Schumacher
NAME: Schumacher, Ferdinand.
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Founded the American oatmeal industry.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: Oatmeal King of America.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 30th March, 1822, in Celle, Hanover, Germany.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 15th April, 1908, in Akron, Ohio. Age 86.
DISCIPLINE: Food processing.
FIELD: Business.
LANGUAGE: German and English.
PARENTS:
SIBLINGS: 1 brother: Otto
SPOUSE: First: Hermine Schumacher, his cousin, married 1851, died 1893. Second: Mary Zipperlen, married in 1899.
CHILDREN: Louis and Adolph.
EDUCATION: Local schools.
MAJOR WORK:
LIFE AND TIMES: Schumacher left school when he was fifteen to start a five year apprenticeship with a local grocer. In 1842, he started work with his father and after four years got a job as a shipping clerk.
In 1850, Schumacher and his brother Otto emigrated to America and settled on a farm in Euclid, near Cleveland, Ohio. After two years, he was bored with farm work, so he moved to Akron, Ohio and set up his own grocery store. The business was successful and he ran the store for the next seven years.
Somewhere around 1854, he installed a hand mill and bought imported oatmeal that he could grind and sell. This proved so successful that he decided to quit the grocery trade and set up his own oatmeal factory.
He bought an empty textile factory and installed machinery that could produce twenty barrels of oatmeal a day, called ‘German Mills American Oatmeal’. When the business began to succeed, he expanded his product list to include pearl barley.
By 1863, he had built up the business and in 1868 purchased the Cascade Flour Mills on the banks of the Cuyahoga River. Business was by now booming, so n 1872 he upgraded the Cascade Mills with more power and production capacity. In the same year, a fire destroyed his first mill so he built a new one, enlarging it six years later.
In 1884 he opened a new mill with an output of two thousand barrels a day of oatmeal, barley, flour, corn, farina, buckwheat flour and cracked wheat. The plant was built beside the Erie Railroad track, which provided him fast transportation to New York and Chicago. His products were now being sold throughout New England, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago.
At the peak of production, a fire destroyed most of the plant and Schumacher could not afford to re-build, so he agreed to go into partnership with the Akron Milling Company and they re-launched under the name of the ‘F. Schumacher Milling Company’. They then joined the Consolidated Oatmeal Company, an association of millers controlling the production and selling price of oatmeal.
Although Schumacher was president of the F. Schumacher Milling Company until 1891, he was no longer the business success he had once been. The loss of the mill had hit him financially, and he had made bad investments, including putting three quarters of a million dollar into a failed water power plant in Marseilles, Illinois.
In 1891, Shumacher became president of a new conglomerate: the American Cereals Company, with mills in Chicago, Cleveland, Rockford, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Ravenna.
With capital of three million dollars, an annual product of between six and eight million dollars, and a workforce of thousands, the company monopolized the market. His shareholders were eager to advertise and market, but Schumacher refused to consider these new techniques.
Despite his refusal, one of American Cereals’ member companies, Quaker Oats, (founded by <a rival was> Crowell*) came to dominate the market using just such innovative marketing techniques. At a board meeting in 1899, Schumacher acknowledged his defeat, sold his shares in the company, and retired.
ASSESSMENT: Schumacher introduced the sale of oatmeal in the United States and was instrumental in making it a big business concern.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: His work related to that of <work related to> Albert Fink* and <work related to> JE Thomson*
ONELINER: Ferdinand Schumacher, early breakfast food pioneer
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
John Harrison Thornton, The History of the Quaker Oats Company, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1933.