The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 66: A Serial Inventor

Episode Date: July 18, 2017

Because necessity is actually the mother of investment. 

This is the way I heard it. As the deadline approached, Edward Francis considered the value of the story he was about to tell. This one had everything. Scandal, subterfuge, suicide, serendipity, and money. Lots and lots of money. If he told it properly, Marjorie would soon become the wealthiest woman in America. If he told it wrong, nobody would ever listen to him again. Edward considered everything his new wife had just told him.

According to Marjorie, her father had been a serial inventor, a brilliant but troubled man who had patented dozens of new farm implements but wrestled with chronic depression. In 1891, Charles William had checked himself into a sanitarium. The physician, in charge, diagnosed Charles with depression and high anxiety and promptly prescribed a series of of yogurt enumas. That's right. Enemes consisting entirely of yogurt. The doctor in question was John Harvey,

a proponent of what many today might call alternative medicine. He believed there was a link between a healthy colon and a healthy mind. And so too did many of his famous patients. President Taft, Amelia Earhart, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, all of them accepted

the doctors claim that a blast of yogurt up the butt would reduce the presence of bad bacteria and thereby brighten their moods. So Charles was in good company. He lingered at the sanitarium for months, experimenting with a variety of alternative treatments, including an oral medication the doctor administered every morning. This was the treatment that captured Charles's imagination. Not only did this morning remedy improve his mood, it piqued his entrepreneurial spirit. So one night, Charles broke into the doctor's office and stole the formula. Then Charles checked himself out of the sanitarium and went about the business of designing a variety of competitive treatments, including an over-the-counter product that he boldly claimed would prevent appendicitis.

Charles Williams products flew off the shelves, and so too did Dr. John Harvey's. In fact, the doctor and his former patient would compete with each other for the next few decades, each fighting for the dominant share of an exploding market. But then, in what can only be called the epitome of gastrointestinal irony, Charles Williams himself had an appendicitis. apparently the treatment he had been selling to prevent this very thing was woefully ineffective, and the resulting agony proved too much to endure. So, in May of 1914, Charles William shot himself in the head,

leaving Marjorie with a $27 million inheritance and a company that needed a steady hand at the helm. And that brings us back to Marjorie's new husband. the deadline that was now upon him and the story he was about to tell to those inclined to listen. Edward Francis glanced at his pocket watch and took a deep breath. He was ready, and when the bell rang at 9 a.m., he offered America a simple but compelling story, along with 200,000 shares of the company his late father-in-law had left behind. No, Edward did not discuss the doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan, who believed that small flakes of stale corn served with milk could alter a person's moods.

No one needed to be reminded that corn flakes were originally prescribed as morning medicine by their inventor, a Seventh-day Adventist named John Harvey Kellogg. But more importantly, no one needed to know that Kellogg's most famous patients was another cereal inventor named Charles William Post, the same patient who had stolen Kellogg's original formula and whose company went on to offer their own line of morning medications, which included post-toasties, post-razenbrand, post-shredded wheat, alphabets, honeycombs, honeybunches of oats, waffle crisps,

fruity pebbles, fruity pebbles extreme, and, of course, Post grape nuts, the tasty concoction that Charles Post promised would prevent appendicitis. But didn't. No, for this story, Edward was only interested in reminding America that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. So that is exactly what he did. He told a simple story and America ate it up. As a result, his new wife, Marjorie, Mary, Mary, Weather Post became the wealthiest woman in America.

And he became the chairman of a cereal company. He would soon expand and rename General Foods. Years later, the famous stockbroker who made it all happen would look back on that legendary IPO and conclude that much of his good fortune was in reality the result of living in a simpler time, a time when entrepreneurs could market your favorite breakfast food, as medicine, and doctors could treat your depression by shoving a pint of yogurt up your butt. A time when a smooth-talking financier could ignore the unsavory elements of a scandalous story and take a company public with a simple claim, guaranteed to inspire regular folks to

keep on buying the products they loved. So, did Edward Francis Hutton really believe that Breakfast was the most important meal of the day. No one really knows. More to the point, no one really cares. Because back in the good old days, when E.F. Hutton talked. People listened. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.