In the early 1930s, deep in the Depression, John Kellogg took a sales job with a new company called "SealTex." They were starting to produce a new kind of bandage, invented in Germany in about 1930, which was cohesive instead of adhesive, so it stuck to itself rather than the user.
John was barely making enough money for he, Ruth and little Kenny to live on, even including repeat orders from Chicago area drug stores. Kresge stores asked SealTex to provide demonstrations in stores all over the eastern U.S. John was doing that - and working with "a talkative female employee" in each store whom could he'd coach to demonstrate the bandage. Even then, his income was low.
In 1934 when John was selling in Boston, he got a letter from Byerley, one of the 3 owners of SealTex. "While I was trying to find answers to our money problems, I got a letter asking that I return to Chicago at once as the firm was broke. The cash I had in my pockets was barely enough to buy the return bus ticket, and I knew that Mom had little also." (Ruth no longer was working.)
My own comment was: "John must have been horrified to hear that SealTex was broke. However, on the other side of the coin, John was focused on achieving - and would have looked at this as his best chance to make his mark in the world. He was a risk taker. It's a good thing he was not a gambler."
It appears that poor management undermined the company. Byerley was finding new items to have his 12 detail (sales) men take to drug stores, but they flopped - and SealTex was stuck with those bills of $8,000- $9,000, some 2 years past due. "Byerley said that if I would take the responsibility for paying all those old bills he had run up, he would give me his stock in the firm and just bow out. I agreed."
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