Finding My Niche - Part 3

The late 19th century was a time of change for American women. So many men had been killed during the Civil War that hundreds of thousands of women would remain unmarried. With neither the legal restrictions that marriage imposed on women at that time nor the financial safety net of a husband's earnings, women built new businesses and assumed control of their late fathers' or husbands' companies. In the process, they introduced new ways of conducting business in America. 

These women's lives and business decisions held lessons for modern businesswomen, so I decided to tell their stories. My first book would be Out of the Kitchen, Into the Boardroom, a popular biography of three women in the food business: Fannie Farmer, Rose Knox and Margaret Rudkin.

Associating Fannie Farmer with the cookbook that bears her name is only a snippet of her story. And the candy? Not hers, but she did license the use of her name (with a spelling alteration) to a candy company. Farmer started working at the Boston Cooking School in 1890 when immigrant women were working as cooks in middle class households. But times were changing. Immigrant women were choosing factory work, and middle class housewives who now needed to do their own cooking sought instruction in preparing simple meals. The Boston Cooking School didn't change with the times, but Farmer did. In addition to establishing her own cooking school, she took full advantage of the media with regular newspaper and magazine columns, lectures, and a half dozen books, all driving customers to her other ventures.

Knox Gelatin is what remains of the industrial company which led Fortune Magazine in the 1930's to name Rose Knox as "an exception that proves the rule" that women can't be captains of industry. Fortune had already excluded women running major cosmetics firms, because the editors didn't think any business marketing primarily to women worthy of consideration. But gelatin is an industrial product used in photography and pharmaceuticals in addition to food and cosmetics. Knox assumed leadership of the company when her husband died in 1908. During her tenure, she distributed promotional booklets of gelatin recipes and instituted the novel labor practices of a five-day workweek, paid vacations and paid sick leave. Knox's personnel policies and contributions to community improvements fostered employee loyalty that helped the company survive the Great Depression. The business was still thriving when she stepped down in 1947 at age 90. In retrospect, we know she made at least one significant business error when she claimed that home cooks wouldn't prefer pre-flavored gelatin.

Of the three, Margaret Rudkin was the only one who started her company from scratch. Rudkin left her job as one of the first women on Wall Street soon after marrying to raise a family at their suburban home, Pepperidge Farm. As a mother, one of the challenges she faced was feeding a son with severe allergies and asthma. After a doctor recommended all-natural stone-ground whole wheat bread, Rudkin tackled the task of making it palatable. She eventually succeeded in making her home-baked loaves delicious, and quickly expanded from selling to friends and neighbors to selling to a specialty grocer in New York. (The grocer met her husband at Grand Central Station to pick up the loaves he transported on his daily commute to Wall Street.) Two keys to Rudkin's success were maintaining quality as the business grew and keeping her eye open for new products -- like Belgian cookies --  to introduce to American consumers.

Don't search on Amazon for Out of the Kitchen, Into the Boardroom. Life got in the way, so my research and drafts were packed away before the book was completed.

But life goes on, and new opportunities and challenges make themselves known.