I subscribe to a bi-monthly magazine entitled German Life (better than it's prosaic title) :) . The Aug./Sep. issue is an article by Kim Carpenter "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap"about Emanuel Heilbronner, who used his liquid soap business with the theme "Moral ABCs" to advocate a message of tolerance and world peace. After a master soap-making certificate in the 1920s from a German guild system trade school, and arguing with his father, he came to Milwaukee for work.
Despite pleas from him and his sisters (who ahd emigrated to the U.S. and what would become Israel his parents stayed in Germany. The lst letter he got from them was heavily censured except for three words "You were right." His parents subsequently were killed in Auschwitz andTeriesentadt. He was also appalled by WWII in general-and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan to step up his proselytizing for world peace and understanding but...
this was the beginning of the Cold War, not esp. noted for tolerance of "peaceniks" andwhile speaking without a permit in Chicago he was arrested and institutionalized in the Elgin mental asylum and given shock treatments. On his third attempt at escape he succeeded and went to L. A.
As Kim Carpenter notes he:
exhorted people to unite as one, respect the environment and recognize the unifying divine source of all religions, he realized that people were frequently taking the soap he was selling on the side [without listening to his message] He bagan printing it on the labels
This iconic meassaging has been retained by his sons and grandsons and shows the long lasting environmental and social awareness of Bronner (who, btw, upon the accession of Hitler to power quickly dropped the Heil from his last name).
As grandson MIke is quoted in the article:
"Today, it's how we take the message on the bottle and apply it. We take the label seriously. We stand for sustainability and fair trade and apply where we can have the most impact-from our employees to our supply chain. We know the difference between ideals and reality,and we apply our ideals to reality." Today, Dr. Bronner's is the number one organic selling liquid and bar soap in North America, earning close to $50 million in sales annually.
From the tiny bit of web surfing I've done it seems like this company and family (5 generations) is a socially/environmentally concerned group. I hope they are similarly so with their labor force (that is, not anti-union, anti-minimum wage, etc). And whether their "fair trade" involvement is indeed with "Fair Trade."
If anyone knows, please feel free to chime in. He does seem to have been a rather eccentric person, with significant setbacks in his life, but who overcame them and "kept the faith". Not a bad legacy.