To Defraud Housewives and Cheat Stomachs: The Gendered Politics of Corn Syrup, 1900–36

Corn syrup has been produced on an industrial scale since the turn of the 20^th century, when manufacturers of corn starch expanded into the new, profitable realms of this liquid sugar. Yet following the passage of the Pure Food Act in 1906, corn refining organizations discovered that moving “glucose” from the cornfield to the table was no simple matter. They faced consumer reticence, government regulations, and stiff competition from within their industry.

This paper examines the processes by which struggles over nature, agriculture, and gender have shaped modern foodways.  Using private letters, USDA records, corporate financial documents, and widely circulated cookery materials, it describes the steps by which the Corn Products Refining Company (CPRC) wrangled with USDA policies in order to make Karo Corn Syrup a ubiquitous household item. For the CPRC, consumers’ acceptance of Karo and corn sugar equated to huge profits and market dominance.  And to affiliated industries, corn syrup and corn sugar meant tangible cost-savings and product improvement.  But for food reformers like H. W. Wiley and some housewives, the creation and circulation of glucose in the market place spelled certain doom for “Mrs. Consumer.”  These struggles became more contentious after WWI, as farm families interpreted refined corn products as important outlets for their agricultural glut. 

In a panel revisiting sweetness and power, Sisson demonstrates how, over periods of agricultural boom and bust, industrial manipulations to the nature of corn and a decades-long campaign to sweeten American women on refined corn products created spaces where state, industry, and farmer interests colluded and collided over what and how female consumers put nature on the table.