Pure Food Fair had Bangor in spades

Expositions displayed the latest innovations in science and technology at the turn of the 20th century. Electricity and structural steel, for example, were featured at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago, while visitors tried out new dishes such as hot dogs and ice cream cones at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.

Not wishing to be outdone, Bangor held what it called the Industrial and Pure Food Exposition at the end of June a century ago last week. While Bangoreans didn’t pretend they were hosting a world’s fair like those in Chicago or St. Louis, City Hall auditorium nevertheless was packed with the latest goods available in eastern Maine, some of them made locally.

“Its object is to boom the city of Bangor, to draw hundreds of strangers here from neighboring cities and towns and to get these people to patronize local merchants,” wrote a Bangor Daily News reporter using an old-slang verb meaning to promote or advertise. Already well known for its large agricultural fair, Bangor had entered another area of “booming” in the new industrial age. Such efforts would help determine whether the city became a dusty backwater area or a bustling metropolis as the 20th century moved forward.

The expression “pure food” was laden with special meaning in those days. The Pure Food Movement had been going on for decades. Reformers had been seeking national legislation to eliminate potentially toxic additives from processed food. Recently, muckrakers including Upton Sinclair, Samuel Hopkins Adams and others had exposed unsafe conditions in meat-packing, patent medicines and other products. The same month that Bangor held its exposition, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act.

City Hall was transformed with bunting and electric light bulbs between June 22 and June 30, 1906. “With rare taste and ingenuity decorators have brought about a wondrous change and a tour among the many booths reminds one of fairyland,” gushed the reporter for The Industrial Journal. Hall’s Orchestra provided music.

Pure food, it turned out, was only a part of the show. The most popular exhibit was the telephone. The New England Telephone and Telegraph Company was giving away free local and long-distance phone calls. Six phones were installed on the stage of the auditorium. When the doors opened there was a great rush for the booths. Lines formed, and hundreds of calls were made during the week.

“An era is approaching when modern man will be miserable if separated from his telephone even for a few minutes,” said W. J. Sheldon, manager of the exhibit. He outlined a system in which a phone could be hooked up in any room in the house, and “when night comes the most indispensable of modern utilities is transferred to the man’s bedroom where it rests on a chair at the bedside and saves a walk down the cold hallway when the bell rings at 2 or 3 a.m. Living in this way a citizen is always approachable – as he should be in this great democratic age.”

The telephone was only one example of the exciting new technology placed on display that week by local companies such as C. H. Babb Plumbing and Charles E. Dole Electrical Supply. Flush toilets and electric light bulbs were still marvels for the majority in 1906.

But many people had come looking for free samples of the pure food promised by the exposition’s name. The Bangor Biscuit Company’s booth was a good place to start. “The Bangor Biscuit Company … has the only factory in Maine in which is manufactured both sponge and sweet biscuit – over 100 varieties; and every biscuit and every cracker is made right here at home under the most perfect sanitary conditions – no need of government inspection to prove them ‘pure food,'” wrote a BDN reporter. “All visitors to the exhibition are presented with samples of the celebrated Hampden Creams – a biscuit representing the best there is in wheat.”

George E. Lufkin, the Bangor candy maker, was also on hand pushing his Pine Tree Taffy, and he had set up a small ice cream parlor nearby. The Bangor Bottling Co. had a display of its sodas. These local products were competing for attention with national products such as Jell-O. The Genesee Pure Food Company supplied hundreds of free samples of Jell-O served by “white gowned assistants and demonstrators.”

The most mouth-watering food event, however, was staged with the assistance of two rival utilities, the Bangor Gaslight Company, which sold coal gas and gas stoves, lights and heaters, and the Bangor Railway & Electric Company, which sold electricity and electric stoves and other appliances. The setting was a “Georgia barbecue” in which two pigs were roasted, one in a gas oven and one in an electric oven with appropriate Southern trappings such as hoe-cake and applesauce.

“A convincing proof of the popularity of this feast was although it was served for the greater part to the ladies in the afternoon, it was only 23 minutes after the first cut was made that the entire pig had disappeared,” stated an observant reporter for the Bangor Daily Commercial. There was no word on whether roast pig tasted better gassed or electrified.

After all this food – Bangor biscuits, Bangor soda, Bangor taffy, Bangor barbecue – had been distributed, however, some visitors were not satisfied. The purity of the repast was not everything. A reporter whose hopes had been quickly dashed commented: “To the person who expects to get fed for nothing every night – the professional dead beat – it is a sad and sudden eye opener to find that very few things were given away.”

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordaily

news.net.