Mr Wm h comstock

Dear sir we have sent you one tierce & 3 cases of pill boxes wich we want you to send us a check for as soon as you git this for we have to pay it the first of next month & must have the money if you want eney moure boxes we will send them & wait for the money till the first of april youres truly

Quay & Champion

Quay continued to supply the boxes for at least fifteen years, during which his need for prompt payment never diminished.  Comstock also bought large quantities of bottles, corks, packing boxes, and wrappers.  Throughout the company’s long existence, however, more frequent payments were made to printers and stationers—­for the heavy flow of almanacs, handbills, labels, trade cards, direction sheets, and billheads—­than for all the drugs and packaging materials.  In the success achieved by the Indian Root Pills, the printing press was just as important a contributor as the pill-mixing machine.

The Final Years

When William Henry Comstock, Sr., moved the Indian Root Pill business to Morristown, in 1867, he was—­at age 37—­at least approaching middle life.  Yet he was still to remain alive, healthy, and in direct charge of the medicine business for more than half a century longer.  And the golden era of the patent-medicine business may be said to have coincided very closely with Mr. Comstock’s active career—­from about 1848 to 1919.

[Footnote 12:  However, additional items were manufactured by the Dr. Howard Medicine Co., affiliated with the Comstock factory in Brockville.  Also, during World War II the company accepted an Army contract for the manufacture and packaging of foot powder.]

[Illustration:  FIGURE 24.—­In its final years the Comstock factory discontinued most of its old remedies and concentrated upon the three most successful:  Comstock’s Dead Shot Worm Pellets, Comstock’s N. & B. Liniment, and Dr. Morse’s Indian Root Pills.]

While no schedule of sales, net income, or financial results are available, the fragmentary records make it obvious that the business continued to flourish beyond World War I, and long after the passage of the first Food and Drug Act—­in 1906.  The almanacs were still printed as recently as 1938; while the labels and other advertising matter abandoned their ornate nineteenth-century style and assumed a distinctly modern aspect—­to the extent of introducing comic-style picture stories, featuring the small boy who lacked energy to make the little league baseball team (he had worms), and the girl who lacked male admirers because of pimples on her face (she suffered from irregular elimination).  Sales volume of the Morristown factory, however, apparently did reach a peak early in the present century—­perhaps around 1910—­and began a more rapid decline during the 1920s.  During this same period the geographical character of the market shifted significantly; as domestic orders dropped off, a very substantial foreign business, particularly in Latin America, sprang up.  While this did not compensate fully for the loss of domestic sales, it did provide a heavy volume that undoubtedly prolonged the life of the Indian Root Pill factory by several decades.