In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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Above: This c. 1870 advertisement promotes
“Sweet Scented Smoking Tobacco. Also, All
Kinds of Tobacco and Segars, manufactured
and sold by Frishmuth, Bro. & Co.,” located
on North Third Street near Race Street in
Old City. Philadelphia had several hundred
makers of tobacco products, mostly cigars,
at the turn of the twentieth century.
PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION,
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Below: Undated view, probably late
nineteenth-century, of the loading docks of
the Pennsylvania Sugar Refining Company
on the Delaware River in Fishtown. Later
named the Jack Frost refinery and popularly
known as the “Sugar House,” the site is now
home to Sugar House Casino.
SOCIETY PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION,
HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Cigar making was another important
industry in turn of the century Philadelphia.
There were 496 manufacturers of tobacco
products in the city in 1909, most of them
cigar makers located in Southwark and
Northern Liberties. Women made up the
majority of their workforces: Philadelphia’s
cigar factories employed 4,300 women in 1915,
over double the number of men. Many African
Americans and early Latino immigrants to the
city worked in this industry also. Notable
among Philadelphia cigar makers at this time
was Bayuk Brothers, founded in 1896. In 1910
Bayuk Brothers introduced the Philadelphia
Hand Made Perfecto cigar, popularly known
as the “Phillies” cigar, which became a longtime
well-known national brand.
SUGAR AND SWEETS
Sugar refining began in Philadelphia in
the late eighteenth century and by the midnineteenth
century the city had a dozen
refineries. Franklin Sugar Refining Company
was established in 1864 on Vine Street, but
later moved to Delaware Avenue and
Bainbridge Street in South Philadelphia. It
became the largest refinery in America at
one point, processing ninety percent of the
nation’s sugar. Like the beer industry, sugar
refining consolidated at the turn of the
twentieth century and by 1912 there were
only four active refineries in the city.
Philadelphia was the second largest sugar
refining city in the nation at this time and
sugar refining was the city’s fourth largest
industry overall. In another parallel with the
beer industry, two major refineries would
survive industry contractions and continue
operating into the late twentieth century:
Jack Frost in Fishtown (known to locals at the
“Sugar House”), which was founded in 1868
and operated for most of its history as the
Pennsylvania Sugar Company, and Amstar
in South Philadelphia, successor to Franklin
Sugar, which operated for a number of years
as Domino Sugar. Amstar had grown out of
a huge sugar refining conglomerate known as
the Sugar Trust that was founded by a New
York investor in the 1880s. The trust purchased
Franklin Sugar and several other local
refineries (but not Jack Frost) in the 1890s.
Philadelphia’s sugar refineries supplied
the city’s many confectioners. There were 117
manufacturers of chocolates and candies in
Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth
century. Stephen Whitman opened a confectionery
shop in 1842 that eventually
grew into Whitman’s Chocolates, pioneer of
prepackaged candy and makers of the famous
Whitman’s Sampler. The company remained
in Philadelphia for over 150 years before
closing its Northeast Philadelphia plant in
1993 after having been purchased by Russell
Stover Candies. Romanian immigrant David
Goldenberg began his candy company in
1890 and, among other products, created
the popular Peanut Chews candy in 1917 as
a World War I ration. Goldenberg Candy
Company was acquired by a larger company
in 2003 but is still making Peanut Chews
at its Northeast Philadelphia factory. Other
popular candies that were produced in
Philadelphia in the early twentieth century
include Good & Plenty, Raisinets, Goobers,
and Sno-Caps, the latter three made by
Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate Company, which
operated in Frankford from 1911 to 1984.
One candy maker who did not succeed
in Philadelphia was Milton Hershey. Hershey
opened a confectionery business at 935 Spring
Garden Street in 1876, hoping to cash in on
business from the Centennial. The company
went bankrupt in 1882, however, and Hershey
eventually moved to central Pennsylvania,
where he founded his famous company town
and hugely successful chocolate empire.
IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY
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