston's peaches. By the time he decided to abandon the project, he needed cash to pay his debts. Tom Huston went to his bankers, First National of Atlanta. They demanded as collateral his controlling stock interest in the prosperous peanut company. When the note fell due, the bank's affiliate, Trust Co. of Georgia, refused to renew, and control of the peanut company passed into its hands. One of the first things Trust Co. of Georgia did was to oust President Tom Huston.

He promptly started afresh with Tom Huston System, merchandisers of "Julep Gums." Having no capital with which to start a gum factory, he arranged to have his product made under contract by Walla-Walla Chewing Gum Co. of Knoxville, Tenn. Almost before he knew what had happened Tom Huston found himself forced in under the Chewing Gum Manufacturers' Code which contains this clause: "No member of the Industry shall guarantee the sale of his product by the purchaser thereof."

To Wrigley, Beech-Nut, and American Chicle, which together make about 95% of all the gum chewed in the U. S., that clause is no burden. National advertising has built up their consumer demand. But when Tom Huston's salesmen approach a retailer with an unknown brand like Julep the retailer wants a money-back agreement in case the gum does not sell. Tom Huston says that none of his 40,000 retail outlets have ever called on him to make good his money-back agreement, but that in new territory his salesmen cannot sell without it. It was to stifle just such new competitors, charges Tom Huston, that the big gum-makers inserted the clause in the code. "My hopes of making Julep Chewing Gum a nationally known product from coast to coast are hopes that have been blasted by the NRA."

Basing his plea on the ground that he was a gum-merchandiser, not a gum- maker, he wrote last week: "General Johnson, this is a matter of life and death with us. Will you be good enough to provide us immediately some relief so that the wheels of our once healthy and coming baby enterprise can start turning again?" With the letter he sent a carton of assorted Julep gums for General Johnson to sample. The General is no gum-chewer.

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