The Early Years of American Ready to Eat Breakfast Cereal: The Breakfast Cereal Revolution Until 1930

Post Cereal

     The Postum Cereal Company was the brain child of Charles William Post.  Post's biography is almost completely opposite to Kellogg's.  Post did not excel in school due to a lack of interest, and after just two years he dropped out to join the Springfield Zouaves.  He eventually left the Zouaves as well, and after heading to Texas to try his hand at being a cowhand and opening a hardware store in Kansas and failing at both headed back to his hometown to marry and become a traveling salesman for a corn planter company.  Once more, Post grew restless and quit his traveling salesman job to go into business for himself.  He set about attempting to create a career for himself inventing, creating a seed planter, a bicycle, and a player piano among other things in the process.  Eventually he suffered a nervous breakdown and found himself unable to work for months, a period of time that saw his business ventures fail once more.  Ever the persistent one though, Post found himself back on his feet and once again in extremely poor health after a campaign for a type of suspenders he invented failed spectacularly.
     Post's poor health found him seeking treatment, and hearing of the many success stories that came out of Battle Creek, a frail Post found himself at the doors of Kellogg's Sanitarium.  Unfortunately, Kellogg's many "cures" failed for Post.  The daily enemas, light baths, and diet changes did little to aid Post, whose continuously declining health led Kellogg to gravely inform Post's wife, Ella, that he was certain to die.  Kellogg's bleakness in his prognosis combined with the astronomical rates that Kellogg charged for his services and the depletion of the family's available funds led Post's wife to promptly wheel him out of the Sanitarium to her cousin's house.
     Ella Post's cousin was named Elizabeth Gregory and was a close follower of Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy.  Upon C.W.'s arrival to her home, she began to minister to Post in the Christian Scientist Style.

[Creation of Cereal Empire, rival Sanitarium,]

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