Their research. This years conference was held in atlanta. About 2000 historians attended. Bart elmore is a professor at the university of alabama and author of the book citizen coke. Explain the title. Its kind of a funny story. Originally citizen kane, one of thought about the title of the book, and it was all about the problems of american capitalism. Though this book is about coke, i was really interested in thinking about how coke was a lens into some of the environmental problems with 20 century 20th century american capitalist growth. So i felt it was kind of a catchy title, plays with in a way citizen kane, which deals with the history of business in the United States. In the interest of full disclosure, i grew up in coke country in atlanta, and i had gone to a school that had been funded heavily by coke money in the south side of atlanta. So i was sitting there saying, coke has been a good citizen in my life, and one of the things that they promote today is the idea of corporate citizenship, saw wanted to delve into that in the book and say, are they good citizens . When we look at the environmental footprint of the company, do they end up looking like a good citizen or like the perhaps has had some pretty big costs that we have not seen in the past. You said we are here in atlanta. Visibility is everywhere. Take us back to the origins of the product. How was it developed . It is a bizarre story, stranger than fiction. It started literally a couple of blocks from where we are sitting a guy named john pemberton. Grew up in columbus, georgia. He was a pharmacist. He was down on his luck. He had suffered a series of during the civil war, and he had stomach ailments and pains, and he starts taking morphine to deal with these problems. Todually, he became addicted morphine. Around the 1880s, he became interested in this new drug that became very popular, cocaine. It may sound strange now, but he was thinking, wouldnt it be cool if this new drug could help me maybe get off this morphine addiction . Though coke would hate this to be the story of its origination, he copied this drink that was very popular in france at the time called zin mariani. People loved this drink because of his basically bordeaux wine mixed with cocaine. It was cocainelaced wine. Sigmund freud was drinking and in the 1870s. Pope leo xiii was drinking in the 1870s. Ulysses s. Grant was drinking it. Pemberton creates is creates this drink that is actually a wine laced with cocaine. Originally, you think coke is actually discuss actually this cocainelaced wine. The problem was prohibition in the south is taking hold in the 1880s. Cities are beginning to ban our hall. So he is forced to remove the carbonatedce it with water, and you have cocacola in 1886. You have him try to deal with his addiction to morphine, and finding this drink that he thought he could copy. If you had a coke in 18841880 five and had one today, could you taste the difference . First of all, he would have had cocaine in the original cocacola. Folks who surmise that maybe four sixon citrix of cocacola, you would have noticed some kind of noticeable singling or numbness from the cocaine in the drink, so cocaine was taken out in 1903. It also had more caffeine. This idea that the secret formula has been around forever caffeine concentrations have fluctuated wildly. You also you almost would have had almost double the caffeine content that you have in the drink today. All these things would have changed. Also the sugar content is different. Today, you have high fructose. Orn syrup then, it would have been all sugar and more of it. Tasted aou would have slightly different product. Wasuring this time period, it regulated . Was the government involved in the development of this product . One of the things that is interesting in the book is the close relationship between coke. Nd the government at first, the problem with cocacola was not the cocaine. It was the caffeine. That was what the government was concerned about. There was a very serious trial that took place beginning in 1911 led by the bureau of chemistry. Bureau the director of the bureau of chemistry saying that the caffeine in cocacola is processed, made in factories and put in the product to try to a in american public. The trial went on for years. Coke was really concerned. As the government came down hard on them, would they have to close up shop . Ltimately, they win that case takes several years to do so. This was a real triumph for coke, to prove that processed caffeine added to beverages is a safe thing to consume. Atlanta, thee in organization of american historians. Give us a sense of coke in atlanta and how it has changed and eve auld over the years and its impact on this city and region. Having grown up here, one of the things i always like to note because there are things in the book that i guess are surprising about some of the things they have done around the world environmentally that are maybe not so good. Where cocacola has had a series of bottling plants in some very arid regions of the country. In some of the regions, these plants have been extracting so much water that they have been in some ways affecting the water table in these regions, so there have been a lot of allocations allegations because that coke should close these plants. There are some rough stories in the book. But i grew up realizing that there was a lot of charitable good produced by coke. You see this city had been built around coke money. The university was given one of the largest grants at the time to a university by robert brother who ran the company for a long time. My high school, my education was paid for in a lot of ways by coke money. You could talk to almost any atlanta citizen, and they would say the Woodruff Arts Center hasome way, coke charity affected their lives. In so many ways, academic institutions, the arts, you name it coke has really built this city. Its rise was really during the industrial revolution. Some called it the gilded age. This city was not alone. Detroit, new york, chicago, seeing tremendous