New York State was the birthplace of the American canning industry and grew to become one of the nation’s most prolific food processing hubs by the late 19th century. The state’s history is marked by early technological developments, massive growth during wartime, and the rise of major corporate processors.
Initially, canned foods were not widely accepted, however. The overarching factor that drove the prevalence and public acceptance of canned food was the symbiotic relationship between the evolving canning industry and the changing role of women, in particular their need or desire to work in the public sphere.
Canning began in France and quickly spread to the city of New York, where an early cannery was established in 1812 by Robert Ayars, using tin-plated wrought-iron cans to preserve oysters, meats, fruits, and vegetables.
Some “vessels of tin” were being made in the city in 1825 by British immigrants Thomas Kensett and his father-in-law Ezra Daggert. They established a cannery in Baltimore in 1840 for Chesapeake Bay oysters that is regarded as the first truly industrial can-making facility in the United States.
Of primary concern was safe preservation of the food being packed. Famed French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) in the 1860s discovered that bacteria could be killed by high heat.
New York inventor Gail Borden at about this time developed vacuum-packed condensed milk, which was in high demand by the United States Army during the Civil War.
Answering that demand was pivotal both in the development of the can and in the preservation of its contents.
With food poisoning a very real threat, advances in can manufacturing included the “sanitary can,” which was soldered only on the exterior seam to help ensure freshness and to keep the solder from tainting the food (usually fruits and vegetables).
The assembly line in the 1870s eliminated hand tooling. These technological advances drove down prices for canned goods, which were once deemed unaffordable.
The technology rapidly expanded to Upstate New York by the late 19th century to process local agriculture products, notably in Wayne County where E. A. Edgett’s Fruit Canning Works was built in Newark, NY in 1872 and its successor the Cobb Preserving Company.
Curtice Brothers Company and Webster Canning Company near Rochester were also major producers, among many smaller facilities around the state. The industry also supported agricultural operations – often utilizing Black and immigrant agricultural workers – along with white dominated shipping, warehousing, wholesale, and marketing jobs.
Major corporate canned food processors in New York State today include Seneca Foods (fruits/vegetables), Mott’s (applesauce), LiDestri Foods (sauces/salsas), Steuben Foods (aseptic dairy/plant-based), and Kraft Heinz.
Despite rising buy-in from the public in the earlier days of the industry, misgivings about the safety and quality of canned foods lingered for decades.
What resulted was a dichotomy between rising demand for time-saving canned foods and ongoing skepticism about their safety, quality, and taste.
The Role of Women
In response the canned food industry relentlessly and aggressively marketed their products to women.
The industry invited women into their laboratories by acquainting them with the science behind preserving food. Newly formed trade groups also set up their own inspection services and gathered data about which foods women bought. Magazines devoted to housekeeping were crammed with articles addressing meal preparation.
Ultimately, these efforts won over women as the arbiters of acceptability. The view that canned food was bland, without nutrition, and possibly tainted faded as consumers embraced the time saved.
In 1897, two million cans of cherries, peaches, pears, plums, berries, quinces, corn, tomatoes, peas and succotash were packed and shipped by the Cobb Preserving Company, mostly on the Erie Canal.
In 1904, canned food producers packed 824 million cans of fruits and vegetables, an output that steadily climbed to 2.3 billion cans in 1923, when canned foods were a household fixture.
By the mid-1930s, Americans were annually eating 7.2 billion cans of fruits and vegetables. For example, a 1934 survey of 195 women entering a Glens Falls, NY food preparation course found that 85 percent of them were using canned foods.
Though the quest for women’s equality dated to the mid-nineteenth the circumstances for noticeable shifts in women’s primary role as housewife occurred in the early twentieth century, as more women sought employment opportunities, whether needed or wanted, outside of the home.
Middle class women were increasingly able to pursue employment and participate in women’s groups and social service organizations.
The need for time savings was universal. What resulted was a symbiotic relationship between the canned food makers and women who wielded considerable power as the decision-makers about the food they made and served.
Without an expansion of women’s roles beyond the home, there would be no real need for the time-saving convenience of canned foods. Without access to faster, more efficient meal preparation, women would likely have been tethered to the stove longer.
Still, women were expected to manage the home and keep an outside job, mainly as teachers, clerks, domestics and nurses.
The burgeoning women’s workforce ushered in the irony of the “double day,” with women now holding two jobs, one as keeper of the home, one of employee in the public sphere who earned less money than men.
While liberal feminism worked to alleviate those conditions, the double-edged sword of balancing work and home persists to this day.
Read more about women’s history in New York State.
This essay was drawn from the National Register of Historic Places Registration For for Liddle Warehouse in Glens Falls, recently nominated to both State and National Registers. You can find the full document, including footnotes, here. John Warren contributed to this essay.
Illustrations, from above: A vintage Campbell’s Vegetable Soup advertisement; Tin can used for the early preservation of food, Bryan Donkin and Co., London, England, 1812 (Science Museum, London); Webster Canning Factory, Vernon, NY; The Cobb Preserving Company complex, 1909, showing buildings along the railroad tracks built to house seasonal agricultural workers (courtesy Perinton Historical Society); A cannery worker filling cans of tuna in Long Beach, California, ca. 1930.
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