Summer 2006

Birt Babcock:  Sauerkraut King

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About 90 years ago, corporate magnate Birton E. Babcock, Class of 1894, was asked, "How were you able to surpass your competitors?"

"How were you able to surpass your competitors?"

"I studied Greek," he quipped.

The short answer minimized Babcock's deep regard for his classical course of study. When he arrived at Wooster in 1890, he was, he wrote, "the mossiest, most uncouth, and unpromising country lad." Babcock later credited the College with transforming that lad into a confident and cultured man. Contrary to the belief that "a college education unfits a man for business," he wrote, "it has taught me to reason and think correctly…"

In the 1890s young Babcock would never have guessed that his future and his fortune lay in cabbage—fields and fields of cabbage.

Education, tithing, hard work

Birt Babcock began his career at the bottom. He had already tried other jobs by the time he and his wife, Edna Wilder Babcock, moved to his hometown of Clyde, Ohio. There he took the only position he could find—at a sauerkraut and pickling factory.

In the early 1900s Birt borrowed $1200 to purchase a pickle factory in Phelps, New York.Twenty years later, the five factories of Babcock's Empire State Pickling Company were processing 500-800 tons of cabbage per day.

Sales slowed a bit in the mid-1920s. In April 1925 Babcock wrote, "I do not know as I have seen my business as low for five years as it is today, but it is bound to come back." The shrewd businessman didn't have to wait long. Six months later, after a freeze ruined cabbage fields elsewhere, he enthused, "Five of us packers have 90 percent of the kraut in the country today, and I have 60 percent of that 90 percent." At one time, Empire State Pickling was considered the largest sauerkraut manufacturer in the world, and the town of Phelps was the world's sauerkraut capital.

Babcock became Phelps' first millionaire, but he didn't forget his roots. A dedicated Presbyterian, he credited his financial gain to "tithing, a college education, and hard work." He liberally supported First Presbyterian Church in Phelps, where he directed the choir, served as an elder, and funded a building addition and a new organ.

Claiming that he owed "a debt to The College of Wooster which cannot be measured by material standards," Babcock generously gave time, talent, and dollars to his beloved alma mater.

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