(Recipes for left-overs, plain desserts and salads by Mrs....)
Recipes for left-overs, plain desserts and salads by Mrs. Knox
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Rose Markward Knox was born on November 18, 1857 in Mansfield, Ohio, United States, soon after her parents moved there from Pennsylvania. The third daughter of David Markward and Amanda (Foreman) Markward, she was christened Helen Rosetta. Her father was a successful druggist until the Panic of 1873, when he lost heavily on real estate investments.
Rose Markward attended public school in Mansfield.
When Rose was in her early twenties, the family moved to Gloversville, New York, where she began to work in a factory sewing gloves.
After living first in New York and then in Newark, Charles Knox, who became a knit-goods salesman, saved $5, 000. The Knoxes decided to invest in manufacturing a prepared gelatin--a product readily received in an age which was lightening women's housework. For the site of his factory Charles, in 1890, chose his hometown, Johnstown, New York, where tanneries provided calf pates from which gelatinous protein could be extracted. While Knox advertised in ways unusual for the time--with racehorses and balloon ascensions--his wife learned the details of manufacturing and concentrated on expanding the uses of gelatin, which was so tedious to make in the home that it was used only for festivities and illnesses. In 1896 she wrote a booklet of recipes, Dainty Desserts.
When Charles Knox died in 1908, friends advised his widow to sell the business, but she decided to keep it for her children. After an accountant discovered dishonesty in an assistant, she concluded that she must manage the business herself. Worried about the effect of a woman president upon the trade, she announced that she was carrying on for her son Charles, who was in school. Charles died soon after, and although her son James entered the firm as her assistant in 1913, she continued as president until her ninetieth birthday in 1947.
Her first important decision was to concentrate on gelatin. She sold other businesses in which her husband had been involved--a newspaper and newsplant, a hardware store, a power plant, a new line of medicated ointments. She determined to run the business "in what I call a woman's way, because after all it was women who purchased gelatine". No more horses and advertising stunts; instead she stressed nutrition, economy, sanitary production, and attractive recipes. She published another cookbook in 1917, Food Economy, and printed recipes on gelatin boxes and in ads under "Mrs. Knox Says. " She campaigned to convince doctors of gelatin's value for certain dietetic deficiencies. To improve her product she established an experimental kitchen and pioneered in industrial research, spending more than $500, 000 in twenty years endowing fellowships at the Mellon Institute to discover new uses for gelatin.
At her death, 40 percent of her company's output was sold for industrial (particularly photography) and medical purposes. The tone of her relations with her employees was set immediately: benign but brisk.
When she first assumed the presidency, she ordered the rear door of the plant closed, explaining to her employees, "We are all ladies and gentlemen working together here and we will all come in through the front door". There were no time clocks.
In 1913 she initiated the five-day week--with the proviso that workers produce as much as they had in five and a half days. The company provided two-week paid vacations, sick leave, and pensions. Knox insisted that grievances be brought to her, and in 1937, although some of her employees were terrified of crossing her, their loyalty was indicated by the fact that 85 percent of them had been in her service at least twenty-five years. In 1911 she moved into a larger and better-designed building; by 1915 volume had tripled and the company was incorporated at $300, 000. This was increased to $1 million in 1925.
After World War I Argentina became the new source for calf pates. Because more Argentine beef was canned, more bones and pates were available for the manufacture of gelatin. In order to meet increasing demands, Knox began purchasing gelatin from Kind and Landesmann of Camden, a company conveniently located for importing calf pates. In 1916 she bought a 50 percent interest in the firm, and in 1930 became vice-president of Kind and Knox Gelatine Company. She also established a company in Canada.
During the depression, rather than laying off employees, she continued to expand her facilities and added a new factory in Camden for the manufacture of flavored gelatin. Knox favored the use of natural fruit juices, but, in 1935, she followed her competitors and produced artificially flavored gelatin, which was made entirely in New Jersey. The unflavored gelatin was also made in New Jersey but packaged in Johnstown--an inefficient procedure that expressed the identification she had with her community.
Knox donated an athletic field, stadium, and clubhouse to the town, a swimming pool to the YMCA, books for school libraries, and contributions to the Presbyterian, Slovak Catholic, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches. She established the Willing Helpers Home for Women, helped found the Federation of Women's Clubs for Civic Improvement of Johnstown in 1920 (becoming its first president), and helped the Business and Professional Woman's Club establish a student loan fund. She induced the Johnstown Historical Society to restore the baronial mansion of Sir William Johnston, an eighteenth-century fur trader and military leader. Frequently recognized as an outstanding businesswoman, she was the first woman to attend meetings of the American Grocery Manufacturers' Association and the first to be elected to its board (1929).
(Recipes for left-overs, plain desserts and salads by Mrs....)
Knox was not a militant feminist.
Quotations:
"Motherhood comprises the future and well-being of our country. "
"From my own experience I know it is entirely possible to happily blend home life and business life. "
"Think about the things you can help, do not think about those you cannot. "
On February 15, 1883 she married a glove salesman, Charles Briggs Knox; they had two sons, Charles Markward and James Elisha, and a daughter, Helen, who died in infancy.
