Business: Happiness Headquarters

In 1883 dainty little Rose Markward married a knit-goods salesman named Charles Briggs Knox who had precisely $11 left after he had paid the minister. By 1889 the thrifty Knoxes had saved $5,000, invested every cent of it in a tiny gelatine works at Johnstown, N. Y. Last week the 325 employes of the Knox gelatine works joined in presenting 80 yellow roses in a Tiffany vase to Rose Markward Knox as “a birthday remembrance and a token of love, loyalty and appreciation from her business family.” This was no empty gesture, for Mrs. Knox, despite her 80 years, still runs Knox with the same vigorous skill that in 30 years has made it a model industry in both profits and employe relations.

When Charles Knox started his gelatine works, he was too poor to hire a sales staff, did his own gelatine selling on the road as a sideline to selling gloves. But when he died in 1908 the Charles B. Knox Gelatine Co, was in anything but prosperous state, for Charles Knox’s idea of good gelatine promotion had been race horses wearing the Knox colors and primitive airships bearing the Knox name.

Mrs. Knox had different ideas. Says she: “I just used common sense—a man would call it horse sense—in running my business. But from the first I was determined to run it in what I called a woman’s way, because . . . after all, it was women who purchased gelatine.” Mrs. Knox spent $500,000 on research, built an experimental kitchen and flooded the nation with gelatine recipes. She ordered the factory kept clean as a kitchen, beautified the grounds, abolished the rear door for employes because “we are all ladies and gentlemen here together.” As one result Knox gelatine sales tripled in the first decade. As another, Knox has never had any labor trouble and 85% of the present employes have been there 25 years.

In 1915 Mrs. Knox incorporated her company for $300,000. In 1925 this was raised to $1,000,000. Since 1913, Rose Knox’s son James has been her assistant. They control the stock, keep profits closely secret. Knox gelatine is currently made in factories at both Johnstown and Camden, N. J., is sold in 300,000 stores the world around. About 80% of Knox sales are plain gelatine, made from calves’ bones mostly imported from the Argentine and processed in lime water for six weeks until the gelatine is boiled off.* In 1935, follow-ing competitors JellO, Royal Gelatin, she consented to produce flavored Knox Jell, which joined with new gelatine recipes for pie and candy to give Knox steadily increasing sales all during Depression. Knox now runs behind Jell-O and Royal in total sales, but remains tops in sales of plain gelatine.

A jolly octogenarian as benevolent and motherly as she is forceful, Mrs. Knox goes to her office about 9:30 every morning, writes as many as 50 letters before lunch, even replying personally to queries from housewives who have misread recipes. At her Johnstown home, “Rose Hill,” she has hothouses full of orchids which she likes to give to fellow townfolk. She has also given them an old ladies’ home, athletic field, set of chimes. The Knox factory pretty completely supports Johnstown and in 1929 Knox employes tacked up a plaque in their lobby with the legend HAPPINESS HEADQUARTERS.

*FamiIiar to all housewives is the Knox trade-mark—a wide-eared calf. It was chosen to emphasize the fact that calves’ bones, not pig bones, are used. Though it has been a popular belief ever since Noah Webster said so, horses’ hoofs play no part in making gelatine.