{"id":9176,"date":"2009-08-11T08:45:23","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T13:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=9176"},"modified":"2009-08-11T19:34:37","modified_gmt":"2009-08-12T00:34:37","slug":"van-camps-pork-beans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2009\/08\/van-camps-pork-beans\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Camp’s Pork & Beans"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 1904 magazine advertisement for Van Camp\u2019s Pork and Beans features a photograph of the Stonewall<\/del> Andrew Jackson equestrian statue in New Orleans. Two cartoon children dressed in Dutch costume gaze at the monument, above this verse:
\n<\/p>\n

New Or<\/em>-leans some call New Or-leans<\/em>,
\n(Van Camp says, \u201cRhymes with pork and beans;\u201d)
\nHere Hans and Lena have espied
\nWhere General Jackson goes to ride.
\nThe freedom which Van Camp effects,
\nThe frugal housewife much respects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The history of Van Camp\u2019s products is a little garbled \u2013 corporate legends with impossible dates seem to have been carefully promulgated \u2013 but as best as I can sort it out, it\u2019s this: The Van Camp (or Van Campen) family immigrated to North America and settled in New Holland (now New Jersey) in the 17th century. By 1804, Charles Van Camp had settled in Indiana Territory as a farmer and wagonmaker. His son Gilbert was born in Brookville, Indiana in 1817.<\/p>\n

Working alternately as a flour miller and a tinsmith, gained business experience and saved money until in 1860 Gilbert moved himself and wife Hester to Indianapolis, where he became junior partner first in the grocery of Fletcher, Williams & Van Camp, and soon after became proprietor of his own business, The Fruit House Grocery. Here he put his metal-working skills to work, and built what is touted as the nation\u2019s first cold-storage food warehouse: He built a house with walls three feet thick, sandwiching cut straw between two sheets of iron. He also experimented with packing fruits and vegetables in tin cans, possibly the first man to do so. One of Hester\u2019s specialities was tender beans flavored with cured pork \u2013 pork and beans \u2013 which Gilbert canned for his grocery.<\/p>\n

Corporate history \u2013 and here\u2019s one point where I can\u2019t discern between fact and legend \u2013 says that Gilbert Van Camp won a lucrative contract selling canned pork and beans to the U.S. government to feed the troops during the Civil War. That seems rather a tall order for one woman cooking beans on her kitchen stove and one man handcrafting tin cans (they didn\u2019t have a factory yet, and were only in the earliest years of their grocery business). True or not, the legend was perpetuated by another advertisement featuring the Dutch cartoon kids Hans and Lena, in 1904. Shown standing in front of the White House, the kids are accompanied by this jingle:<\/p>\n

The White House Hans and Lena view,
\nOn Pennsylvania Avenue;
\nTo Washington folks came in troops,
\nSupported by Van Camp\u2019s good soups.
\nThe eighteen kinds Van Camp prepares
\nRelieve the cooks from many cares.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By 1882, Gilbert Van Camp did have a packing plant and had made Indiana the nation\u2019s premier state for the production of canned foods, specializing in pork and beans, canned milk and condensed (he called them \u201cconcentrated\u201d) soups. His son Frank joined him in the business that year; with a head for business, Frank soon became his father\u2019s general manager. In 1891, while helping to clean up after a devastating fire at the canning plant, Frank reportedly made a discovery that turned disaster into triumph: While eating his father\u2019s pork and beans for lunch one day, he either \u2013 depending on the version of the legend \u2013 absent-mindedly mixed his beans with tomato soup, or else opened a blackened ketchup bottle and deliberately poured it on his beans, and discovered that beans in tomato sauce were much more to his liking than the traditional recipe, which, like Boston baked beans, was flavored with molasses.<\/p>\n

Which may be one reason why Hans and Lena went to Boston in a 1904 advertisement published in Scribners,<\/em> touring in an incredibly early version of the automobile:<\/p>\n

Upon an auto\u2019s flying seat
\nHere Hans and Lena Boston greet;
\nSee old South Church and pork and beans,
\nOriginal New England scenes.
\nThe \u201cBoston Baked\u201d Van Camp prepares
\nThe housewife frees from many cares.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pork and beans cooked in a tomato base became wildly popular, made Frank a millionaire, and sent him to California where he added tuna fish \u2013 under the brand name Chicken of the Sea \u2013 to his company\u2019s repertoire. He found his greatest success in the years between 1900 and his 1909 death, when Van Camp\u2019s Pork and Beans was the nation\u2019s best selling brand.<\/p>\n

The years 1903 to 1907, and perhaps a year or two either side of those dates, were also the years when Hans and Lena were used as advertising figures. These cheeky kids accompanied doggerel that was only half a step from irreverence with its claiming for Van Camp\u2019s the heroic achievements of the nation\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n

In Munsey\u2019s Magazine<\/em>, in 1904, before a photograph of Independence Hall, Lena is waving a flag and Hans beats on a drum made from a Van Camp\u2019s can:<\/p>\n

On Independence Day \u2019tis meet
\nThat Philadelphia\u2019s busy street
\nResounds with drum and martial tramp
\nAs Hans and Lena praise Van Camp.
\nVan Camp, who with his pork and beans,
\nHas freed a world of household queens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In McClure\u2019s<\/em> in 1903, the two are seated at the base of Chicago\u2019s statue of Lincoln:<\/p>\n

Beneath the Lincoln Monument,
\nOn great Chicago\u2019s charms intent,
\nNow Hans and Lena here you see
\nEnjoying beans and liberty.
\nThe slaves Van Camp emancipates
\nAre cooks in matrimonial states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1904, the pair traveled from coast to coast. In California \u2013<\/p>\n

The Cliff house, on Pacific\u2019s Shore,
\nNear San Francisco\u2019s Golden Door,
\nSuggests to Lena and to Hans
\nThe eighteen soups that Van Camp cans;
\nFor those, the great emancipators,
\nStand high o\u2019er watery imitators.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2013 and at Niagara Falls, in the pages of Good Housekeeping<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Quoth Hans to Lena, \u201cWhat a sight
\nTo view Niag\u2019ra in its might.
\nYou know there\u2019s wondrous power, too,
\nFrom every housewife\u2019s point of view
\nIn Van Camp\u2019s Soups \u2013 so pure and fine;
\nThey save much labor, Lena mine.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By now you must think I\u2019ve sold out to giant agribusiness. I haven\u2019t \u2013 but ConAgra, if you\u2019re listening, I wouldn\u2019t turn down a case of Van Camp\u2019s Pork and Beans.<\/p>\n

This really does have something \u2013 however slight \u2013 to do with Mormon history.<\/p>\n

Really.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know the date, or the magazine, and apologize for the poor quality of this image that I snagged off of eBay after having been outbid in the purchase of this advertisement months ago. Sometime during these years, perhaps during their 1904 cross-country tour from Niagara to San Francisco, Hans and Lena visited Salt Lake City. Here we see them seated near the Salt Lake Temple, offering their impudent rhyme:<\/p>\n

.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

In Salt Lake City set apart,
\nThe Temple, dear to Mormon heart,
\nNow Hans and Lena much admire,
\nAnd long to place upon each spire
\nOf Van Camp\u2019s fancy soups a can,
\nThat cooks may know the nobler plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

.
\nCross-posted from Keepapitchinin — click here<\/a> for comments.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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