The increase in the variety of goods pro duced by American bakers did not begin to become apparent until after the introduction of the machine method of baking. Prior to 1840, or even for some years after that date, there were only five kinds of crackers that were known to the general trade, and the few exceptions were products that were of purely local invention and sale. The standard crack ers, in this period, were the old-fashioned "pilot-bread," the original hard cold-water crackers made by the Bents, the soft or butter cracker, and the square and round soda bis cuit. The last three varieties differed from the older cracker both in the fact that they were products from a fermented dough, and that they contained shortening, either of butter or lard. Of these crackers, the most popular varieties for ordinary use were those that had been pro duced by the process of fermentation, as they were of lighter and softer texture than the old type of-hard cracker.
The sweetened, or fancy, cracker more familiarly known as ((biscuit,'" is an English in vention which was placed upon the market sometime laver than 1855. Among the English firms that sent their goods to the American market were Huntley & Palmer, and Peak, Frean & Company, but the products of •bath houses were sold so widely that they won found it necessary to establish distributing agencies in every large city of the country. As all the important grocery houses in the United States were selling these goods, and as every body who could afford such luxuries were buy ing them, it did not take long for the domestic manufacturers to recognize the fact that this was an avenue of trade that must not retrain closed to the bakers of this country. Belcher & Larrabee of Albany was the first firm to take steps in this matter, but as early as 1865 they sent to England for the cutters and machines necessary to the undertaking, and their attempt to produce these sweetened and fancy biscuit was so successful that other firms soon fol lowed their example, with the result that this branch of the cracker manufacture has gradu ally extended until it has become one of the greatest sources of profit to the trade. In fact,
so popular did the new biscuit become that the firms of H. J. McCollum of New York, and Denio & Roberts of Boston, then the most prominent makers of bakers' supplies in Amer ica, began the manufacture of all necessary ap pliances for the new industry, so that they were soon able to equip all domestic plants with all machinery needed to enable them to rival the operations of the best bakeries of England. As the result, the importation of English goods not only decreased to a marked degree, but, en couraged by their success in this country, several American firms, including Holmes & Coutts, the Wilsons of Philadelphia, and F. A. Kennedy, began to introduce their high-class unsweetened goods to the European market.
In 1890, in accordance with the "consolida tion'" idea which was then sweeping the country, the largest plants in the United States were formed into three large companies. The first, the New York Biscuit Company, included nearly all the cracker interests in New York and the New England States, its factory in New York city being the largest and most complete in this country. The American Bis cuit Company represented chiefly the West and South, while the United States Baking Company had large factories in Ohio, Indiana and Penn sylvania. These three concerns, which then represented an aggregate capital of $25,000,000, and an annual consumption of flour which ap proximated 1,400,000 barrels, were again ab sorbed, in 1898, under the one title of the National Biscuit Company. With a capital of $55,000,000, and with bakeries in all the principal American cities, this company has not only revolutionized the methods of cracker-making but has introduced many novel ideas, not only in the form of new varieties of crackers, or biscuit, but in the matter of air-tight packages, and other inventions which have added greatly to the commercial value of this product of our national industry. Consult The Cracker baker, Devoted to the interests of the Cracker and Biscuit trade of the World' (Vols. New York 1912-15).