"Clark Bars: A Mighty Money-Maker in Candy Bars & Chewing Gum, Clark Co. Declares Another Dividend." From The Bulletin Index, 26 December 1935.
Last week D. L. Clark Co. declared a 10c dividend on its 300,000 common shares. Some 70% of the dimes distributed by the candy firm will clink into the pockets of its founder-president David Lytle Clark, and his six sons and six daughters. Mr. Clark let the public buy up the rest of the stock for the first time in 1929.
Clark's biggest sales item is the 5c Clark Bar, which is spun taffy coated over with chocolate. In good times the public buys a million Clark Bars a day. Zig-Zag, another product, consists of popcorn covered with molasses and comes in a gaudy yellow box along with trinkets like whistles, toy knives, tin badges, noisemakers. It retails at 5c. Zig-Zag sales, highly seasonal, are best during summer months when picnicking moppets consume about 60,000 boxes daily.
Clark's also sells daily about 75 tons of penny bulk candies— kisses, suckers, jelly beans, brittle--to chain stores. This line has been the company's big Depression puller since sales of its 5c items dipped. In 1929 Clark sold $4,700,000 worth of candy, made a record $790,000 profit. During Depression it went into the red only once. With sales half of normal it made $48,000 last year. At present Clark's is running full blast turning out Christmas candies. Last week its stock, quoted at $17 in 1929, hit this year's high at $6.25.
Across the lower North Side street from his candy factory David Lytle Clark makes Teaberry Gum in the separately incorporated Clark Brothers Chewing Gum Co. Since the Clarks, pere, fils et filles, own 90% of this company the affairs of Teaberry Gum are closed family secrets. Consequently, its earnings are purely conjectural, but indications are that it is as good, if not a better, money maker--for chewing gum is about 65% profit to the maker (not counting costs of advertising & premiums which are high).
The chewing gum industry was founded in 1871 by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the villainous Mexican general (1795-1876) who massacred the Texas Alamo in 1836. As President of Mexico he was exiled several times, living in Staten Island the last time. When he departed he left behind a piece of chewing chicle.* An inquisitive neighbor, one Thomas Adams boiled it, found it so much to his liking that he sent it down to the general store where it met with sensational success. (The Adams Co. is now American Chicle Co., makers of Dentyne and Blackjack).
In 1929 the Big Three--Wrigley's (60%), Beechnut and American Chicle sold an estimated 90% of the U. S.'s $60,000,000 wholesale chewing gum output. The remaining 10% was split up among 30-odd companies. Of these the most potent independent, Clark, had the undetermined lion's shares.
Like two candy-makers--Hershey and Curtis (Baby Ruth)--David Clark once gave up making chewing gum as a bad job. The first time he marketed Teaberry Gum in the 1900's, he yanked it off U. S. confectionery counters, a failure. But since 1911 he has kept it the biggest little seller by dint of spending millions for advertising. Pinkish in color, his gum is flavored with wintergreen which grows in the mountains of North Carolina and is called "teaberry" by the natives. Southerners are biggest chewers of Teaberry Gum. By 1924 it was selling so heavily Mr. Clark capitalized the Clark Brothers Chewing Gum Co. for $2,000,000 to take it off the hands of his candy company, has let only close friends and officials buy some of the stock which is not for sale on any exchange.
Ten years after the Civil War David Lytle Clark vended matches and penny candies from door-to-door at $1.50 a week. About the same time Milton Snavely Hershey was selling the caramels he cooked in Philadelphia alleys by horse & wagon, and William Wrigley Jr. was selling soap from horse & wagon in Chicago and giving away chewing gum as a come-on. Up-&-coming David Clark, an Irish immigrant, soon got himself a horse & wagon. At night he studied at business college.
Finally he scraped up enough money to move his one-room factory to McKeesport (he is a director still of that city's biggest bank), where he incorporated D. L. Clark Co. and first made his sensational Zig-Zag. When he moved the factory back to the North Side to stay in 1911, the dawn of the 5c candy bar was just breaking and he got in at the start with his Clark Bar. Mr. Clark now makes two other fruit bars--Orange and Pineapple--but neither has achieved the success of his Clark Bar.
At 70, grey, bespectacled David Lytle Clark works at his desk every day. Among his friends he is known as an amiable, witty conversationalist. Two years ago, emulating William Wrigley's Catalina Island, he bought Snell's Island Golf Course in St. Petersburg, Fla. from a bankrupt millionaire, spent a small fortune improving its 27-hole course and club-hotel. He now does a landslide tourist business.
Of David Lytle Clark's numerous family only three are unmarried. None of his sons went to college but started in working at the family factories. Robert and Joseph are salesmen and Alan is assistant salesmanager for the chewing gum company. In the candy company David Jr. is vice president and Charles is assistant salesmanager. Eldest Son Harold, 43, witty, mustached and smart, is treasurer of the candy company, general manager of the chewing gum company. He takes his job seriously. Once when an enthusiastic friend exclaimed: "Harold, this is a crackerjack proposition," Harold brought him up sternly with "Don't say crackerjack, say Zig-Zag." Cracker-Jack popcorn is Zig-Zag's big rival.
*Gum is made from sugar (half), chicle and flavor. Chicle is coagulated sap of a tropical tree (sapodilla), growing in Mexico and Guatemala. Raw chicle is melted in open kettles, flows through pipes into a cement-mixer-like churner, syrup and flavor added, kneaded for hours, then rolled into strips a foot wide, cut to size and dusted with powdered sugar to keep from sticking. Return to Text.
Last updated: 27 April 1999.