His partners “squeezed” him out of the cheese business, so he had no choice, but to start over and “re-kraft” his trade. In the process, he developed a revolutionary patent which pasteurized and processed cheese. This transformed the way cheese was used, because it kept it from spoiling and it could be shipped in tins during World War I  to U.S. armed forces.1

 

James Lewis Kraft, founder of the Kraft Cheese Company, was born in 1874 to a humble Mennonite family on a farm near Ontario, CANADA. His first job was as a cheese-slicer at a general store in nearby Fort Erie, Ontario. Later he invested in a cheese company and went to Chicago, Illinois, to look after a branch of that company. While there, his partners “eased him out of the business.”1

 

In 1903, he became stranded in Chicago, Illinois, with only 65 dollars. He acquired a horse named Paddy and a wagon. Every day he would buy cheese in the city’s wholesale warehouse district and then travel to smaller stores early in the morning (before the cheese could spoil and before merchants could buy from another source) and resell it.  His delivery business worked because it saved the merchants time and travel. Later, he credited his great success to his horse Paddy.  

By 1909 his business prospered enough that several of his brothers joined him and together incorporated the company as the JL Kraft and Bros Co.

 

Later Kraft formed the Kraft Cheese Corporation. As the head of this billion-dollar industry, for many years, he gave approximately 25 percent of his income to Christian causes. His success buoyed him, through the Great Depression, so much so that, “in the mid-1920s, Kraft began a venture to create a fashionable golf and tennis resort community in Lake Wales, Florida… [The resort opened] in the worst year of the Great Depression, 1931, and has been run by successive generations … ever since.”  “The Kraft House” remains on the property today.3

 

In his adult life, he said, “The only investment I ever made which has paid consistently increasing dividends is the money I have given to the Lord.”1

By Cindy R. Chamberlin, 2009.

 

Sources:

1  Ervin Shaw, “Another Special Life in Christ: James Lewis Kraft.” Web site on “Christian Testimony,” posted 28 Dec., 2003.

2  James Kraft Autograph, “History for Sale.” ”Typed letter signed 12/24/1924, document  #217284.

3  Wiki Wak, James Lewis Kraft. Web site entry, posted 2009.

 

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