{"product_id":"antique-1920s-autocrat-brand-sweet-pickles-jar-goodman-and-beer-co-new-orleans-paper-label-tied-on-with-twine","title":"Antique 1920s Autocrat Brand Sweet Pickles Jar 🥒 Goodman \u0026 Beer Co. New Orleans, Paper Label Tied On With Twine","description":"\u003ch2\u003e🥒 Why Does a Jar of Sweet Pickles Say BEER on It?\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 6 1\/2\" x 3\" ~ A one of one, and this is the exact jar you'll get.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SWmLGbfc6Pw\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBecause Beer was somebody's last name. Goodman \u0026amp; Beer Co., Inc. was a New Orleans wholesale grocery house, and Autocrat was its own brand. The same firm's name turns up on an Autocrat baking powder can label, so pickles were only one shelf of the line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd then there's the twine. Somebody wound cotton string around this jar, right across the middle of the label, and knotted it on the front to hold the thing on. I have never seen that before. Whoever it was, their fix is still holding a hundred years later, and that's the part I can't stop looking at.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🥚 It Started With Two Egg Men on Poydras Street\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBefore anybody put a pickle in this jar, Goodman \u0026amp; Beer was eggs. In 1907 two commission houses sat a few doors apart on Poydras Street, right in the middle of what historian Richard Campanella calls the wholesale grocery district on Poydras at Tchoupitoulas. H. Goodman \u0026amp; Co., at No. 226, handled eggs, poultry and game. J. L. Beer \u0026amp; Co., at 218 and 220, established 1884, handled eggs, poultry and produce, with S. M. Beer's name right there in its advertisement. Farmers upriver shipped them apples and pecans on consignment, and a 1904 Donaldsonville paper was reminding growers: \"When you ship your pecans to J. L. Beer Co., New Orleans, don't forget to put your name and address on the tag.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy about 1916 a Goodman Beer Company was doing business, and on February 26, 1918 it was chartered as Goodman \u0026amp; Beer Company, Inc., with $200,000 in capital, Harry Goodman as president and S. M. Beer as vice president. The charter gave them the right to grow their own produce and own farms and plantations. So that little INC. on this label is a clue all by itself: it points to 1918 or later.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey had big ideas. In 1919 they bought half-page newspaper ads every week for three months to sell \"Nula\" eggs, because they wanted, in the words of the trade press, \"to make their brand of eggs as familiar in the household, as a soap or washing powder.\" Grocers who carried Nula hung a sign in the store. In 1922 they swallowed Burkenroad-Goldsmith Co., Ltd., in what the papers called \"one of the largest mercantile mergers of recent years in New Orleans,\" two firms each doing over $2,500,000 a year. They printed their own price list, gave a bottle of preserved figs to a showcase of New Orleans products in 1925, and were bringing in chicle from Progreso and coconuts from Belize.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🏫 The Day New Orleans Closed Its Schools for Harry Goodman\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarry Goodman is the name on this label that stops me. He founded the United Cash Stores, one of the first grocery chains in New Orleans. The governor appointed him to the Orleans Parish School Board, and at the next election he was reelected ahead of all the other candidates. He died at home on December 12, 1928, and the trade paper reported it plainly: \"Public schools were closed on the day of his funeral.\" That's quite a send-off for a wholesale grocer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e📜 The Time Goodman \u0026amp; Beer Sent Back a Whole Rail Car of Tomato Paste\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere's what I love about digging into these names. On March 12, 1920, Goodman \u0026amp; Beer bought a full carload of tomato paste from the New Central Canning Co., 809 cases at $8 a case, bought off a sample. That's $6,472 of tomato paste.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen the complaints came in. Retailers said their customers wouldn't use it. Some of it was too light and watery, some too dark and overcooked, and the stores wanted credit. Goodman \u0026amp; Beer looked into it, gave the credits, refused to pay the cannery, and offered the whole lot back.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt went to arbitration in front of George P. Thompson, who had spent 25 years in the wholesale grocery business and 10 of them as president of the Wholesale Grocers' Association. He examined the goods and said they weren't standard, meaning you couldn't sell them. The cannery fought it to the Louisiana Supreme Court, and in June 1924 the court sided with Goodman \u0026amp; Beer. New Central asked again and the whole court said no that September. So when this little blue label says Goodman \u0026amp; Beer, that's a house that stood behind what went out under its name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🫙 What's on the Jar\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe die-cut label reads AUTOCRAT BRAND, SWEET PICKLES, CONTENTS 8 OUNCES, DIST. BY GOODMAN \u0026amp; BEER CO. INC., NEW ORLEANS, LA. That contents line is there for a reason: the Gould Amendment of 1913 made food packers state how much was in the package, and here it sits in its own little gold panel at the top.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe glass is clear and eight-sided, with a metal screw lid and numbers pressed into the base. Goodman \u0026amp; Beer is on record in 1920 and 1924, and that's the New Orleans this jar comes out of.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Autocrat name outlasted this label, too. It was still on New Orleans can labels in the 1950s, by then for Associated Distributing Company, Inc.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e👑 Why Would You Call Your Pickles Autocrat?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBecause in those days the word meant the best in the house. Oliver Wendell Holmes had made it a household word with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table back in 1858, and by the early 1900s you could buy Autocrat coffee, Autocrat writing paper and a 1911 Oldsmobile Autocrat. An Autocrat Brand of canned goods was being advertised out of New Orleans as early as 1908. And in 1945 and 1946, Goodman \u0026amp; Beer was still running ads in a New Orleans nursing school yearbook, opposite Charity Hospital, that said it straight out: \"Use Red Ball and Autocrat Brands.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat's how a wholesaler made its money. It didn't need a pickle factory. A packer filled the jar, and the wholesaler's own name and brand went on the front. The firm's canned shrimp went out the same way, marked \"Packed For Goodman \u0026amp; Beer Co., Inc.\" Bottle people have a saying about food jars like this one, and it's the reason a survivor with its paper still on matters: \"Only an original label tells for sure\" what was inside.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🧵 About That String\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGlue was the weak spot of an old label. One pharmacist of the day complained that \"Gummed labels are not worth the space they occupy in most climates,\" and New Orleans is about as hard a climate on paste as you'll find. Before stickers, tying a tag onto a thing was simply how you labeled it. Somebody looked at this jar, saw the name coming loose, and reached for the string.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🏛️ What Became of Them\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went right on after Goodman. When Prohibition ended they registered Golden Rod for gin, whiskey and brandy, in use from February 5, 1934. By January 1940 the firm was the Goodman \u0026amp; Beer branch of Consolidated Companies, Inc., of Plaquemine, Louisiana, working out of 412-430 South Front Street and later 727 South Cortez. The name was still turning up in grocery distribution studies in the 1980s, a hundred years after J. L. Beer hung out his shingle. They weren't saints, either. In 1927 the Federal Trade Commission ordered the Wholesale Grocers' Association of New Orleans to quit squeezing out competitors, and named its president, the same George P. Thompson who judged that tomato paste, along with Goodman \u0026amp; Beer and Harry Goodman himself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🏠 Where It Belongs\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePut it on a kitchen shelf, in a Louisiana collection, or next to anything from the old corner grocery. I haven't found another Autocrat pickle jar with its label, so this is the one. 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