growth and development. Absolutely. I think what was different about coke, and i think this goes to the heart of what i was writing andt, is unlike u. S. Steel unlike maybe these other the sugar trucks in these big vertically integrated in priors, coke was very different. It chose not to vertically integrate. What i callsuccess, it secret formula, was not really its recipes, but actually, its unique or per structure of outsourcing and franchising. Whats crazy about coke is by the end of the 19th century, is all over the country. They were in every state in the union. Its the ability to do that through the bottling Franchise System that makes coke really unique in terms of the taste the pace with which it spread across the country and then, of course, the globe. Let me ask about the bottling and the socalled new coke, the formula that was the subject of so much attention. In the 1980s, 1985. What is really interesting about i trace the ingredients in the book. That is what im interested in. A lot of sugar, caffeine, anything. I could have written about every natural flavor, but i do not think that would have fit into the book, so i decided to focus on just one. Coca leaves. Today, coke is still the single of coca leavesr in the United States. They sell the cocaine to pharmaceutical companies and leave the extract as a flavor profile in the beverage. It is this incredibly secret trade. I went to peru to try to track the story down, and it will goes on. It is a remarkable story. But they have this coca leaf that is this flavoring profile and their drink. You know, they have it, and. Obody else can get it it goes back to your story about the publicprivate partnership. The federal government oversees this trade between cocacola and coca plant. N other companies have said they want some of it, too, so the federal government said the trade is somewhat restricted. They would allow coke to do it, but they cannot have access to do it as well. It is a really interesting story of a monopoly being formed in many ways through the federal bureau of narcotics to try to regulate this kind of special trade that coke had with these coca farmers. So that is the secret ingredient . Getting back to your question, that would be one of the secret ingredients. What is interesting about new coke is that one of the reasons they are trying to reformulate, they aree reasons trying to reformulate the product is to get rid of this pesky coca leaf issue. This is the 1980s. The war on drugs, reagan is trying to crack down on drug use in the United States. This is something we do not want to have a connection to. Nowevidence that we have suggests that they actually took up the coca leaf flavoring but,ct in that new coke, of course, it was an absolute fiasco. People called in hundreds of phone calls to the Corporate Office saying, we want our coke back. You killed the real thing. And all this. If they ever thought about removing the coca leaves, there was this reality that they said, weve got something here with this formula. We should not mess with it. Some compare that to a botched marketing rollout. They really seemed to believe they had done all these polls and taste tests, and they seemed to really believe some people think it was a gimmick, that they did this to kind of recreate a brand loyalty for the coke formula, but they seemed to really believe that consumers wanted a new thing. At this time, pepsi was doing really well as well, so they were cutting into their market share, and they thought they were going to lose out to pepsi if they did not do something bold. When did we start seeing the Mass Marketing of cocacola and the Advertising Campaigns that are now ubiquitous with 20th and now 21stcentury branding . I would say that the Mass Marketing stuff is very early on, right after the product is created, he gets in partnership with a guy who gets in partnership with people that are familiar with print, and they begin pushing out tons of promotional campaigns. They actually give away free samples of coke everywhere. They are all about the idea of creating ubiquity and creating access to this product. What is interesting, though, about the Mass Marketing campaign is originally in the late 19th century, is that it is all about the curative robberies of cocacola. Pitched as a brain tonic. That was its title. Strain, worry, nervousness, and any type of anxiety that you would have. What they came to find by the early 1900s is this got them into trouble. By claiming that it had all note properties, it does have all these properties. It also drew the attention of medical experts and these new bureau of chemistry folks who were asking if it was a medicine and how it should be regulated. But you see by the 1920s is them getting away from that, focusing on the pause that refreshes, whatever that means, right . And these catchy phrases that are intentionally designed not to talk about what is really in coke, but to kind of conjure up these feelings of happiness and good feelings that we associate coke with today. Did the founders the scientists who really came up with this product realize in the 1890s what they had created . Unfortunatelyton dies in 1891 or 1892, and he never gets to see what coke becomes. When he dies, he is actually running out of money. He does not know that this thing is really going to be such a big hit that it is, and we are not going to have bottling of coke until 1899. I would say that the decision to begin to bottle coke and to spread it via the local capital of all these businessmen around the country is the key to cokes success, and i dont think pemberton foresaw that. Cocacola where does the name come from . Coca from the coca leaves in peru. Andas consumed by the incas folks native to peru for centuries. One of the debates that goes on in peru today is about whether name, this name that was of the peruvian people and is now part of this branding. Cola is more interesting. Cola was originally kola, the comes from west africa, and this was the original source of caffeine for cocacola. Pemberton believed that the