Kilmer House

Regular readers of Kilmer House have learned that, in the early days of the Company, Johnson & Johnson had its own water filtration plant to ensure that it had pure water for manufacturing, its own power house to generate electricity, and its own swimming pool as a benefit for employees.  So you’re probably wondering what else the Company had that might seem unusual today.

So here goes:  we also had our own printing presses – big ones.  They were part of the Johnson & Johnson Printing Department which, in 1916, had 35 employees.

One of the gigantic printing presses in the Printing Department, from 1911

So…what did we print?  The Johnson & Johnson Printing Department printed labels for the Company’s products, ads, show cards, scale pan covers* and other materials provided to retail druggists in order to increase their business and boost Company sales…and of course, RED CROSS NOTES and THE RED CROSS MESSENGER.  Employees in the Printing Department also printed a wide variety of booklets and pamphlets to educate doctors, surgeons, nurses, pharmacists and consumers about health and medical care, sanitation and public health.  Some of it was black and white, but much of it was printed in full color.

A Drugstore Show Card printed by the Printing Department            

  

Like every other area of the Company, the printing department was scrupulously clean.  A retail druggist who visited Johnson & Johnson in 1916 noted:  “Cleanliness was the unbroken rule everywhere, in and about the buildings.  Even in the printing department, where thirty or more employees are kept busy with modern machinery getting out the pretty labels and the beautiful art work, one could wear a Palm Beach suit without danger of having it daubed with ink.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1916, vol. VIII, Nos. 7 and 8, p. 459, “The Factory Behind the Goods.” ] 

Why did Johnson & Johnson do its own printing back then?  Because of the Company’s exacting standards and the demand for its products that kept production at high and growing levels.  Johnson & Johnson had its own printing department because it was the best way to help fulfill its mission.  But wait – hasn’t the Company’s mission always been to make products that saved lives and improved health?  So how was printing part of that? 

    

 Belladonna Plasters and Carbolated Gauze, showing printed labels

In today’s world, it’s no longer necessary for a company to print its own product labels or advertising materials.  But 100 years ago, with fewer resources widely available, it made more sense for Johnson & Johnson to do its printing in-house – in order to keep up with the rapid production of products, and to fulfill the Company’s advertising and educational goals.  (In fact, a 1914 edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER – at the start of World War I when the Company was working around the clock to produce bandages and other materials – noted that due to the high work load, the Printing Department was unable to print the usual issue of the MESSENGER at the time, and would make up for it with a double issue at the next publication date.)  The Printing Department was a huge part not only of fulfilling product orders, but also of the way Johnson & Johnson communicated through advertising and education.

An employee in the Printing Department

So whether an employee worked in the Cotton Mill bleaching and sterilizing the cotton that went into the Company’s sterile surgical dressings, or in the printing department printing labels, ads and publications, he or she both would have seen their work as contributing to the Company’s goal of making products that saved lives and helped people.  They both would have felt they were helping improve people’s health, not only with products but with labels, advertising and educational materials.

An issue of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER printed by the Printing Department

So, you’re probably thinking, “Okay, fair enough.  But is there ANYTHING that Johnson & Johnson didn’t do itself 100 years ago?”  Of course:  we purchased raw materials to make our products, among other things.  And though the Printing Department may have printed the labels, we did purchase the elements that went into our product’s packaging.

Like cigar boxes, from the cigar box factory down the street:

Does this plaster box look suspiciously like a cigar box?

Or jars, from the local fruit jar manufacturer:

Rows of jars holding aseptic gauze in the Gauze Mill’s Jar Finishing Room

Or collapsible metal tubes, for JOHNSON’S^® Shaving Cream Soap.  (By the way, New Brunswick’s fruit jar company, the Consolidated Fruit Jar Company, was quite well-known at the time…even having John Mason – of Mason Jar fame – as a partner of the business in 1871.)

* Scale pan covers were designed to line the pans of scales used by retail druggists to measure items that were sold by weight.  Since both druggists and customers would be looking at the scale every time one of these transactions took place, it was a good place to advertise.

A Scale Pan Cover (scanned onto a black background) — they were round to fit on the round pans of drugstore scales.

Frederick Barnett Kilmer

Fred Kilmer, the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer from 1889 to 1934, took his role as a scientist, writer, guardian of public health and educator of the public very seriously.  But he was not against ever so subtly lightening things up a little bit every now and then.  Here’s an example from a 1914 issue of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER.  Sandwiched between articles on the importance of First Aid, advice for druggists on how to effectively decorate drugstore windows to increase their business, and the proper use of Synol Soap, the Company’s antibacterial soap, is a picture of…Fred Kilmer’s cat.

Tom Rutgers, with a “Don’t Mess with Me” look

As everyone who’s ever put together a publication knows, you need to fill up the empty spaces on the page.  Kilmer, as editor of the MESSENGER and its sister publication for doctors and surgeons, RED CROSS NOTES, often included small ads for Johnson & Johnson products, photographs of pharmacies proudly sent in by pharmacists throughout the U.S. and the world, and pictures sent in by parents of their babies and toddlers playing with JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder tins.

Occasionally the reader of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER would find a photograph of a dog whose coat was kept clean and healthy with Lister’s Dog Soap (yes, that was a Johnson & Johnson product) or a famous athlete or actress of the day who used one of our products.

Kilmer was a thorough professional and in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, he was dedicated to educating retail druggists about the importance of pharmacy as a profession, about how to increase their business (and by extension, the Company’s sales) and on the Company’s philosophy and the science behind Johnson & Johnson products.  But very rarely, he let something more personal show through.  In one issue, he ran a short poem by his son Joyce Kilmer.  In another issue, it was a picture of his cat.

Of course, Kilmer, being the devoted writer and educator that he was, couldn’t just run a picture of his cat by itself.  Just as Kilmer’s son Joyce had helped his father by writing articles for Johnson & Johnson publications, Tom Rutgers the cat also lent a hand (or a paw) in service of Kilmer’s educational goals.  Kilmer accompanied Tom’s photo with a short article, “The Drug Store Cat,” which traced the earliest origins of medicine and pharmacy all the way back through the ages to alchemy and magic, which were of course were associated with…cats, and black cats, specifically.  (Alert blog readers will note from the picture above that Tom Rutgers was a black cat.)  Kilmer went so far as to say:

“A cat is a most useful adjunct of a well appointed drug store.  Reputed as the embodiment of wisdom and mystery, a black cat might, with propriety, be chosen as one of the symbols of pharmacy.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VI, No. 12, May 1914, p. 711]

Another reason cats were probably such a “useful adjunct of a well appointed drug store” in the late 1800s and early 1900s was the fact that they kept mice away.  So why the name Tom Rutgers?   It could have been for any number of reasons, such as the proximity of Kilmer’s College Avenue house to Rutgers (his address was listed as 147 College Avenue by the 1906 Yearbook of the American Pharmaceutical Association)…or the fact that Kilmer’s son Joyce went to Rutgers Prep, and then to Rutgers College before finishing his education at Columbia University….or it could have been something else entirely.  Only Tom Rutgers, the feline symbol of pharmacy, and Fred Kilmer, the former retail pharmacist, knew the answer.

By the way, it’s remarkable how many of the people in the early history of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies started as clerks in retail pharmacies:  Robert Wood Johnson the first, Fred Kilmer, Alexander Lewis, the Company’s early corporate secretary and head of sales; the McNeil brothers and Revra DePuy, who founded the first-ever orthopaedics Company. Here’s a picture of Fred Kilmer (left) and Alexander Lewis (right), posing for an early ad: