Kathryn W. Kemp, God's Capitalist: Asa Candler of Coca-Cola. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2002, Pp. 294. $35.00.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Thomas R. Winpenny

With little more than a 1950 biography written by a family member, an entry in the Dictionary of Georgia Biography, and inclusion in some journalistic histories of Coca-Cola, perhaps it is time for a full length biography of Asa Candler, the prominant figure in the international cola colossus. To that end Kathryn Kemp plunged into the Candler papers in the Woodruff Library at Emory University and the Candler papers in the Coca-Cola Company Archives to generate a 294 page story of Asa's life. Three members of the Georgia State History Department read the manuscript and offered comments and suggestions. It seems likely that they started this project as dissertation advisors.

Asa was the eighth of eleven children born to Samuel and Martha Candler in 1851 in the hills of Carroll County, Georgia. This northwest region of the state was famous as the site where gold was discovered in the 1830s. "Country boy" Asa spent his youth in the Primitive Baptist Church, but later moved with his family into the Methodist Church. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the Methodist Church of the late nineteenth century in rural Georgia was arguably as conservative, straight-laced, and evangelical as the modern Methodist Church is liberal and leaning in the direction of a host of radical causes. One should not be mistaken for the other. This Methodist involvement meant church on Sunday coupled with a strict dose of sabbatarianism and midweek services. Furthermore, Asa's older brother and closest advisor Warren became a Methodist bishop. Not surprisingly, Kathryn Kemp contends that this stern religious influence shaped Candler's character, at least until the last decade of his life when a few romantic flings generated chaos.

As a businessman, Asa was religiously entrepreneurial and apparently successful in most things he tried. Operating a drugstore in Atlanta with Marcellus Hallman in 1880, he bought out Hallman in 1881 and managed to survive a fire that destroyed his inventory in 1883. Five years later he invested $500 in Coca-Cola, a new drink invented by Atlanta druggist John Pemberton; and, to use a trite phrase, the rest is history.

While it would be logical to imagine that the rest of Candler's business career was totally consumed with the rise of America's first soft drink to enter the national market, this is not the case. Kemp points out that as early as 1890 Asa invested in a street railway in Atlanta, and later established his own commercial bank. Candler developed a great personal interest in skyscrapers and thus urban real estate, and ultimately owned a number of these towering structures in many of the leading cities of America. When Georgia cotton growers were threatened with financial ruin, Asa was moved to guarantee loans -- and earn some interest. At the same time, the soda business did provide a number of time-consuming challenges. For example, the appearance of endless "look alike" and "sound alike" products required litigation to drive them from the marketplace. A belief in the importance of advertising led to a promotional budget that reached $1,000,000 annually by 1911. An aggressive application of the new Food and Drug Act led to a battle with the federal government that lasted from 1909 (when a shipment of syrup was seized) until 1918 when a negotiated settlement led to Coca-Cola changing its manufacturing procedures. (Endless rumors regarding the caffeine or cocaine contents of the soft drink led to myriad allegations that the producers of Coke were "dope dealers" creating a nation of addicts.)

Philanthropy for Asa meant giving generously to the Methodist Church. This later translated into gifts to Emory University, amounting to a total of roughly $7,000,000, so that Emory could serve as an antidote to the spiritual waywardness of Vanderbilt University.

Politically, Asa was elected Mayor of Atlanta in 1916 at age 65. The citizens seemed to believe that this industrial magnet would be the answer to the city's financial woes. Candler did cut the Atlanta payroll and balance the budget. Predictably, perhaps, he threw the weight of his office behind sabbatarianism and the W.C.T.U. Perhaps due to age, Asa's appetite for politics never extended beyond the Mayor's office.

When Candler "got out of business" in 1916, and gave a lot of Coca-Cola stock to his children, the firm had $27,000,000 in assets and ranked 212 out of the 500 largest industrials in America. (The great global reach of the business was mostly a later development.) Toward the end of the decade his service to Atlanta as mayor was also drawing to a close and he turned his attention to Lucy, his wife for over forty years who was dying of breast cancer. She died in February of 1919.

This enormously successful businessman and public paragon of virtue, who did much to create the world's best known product and trade mark, suffered through a disastrous last decade (1919 - 1929) during which two failed romances led to litigation and public scandal. Asa died March 12, 1929.

While it seems helpful to have this narrative account of Asa Candler's life, published by Mercer University Press, to add to the historiography of American business, it would be hard to argue that there is no room for another to undertake the same task. After almost 300 pages of text, the reader still wants to know more about the man in question. Could Candler have been as wooden as Kemp indirectly suggests? Perhaps he was. Was there more to this man than his arid remarks on stewardship? Kemp concludes with the observation that Asa was neither a "heartless capitalist" nor a "Christian Saint," a remarkably safe observation. The title God's Capitalist strikes this reviewer as a crude and crass designation fabricated to catch the eye of a potential buyer. Alas, my copy was free!

Professor Winpenny publishes in the field of industrial history and the history of technology. He has a forthcoming book on the history of the Manhattan Bridge.