"Jiffy": A Family Tradition, Mixing Business and Old-Fashioned Values by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds (review)

128 MichiganHistoricalReview de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, in 1689 thatMichUimackinac was "of the greatest importance for the good" of the beaver trade (p. 88), subsequent documents reveal that the expenses of war and empire compelled the Sun King to proscribe the Upper Country fur trade in 1698. Edge of Empire ends in 1716, when renewed imperial competition with Great Britain as well as problems with France's erstwhile Fox allies necessitated the construction of a new Michihmackinac. In addition to Brandao's useful introduction, court cases presented in this book shed light on how the fur trade worked. Montreal merchants or politicians held conges,or royal licenses, that permitted them to engage in the fur trade in a specific location. Most of the conges were assigned toMichihmackinac because itwas centrally located in the heart of the best beaver-trapping territory.Merchants contracted with traders to carry their goods into the interior, trade them to Indian hunters for pelts, and thenmake an honest accounting of their efforts. As many of the court documents in Edge ofEmpire show, however, embezzlement by traders was a common occurrence. Likewise, false accusations of embezzlement by merchants against traders were common. In another enhghtening twist, the documents also reveal the substantial involvement of women not only in the fur trade, but also as merchants, proprietors, and litigants atMichihmackinac. Brandao and Peyser have rendered a valuable service to English speaking scholars by highlighting the French and Indian contributions to the early history ofMichigan, theMidwest, and theUnited States in general. Edge ofEmpire makes accessible to modern readers a world obscured by the passage of time and the difficulties involved in reading the French language of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Matthew L. Rhoades University ofHouston-Victoria Cynthia Furlong Reynolds. 'Jiffy": A Family Tradition, Mixing Business and Old-Fashioned Values. Chelsea, Mich.: Chelsea Milling Company, 2008 (distributed by theUniversity ofMichigan Press, Ann Arbor). Pp. 248. Index. Photographs. Cloth, $24.95. I judged this book by its cover, and it looked delicious?sporting a reproduction of the famous Jiffycorn-muffin box, where a pat of butter lovingly melts on a hot-from-the-oven muffin. I thought the cover illustration was brilliant, but then I read the inside flap. Listed Book Reviews 129 "ingredients" to be found in this book are "love, consideration, courage, consistency," and soforth. Inside one sees more family snapshots than a business history should have. Is this a history or an elaborate scrapbook? If this book has a thesis, it is that Jiffy, aka Chelsea Milling Company inChelsea, Michigan, never sold its soul tomake money. The purpose of thiswork is to describe and celebrate the humane business culture at Jiffy's as fostered by the Holmes family,who operated the Chelsea Mill from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. Reynolds, who is a journalist and corporate historian, traces the mill back to its earliest owners, but the Jiffystory really startswith Howard Samuel Holmes, who inherited themill from his father in the 1910s. Holmes prospered, but fell to his death inside a grain elevator in 1936. From 1936 to 1940, his wife Mabel took charge of the Chelsea Mill. It was Mabel Holmes who created Jiffybiscuit mix in her own kitchen. The firstof its kind, themix required only milk, and was c"so simple even a man could do it'" (p. 12). Years later, her son Dudley said his mother was '"brilliant, intuitive, and strong-minded, the kind of woman who nowadays would be theCEO of some big company'" (p. 12). The bulk of the book concerns Jiffy's success under Holmes's hardworking twin sons, Dudley and Howard, who took over themill in 1940. For decades, Jiffy sales were consistendy in the top three, along with Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker, despite the fact that the company did not advertise. By the 1980s, however, the Jiffybrand began to stagnate. When "Howdy" Holmes, Howard's son, joined the company in the 1980s, the younger man found rotary phones and a switchboard that closed for lunch. Howdy's job was to retain the family-business atmosphere while bringing the plant up to speed. Poignandy, in the 1990s, as Howard Holmes began to suffer a mental...