PACKAGING
PACKAGING. Even before modern mass packaging, merchants sold goods in crocks, barrels, or bottles or wrapped in paper, fabric, or leaves. Some of the earliest prepackaged, prelabeled items were patent medicines and tobacco products. However, most products before the late nineteenth century were sold loose from bulk containers.
The history of modern mass-produced, prepackaged products parallels the rise of complex industrial organization and standardized, large-scale production processes beginning in the late nineteenth century. Industry began to use packages as a way to sell a visually distinctive national brand—promoting it in the new mass-media advertising outlets—to consumers who increasingly shopped not in dry goods stores but in large, well-stocked department stores and supermarkets. Thus, innovation in industrial organization, production processes, and advertising media evolved synergistically with innovations in packaging technologies and processes. This was particularly true in the food industry, where the rise of mason jar–steam pressure packing (1870s), tin can manufacturing machinery (early 1900s), and the paper carton enabled more products to be sold on a wider scale and advertised by brand. General Foods and many other large, multi-national corporations arose from the merger of many smaller companies whose brands had become known to consumers through their distinctive packaging. Along with new packaging techniques came new forms of food preservation, such as freezing and pasteurization. Later, the rise of aseptic and shrink-wrap technologies, along with new preservation technologies, paralleled the rise of the globalized fresh food economy.
In tandem with the rise of packaging technologies was the development of product design and labeling. American package design lagged behind that of the European manufacturers, but by the 1920s, the United States began to draw heavily from the European Beaux Arts movement to create a more modern-looking package that sold the product. Increasingly efficient packaging machinery also became more sophisticated in terms of meeting advanced design requirements, including the development of flexographic printing and other forms of advanced lithography.
Along with the development of modern packaging design came consumer demands for greater information about the nature of the goods within. From the beginning, manufacturers made unsubstantiated claims on packages and associated advertisements. In response, the pure food consumer movement lobbied for the legislation that created labeling criteria for ingredients and additives. Concerns over nutrition also led to the establishment of nutritional information on food packages. Over time, packages displayed more third-party certifications of quality and purity, such as awards from international expositions. Increasing consumer concern led to a proliferation of certifications on packages, from industrial standards of manufacture to parent association approvals.
Public concern moved to the question of packaging itself. Environmental movements led to the establishment of recycled packaging as well as demands for "source reduction" in the packaging system. Nevertheless, these trends are often counteracted by demands for convenience and safety.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chandler, Alfred. Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise. Boston: MIT Press, 1962.
Heller, Steven. "Commercial Modern: American Design Style, 1925–1933." Print 49 (1995): 58–69.
Levenstein, Harvey A. Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
