When driving as a chauffer, one ought to not criticize any passenger, when they out number you and will twist your nose... plus, this history of Cracker Jack

in July of 1917, the reputation of the Rueckheim family, creator of Cracker Jack, was rocked when news broke of a brawl at the family estate.

Frederick, the patriarch, wasn’t involved, but his 2nd wife, Mrs. Ola J. Roberts, and two of his step children—Alta and Harry were caught in the fray, along with family friend Robert Kimball. Their adversary, it seems, was the Rueckheims’ chauffeur, Fred Nelson, who’d opted to criticize Kimball for leaving the car’s lights running, draining the car battery

Young Alta told Nelson he was out of line. Nelson quipped something back at her, and the rumble was on.

 
“Details of a free-for-all battle royal that would have crowded the most agile comedy from the movie screens were described yesterday before a jury in Judge Robinson’s municipal court,” the Tribune reported.

 
“Harry tried to wallop the chauffeur and Kimball received one from Nelson. Miss Roberts, it is alleged, picked up a wrench and used it freely. After she lost it she scouted up an empty milk bottle. Finally Nelson was borne to the ground, and while lying there, according to testimony, Mrs. Rueckheim twisted his nose. . . . Mrs. Rueckheim and her daughter deny most of the assault charges, but Miss Roberts does admit the wrench part.”

Harry, Alta, and Nelson were charged with assault; Ola and Robert were charged with disorderly conduct. The judge decided to dismiss all the charges and told the involved parties to “go home and be peaceful.”

  “‘Who Hit Our Chauffeur?’ Is Court Comedy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 8, 1917, 13 might detail the court transcripts, which I bet were funny... but I can't find an online copy

https://www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/single-post/cracker-jack-co/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/04/06/cracker-jill-debut-cracker-jack/

Frederick Rueckheim was born in Japenzin, Germany, in 1846, but his loyalties, more specifically, rested with Prussia, as he fought for that side in the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866. Three years later, he immigrated to the U.S., joining many of the veterans from another recent war, all seeking a better life in the great American West, and back then, Chicago was way out West.... keeping in mind that the actual site of the Charles Ingalls house on Indian land was located in what is now the southeast corner of Section 36, Rutland Township, Montgomery County, Kansas. That was 1869. 

When the Great Chicago Fire flattened the skyline in 1871, Rueckheim decided to head north and help with the cleanup effort.

Fred Rueckheim, carrying $200, met William Brinkmeyer out on the city salvage circuit. Before the fire, Brinkmeyer had been the fairly successful owner of a Chicago popcorn stand. Now Rueckheim put up his stash of cash to re-establish Brinkmeyer’s business. They operated out of a backroom, utilizing one molasses kettle and a single popper.

There were a couple key technical innovations that really separated Cracker Jack from the legions of similar candies out on the market at the turn of the century.

First, Louis Rueckheim figured out how to prevent the individual morsels from sticking together into a coagulated gooey mess—some sort of barrel rotation trick. This made the stuff exceedingly more edible. 

Second, a new addition to the company, Henry G. Eckstein, came up with a way to better preserve the freshness and crispness of the snack for those long shipments back to the east coast. In 1899, his “waxed sealed package” enabled F. W. Rueckheim & Bro. to sell their product in slim waterproof cartons instead of expensive, bulky tins.

Tin Pan Alley singer who, in 1908, penned a little ditty called “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (incidentally, he’d never been to one). To maintain a proper rhyme scheme, Norworth lazily name-checked his favorite confection in the lyrics—“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack . . .”

When the song subsequently became the year’s biggest hit, nobody was more blindsided than the guys at the Cracker Jack offices. Without lifting a finger, they’d become the beneficiaries of perhaps the greatest pro bono marketing campaign in American history

It was the country’s first great sports anthem, and by a stupid stroke of luck, it permanently correlated the Cracker Jack name with America’s pastime— with a free ad in every rendition, ad nauseum.

In the ‘20s and ‘30s, a kid might get to the bottom of a box only to find a tiny diecast “thing”—a hat, a boot, maybe a thimble or an iron. Of course, when those same diecast molds wound up as Monopoly game pieces a wee bit later, it was no coincidence. They were all manufactured by another pair of Chicago siblings, the Dowst Brothers.

The recipe for Cracker Jack has only changed once since 1896. After Borden purchased Cracker Jack in 1964, the recipe exchanged white sugar for corn syrup

By 1930, the Cracker Jack Company used 25 percent of the world’s supply of popcorn for its products 

this was easily a 2 hour post just to read source material and decide what to repost, and was motivated by the chauffer funny story, and then the desire to share the story of the iconic Cracker Jack that had originated as a street vendor selling fresh popped popcorn, in the cleanup of the devastating fire of Chicago - the only story I have heard that connects events that have had to do with Chicago's fire and salvage of any major city disaster.

 San Fran was destroyed in 1906, posted about https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/10/san-francisco-1906-earthquake-and.html and https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/03/west-san-francisco-had-street-car.html 

Baltimore was destroyed in a 1904 fire https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-goliath-fire-horse-became-hero-in.html

 and I can't recall any others that were this large and destroyed, but a lot of smaller ones were, like Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Johnstown,