Bowman's Bubbles

Out of the mouths of babes, parents are sometimes horrified to see emitted sturdy pink bubbles which burst with a snapping sound. A child who is expert with bubble gum can blow a globe almost as big as his head. Satisfaction is also to be derived from gulping back bubbles of moderate size, making them pop inside the mouth. As millions of U. S. moppets return to school this month these practices are going to be more prevalent, because September is a peak month for sales of "Blony" bubble gum.

Blony is not the only nor the original bubble gum, but for eight years it has been the most popular, and comprises at least 60% of that delicacy now sold in the U. S. It is concocted in Philadelphia by Gum, Inc., which occupies five floors and the basement of a building on Woodland Avenue. The Blony process and Gum, Inc., are both creations of one of Philadelphia's lustiest characters, burly, brown-eyed Jacob Warren Bowman, whose business adventures have been many and remarkable.

Born in Ohio, raised on a New Mexico ranch, he was "married, divorced and bankrupt" before he was 21. After going broke he settled down to work for the Overland used-car agency in Los Angeles until one day he heard that a steam laundry was badly needed in Tampico, Mexico, to wash oil workers' dirty shirts.

By the time Bowman got to Tampico a local group had already started a steam laundry, so he bought a little motor boat to pull barges. When this enterprise failed, he and another young American chugged off to Veracruz, conceived the idea of revolutionizing the mahogany trade by floating mahogany logs down the rivers to the Gulf. The two adventurers struggled for several days getting a mahogany log out of the forest into a small stream, where, since mahogany is heavier than water, it immediately sank.

Back in the U. S. the alert Bowman went into the coffee-roasting business, impulsively sold out when it occurred to him that candy lozenges like Life Savers would be a great success if flavored with coffee. Intending to work out his idea at the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in Pittsburgh, he was surprised to learn that it had been tried before, was hopeless. But Bowman was getting nearer to his destined specialty. On his way to Detroit to take a job in an automobile plant, he met a chewing-gum salesman who was working the ''butcher knife deal." Within a year J. Warren Bowman himself was a topnotch gum salesman, exponent of the "Indian blanket deal" (one blanket with every 24 boxes) and part owner of a plant in Lansing, Mich., which turned out a 1-c- gum called "Ju-Ce-Kiss." In 1927 he started his own plant in Philadelphia, in 1929 produced Blony.

Blony's chief claim to commercial prestige is that it is bigger than any other piece of bubble gum offered for a penny. Base of all bubble gums is a synthetic rubber product combined with hydrogenized vegetable oils and synthetic resins. "Blony," which is flavored with what Bubbleman Bowman calls "fruit characteristic," weighs 210 grains and advertises "Three Big BITES for a penny," has made Gum, Inc. the biggest firm in the U. S. catering exclusively to the penny gum trade.

Though Bubbleman Bowman was soon rich enough to keep a private plane, all was not clear sailing for Gum, Inc. Beginning in 1930 Blony's vivid pink base was supplied by a New York druggist named Franklin V. Canning, who agreed to sell the material to Gum, Inc. at no higher price than it could be got for elsewhere, and who supplied working capital in return for 50% (250 shares) of the stock. In 1932 trouble arose because a Wrigley subsidiary developed a better base which undersold Canning's. Consequently altercations between Canning and President Bowman resulted in the latter's ouster from the company last year.

After a long, bitter legal battle during which Bubbleman Bowman spent most of his time scuttling around the Gulf of Mexico in a sea-sled, the Pennsylvania State supreme court upheld his reinstatement as president of Gum, Inc. last July. That month Gum, Inc. made $7,472, after six months' earnings of $49,000 on sales estimated at about $800,000. Bubbleman Bowman's only current worry is a suit by his estranged second wife, Ruth, who claims a verbal agreement to a half-interest in his holdings. Last week, after the first arguments were heard, Philadelphians believed that Bubbleman Bowman was secure.

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