The drug stores and soda founts are selling enormous quantities of something they call coca cola. It is said to relieve nervousness, and ‘that tired feeling’ and all that sort of thing, and people are drinking it a dozen times a day. I am told by a physician that the ingredient which makes coca cola so popular is cocaine. There is evidently enough of it in the drink to affect people and it is insidiously but surely getting thousands of people into the cocaine habit, which is ten times worse than alcoholism and as bad as the morphine habit. It is an awful drug and the victims of it are slaves. I have seen it!
This was a post-industrial revolution era that was still bringing about major innovations and changes in the way that products were thought of from a manufacturing standpoint, and Coca-Cola would soon become available, not just at pharmacies and soda fountains in Georgia, but all across the United States. In 1899 the company began to move away from the soda fountain market and sell mass-market bottles of their product. This move made the drink accessible to people of colour for the very first time. The soda fountains of old were segregated areas, like so many businesses of the era.
The intention wasn’t to market to people of all races, but rather just to expand the national scope of the business. The backlash was unexpected, but severe, as reports of ‘negro cocaine fiends’ were being spread by newspapers nationwide. An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association even went so far as to say: ‘The negroes in some parts of the South are reported as being addicted to a new form of vice – that of ‘cocaine sniffing’ or the ‘coke habit’, as it appears to have this name also.’ The article goes on to discuss ‘the negroes of Kentucky’ and the hopes that the cocaine habits there will remain isolated to those areas. There is also talk of how some areas had made it illegal for a doctor to prescribe cocaine to a patient for anything but medicinal purposes.
The major backlash against cocaine was absolutely racially charged, and as evidence anti-narcotic legislation, like the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was introduced. It would be this purely racist movement against cocaine in the United States that would eventually lead to Coca-Cola removing all traces of the drug from their drink.
In 1908 Dr Hamilton Wright became America’s first Opium Commissioner. He attended the Shanghai International Opium Commission in February of 1909 and gave a full report on the subject, which included not only findings on chronic opium use in the United States, but also highlighted what he felt was a problem with cocaine. ‘It is certain, however, that the use of cocaine among the lower order of working negroes is quite common.’ Wright goes on to say:
This class of negro is not willing, as a rule, to go to much trouble or send to any distance for anything, and, for this reason, where he is known to have become debauched by cocaine, it is certain that the drug has been brought directly to him from New York and other Northern States where it is manufactured.
The Harrison Narcotics Act was: An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes. The term narcotic was utilised, so that the act could cover not just opium, but the growing concern regarding cocaine. This law also made allowances for doctors to continue prescribing said narcotics to their patients as a part of normal treatments, but could not supply it to existing addicts to quench their habit.
Coca-Cola began bending to the public pressure and in the early twentieth century began developing processes for lessening the amount of cocaine in the drink and ceased advertising its benefits and use. In 1922, the Jones-Miller Act was passed, which banned the importation of cocaine to the United States. It was discovered years ago that Coca-Cola received a special exception from this law by the government and continued to import the plant. It wasn’t until 1929 that the company was able to begin removing the cocaine content completely from their drink, but to this day they still import the narcotic-laced plant.
The coca leaf was still a part of the Coca-Cola mixture in recent years. There was a special extraction process that was developed in conjunction with the government of Peru in the 1980s. This was amidst the Reagan administration’s ‘war on drugs’ campaign, but special permission was given for coca leaves to be imported into the United States to the Stephan Maywood plant. There, the company would have the cocaine removed from the plant through a special process. The cocaine by-product is then sold to Mallinckrodt, a company that purifies the drug into cocaine hydrochloride U.S.P., which is used as a local anaesthetic by many ear, nose and throat doctors. The coca leaves, minus cocaine content, are then sent to Coca-Cola for inclusion in their drink.
The Coca-Cola company is a corporate giant in today’s world. The total assets of Coca-Cola were over ninety billion dollars in 2015. The company is still based in Atlanta, Georgia, but they have grown far past the days of their morally ambiguous Southern Confederate creator and the days of cocaine inclusion. Now, Coca-Cola makes it a point to take a stand in matters of social justice. In a press release in April of 2016 titled: ‘The Coca-Cola Company Statement on Importance of Equal Rights for LGBT Community’, the company stated their dedication to equal rights for alclass="underline"
The Coca-Cola Company does not support legislation that discriminates. We believe policies that discriminate are contrary to our Company’s core values and also negatively affect the lives of our associates, consumers, customers, suppliers, and partners.
In March 2015 they also expressed publicly their support of marriage equality:
As a believer in an inclusive world, The Coca-Cola Company values and celebrates diversity. We have long been a strong supporter of the LGBT community and have advocated for inclusion, equality and diversity through both our policies and practices.
Coca-Cola totals a staggering 700,000 employees worldwide. They sell 1.9 billion servings of Coke every day and their dividends have steadily increased each year for over fifty years. Coca-Cola merchandise remains collectible, especially the vintage merchandise and advertising materials. Thankfully, Coke is here to stay.
Chapter Two
Hugo Boss: Nazi Fashion
There were many manufacturers involved in the uniforming and arming of the German Nazi soldiers throughout the Second World War, but only one of those companies would become a household name in fashion that remains in the public eye today, and that is Hugo F. Boss. The Hugo Boss company features a namesake that is shrouded in disgrace and subversion, with accusations of forced labour and an allegiance to the National Socialist Party by Boss himself. There is no doubt that Hugo F. Boss agreed with and supported the ideals of the Nazi party, and his clothing company would be one of many that ended up making uniforms for the Nazi troops and the Gestapo prior to and throughout the Second World War.
Hugo Ferdinand Boss was born on 8 July 1885 in the Swabian town of Metzingen, in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, Germany. Boss was the youngest of four siblings. His parents, Heinrich and Luise Boss, ran a modest lingerie shop, which Boss would eventually inherit when he married Anna Katharin Freysinger in 1908. It would be abnormal for the youngest child to inherit the family business under normal circumstances, but only Hugo and his sister survived infancy, therefore the then traditional responsibility was bestowed upon Hugo. The couple would have one daughter before Hugo enlisted in the German Army in 1914, at the start of the First World War. Hugo never received any medals or promotions while serving in the army, clearly not ambitious about an on-going military career. This isn’t surprising for someone who had a family business to fall back on.