kola nut was this new, exotic source of caffeine, and that this would distinguish his product from other caffeinated beverages. The problem with it is when you think about Mass Marketing, all nuts do not throw around the world, and there was a shortage at that time, so he decided to ultimately source most of his caffeine, via fromnto, of all companies, waste tea leaves, the tea leaves left on tea exchanges, damaged or broken and could not be sold. It was this incredible story of recycling the waste tea leaves left on the floors of t exchanges around the world. That explains why coke was able to get caffeine for dirt cheap prices. Can you give us a sense of the company today, how many people it employs, its worldwide reach, profits, and revenue . About 200rates in countries worldwide, sells about day,illion servings per which is amazing. When you talk about employment, its very interesting because again, my book is in part about what they own and whose salaries they really pay. From, asd say that they call them cocacola associates, whether they be local retailers in a small momandpop store or a bottle or somebody that has some overction to coke, talking 700,000 folks, a lot of people they are actually employing in that way. Actually on the payroll of cocacola, 150,000 still a lot. They ended up merging a lot of their bottling enterprises and owning for a short time some of their bottlers. That increased their employment for a long time, but they were the 20 second most Profitable Company in the United States in most Profitable Company in the United States. They were the number one brand in the world in 2012. I think they have since been outpaced by apple. We are talking about a product that has massive global reach from alabama to zimbabwe. That was the question i really wanted to answer how . This expression of skier patton created by this morphine addict in a basement just two blocks from here in my hometown this thisre patent created by morphine addict. Did you have access to the files . Where they open to showing you how the process work . No. It was an environmental history of the company that looked at the ingredients. If theres one thing cocacola does not like talking about, is the secret formula and their secret ingredient. Run the beginning, coke did not give me access to the corporate archives, which i fondly driveby when i come home. But what is amazing is that robert woodruff, who ran the company from the 1920s until steppeds he had down, but he was basically considered the boss for all of these years. He donated all of his personal correspondence, correspondence between president s and executives i mean, incredibly rich you incredibly rich collection to emory university. Story,ble to unravel the going through each ingredient of tracing out the stories of how coke was able to get all the stuff from around the world. Its obvious you are excited about this topic. What did you learn that surprised you most . I think it of things i. Hink two things one was the story of the coca leaf, the fact that coke still relationshipet with peruvian coca farmers that still overseen by the federal government. That is somewhat unknown by the public, and i think that will be interesting to see what people say when that comes out, that story. The other thing that was really striking to me i thought coke did stuff. By that, i mean i thought coke owned all these things. All they really sell is a concentrate. Make their they money. It is not and owning bottlers or buying up sugar plantations in cuba, which hershey and other companies did. Coke maintained a sleek, lean corporate structure, which most firms we think about on the scale that coke is on, you know, we think is being vertically integrated. I think it was that crazy story of finding the secret formula of the structure of the firm that was really surprising when i got into this project. Bart elmore, professor of the university of alabama, native of atlanta, and author of the book ke. Izen cop appreciate you being with us. You are watching American History tv all weekend, every weekend. Ike us on facebook we are at the henry a. Wallace country life center, which is 50 miles south and west of des moines. This is the birthplace of henry a. Wallace. Wallace is of iowa consist of three generations. The patriarch was known as fondly as uncle henry, and he was the founder of wallace the farmer magazine. Was u. S. Secretary of agriculture under woodrow wilson. Henrys son was born on this farm in 1888. He went on to become editor of the magazine. He was asked by Franklin Roosevelt to serve as secretary of agriculture, which he did for eight years. s41 to 1945, he was roosevelt vice president. As u. S. Secretary of agriculture, he is known for the agricultural adjustment act, which was the first time that farmers are asked not to produce. Could notpeople believe the things he was proposing regarding that, but up, theyrices went started to listen to him. People still refer to him today secretary of agriculture. Explore the history and literary life of des moines, iowa, next weekend on cspan2s booktv an American History tv on cspan3. Dedicatedsed and so not to be made fuzzy i am thinking and stupid labels. Thatld remind you extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. [applause] thank you. Thank you. [applause] thank you. [applause] thank you. Let me remind you, also, that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. [applause] senator goldwaters acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican National convention, this weekend on American History tvs each week, American History tvs series marks the 150th anniversary of the conflict by bringing you lectures, discussions, and battlefield visits. 150 years ago in july of 1864, a Confederate Army of about 12,000 under the command of general early nearly invaded washington, d. C. Next, marc leepson takes us on a tour of battlefields to tell the story of the battle of monocacy, where the confederates were delayed by union forces in their ap
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