Sharing Missouri Stories: The “What” and the “So What”

One of the ideas we have tried to emphasize in this issue of MO Passages is that MHC supports a variety programs that seek to place Missouri stories in a larger historical context. This is particularly true of the Museum on Main Street program, in which a Smithsonian traveling exhibit tells a national story is augmented by exhibits and programs that tell local stories which are related to that “big picture” presentation. Next year, Museum on Main Street will present “The Way We Work,” an exhibit that explores the changing nature of work and the workplace in American history. So what kind of local Missouri stories can be introduced as illustrations of that overall theme? Here is an example that you might not be aware of:

“That’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Otto Rohwedder's bread slicer

Otto Rohwedder's bread slicing machine, in operation at the Chillicothe Baking Co. (Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, NMAH/Work & Industry)

Most of us have heard familiar phrase at some time or other. More than a few of us have probably uttered the phrase at some point. But just how much of an innovation was bread that came from the store already sliced? Was it actually all that great? The people of Chillicothe, Missouri think so. They want everyone to know exactly where the commercial production of pre-sliced bread loaves began.

It was, in fact, in Missouri during the 1920s that the Chillicothe Baking Company began offering pre-sliced bread to its customers. The bakery’s owner, M.F. “Frank” Bench introduced “Kleen Maid” sliced bread to the public on July 6, 1928, with an advertisement in the Chillicothe Constitution Tribune stating:

“Just think of it! Every slice perfect and CORRECT, far better than you could cut it yourself….There was a time when you ground coffee. Now you buy it ground. Well, this is the same sort of sensible, logical improvement.”

For the first time in the history of baking, consumers could purchase a loaf of bread that had been efficiently and neatly cut into slices by a machine. This was a great improvement over hand slicing, as the ability to cut bread into perfectly even portions with a conventional bread knife eluded even the most skilled of bakery workers. There were efforts through the years to develop a machine to slice bread loaves, but these were less than successful. Then in 1927, Otto Rohwedder, an inventor from Des Moines, Iowa, came up with a design for the first practical bread-slicing machine. Rohwedder’s pitched his idea all over the country but found no takers until he met Frank Bench of Chillicothe, Missouri. Mr. Bench saw the potential in the concept and partnered with Rohwedder to begin offering pre-sliced bread.

So the next time you buy a loaf of bread at the store, and you enjoy the convenience of simply removing a few slices from the wrapper as you need them, think about Otto Rohwedder and Frank Bench and their willingness to try out a new idea. And while you’re at it, the residents of Chillicothe hope that you will also think about the north-central Missouri town where the innovative concept was first put to work.

“We got to thinking about it and our thoughts were this: We’ve really got something here,” says Ed Douglas, a local banker and chairman of the city’s Sliced Bread Committee. In September 2007, The Chillicothe City Council adopted “Home of Sliced Bread” as the town’s new slogan (visit http://www.homeofslicedbread.com/ for more information).

Home of Slice Bread Logo

So is this tale of Rohwedder’s mechanical bread slicer simply an isolated curiosity, a “local pride” kind of story with little significance beyond the community where the machine was first put into regular use? Or was it a development that was representative of a general trend in the history of American industry? Consider the following quote from an article regarding the U.S. economy in the 1920s, written by Dr. W. Gene Smiley, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Marquette University, which was posted on the Economic History Association website at http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Smiley.1920s.final:

“The mechanization of American manufacturing accelerated in the 1920s, and this led to a much more rapid growth of productivity in manufacturing compared to earlier decades and to other sectors at that time. There were several forces that promoted mechanization. One was the rapidly expanding aggregate demand during the prosperous twenties. Another was the technological developments in new machines and processes…”

Clearly, the introduction of mechanical bread slicing in the baking industry was part of a larger story. It was only one example of how new equipment was transforming the industrial workplace during the 1920s. Furthermore, we can argue that acceptance of Rohweddr’s machine is related not just to the process of industrial mechanization and changes in the labor force that Dr. Smiley described. It showed the growth of the processed food industry, which was connected with the growth of chain grocery stores which facilitated wider distribution of and demand for individually-packaged “convenience” food products in this same era.

Whatever happened to that first bread slicing machine, you may ask? After many years of usage it was scrapped, because it was literally falling apart. The second machine sold by Otto Rohwedder, however, does survive. It is now in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, a fact that stands as confirmation of the fact that pre-sliced bread has its place in American history as a revolutionary innovation in the food industry.

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