The Rise of Baking Powder Business

In Chicago and Terre Haute, Indiana, two new companies entered the baking powder war. Both used a new formula based on sodium aluminum sulfate, which Royal conflated with alum. Calumet was headed by salesman William Wright; Clabber was developed by the German Catholic immigrant Hulman family. Within fifty years, the Hulmans had grown from a small grocery to a distillery and department store, and wholesaler with branches throughout the Midwest, and earned the respect of labor leader and native son Eugene Debs. Baking powder also expanded into new foods such as Aunt Jemima pancake mix.