This is an instructional sign from the Humke Sanitary Bakery of Dubuque, dating back to the 1930s.
Frederick Oliver “Ollie” Humke (1887 – 1971) began his career in the bakery business at Frank Albert Wither’s bakery on 13th and Main Street in Dubuque in the early 1900s. Ollie later purchased the shop with his co-worker William Graessele (whose last name may also be spelled Graesle or Graessle) and moved the bakery to Clay Street (now Central Avenue) before they parted ways in 1913. Other family members subsequently joined Ollie’s venture, which was renamed various iterations of Humke Bakery and finally Humke Sanitary Bakery.
By the 1920s, the bakery expanded to three branches, including one located in the Piggly Wiggly store on Main Street. In the 1930s, the bakery formalized its Bakery to Home Service, taking inspiration from the milk delivery business. Customers could hang signs like this one in their windows to indicate their desire to conduct business. Drivers in specially marked Humke Bakery vehicles would sound their horns to announce their arrival for bread delivery and sales. Over the years, “sanitary” was dropped from the name again. By the late 1940s, the bakery only had one branch, with much smaller ads in the papers. By 1957, the bakery was called Humke’s What-Not Shop.
Why was it called a “sanitary” bakery? Around the turn of the century into the 1920s, germ theory, the idea that disease is caused by microorganisms rather than miasmas, was gaining wider acceptance. Muckraking media, such as the exposé The Jungle by journalist Upton Sinclair, who worked in a meatpacking plant, scrutinized food preparation practices. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, an early consumer protection law, established the first federal regulations for food and drugs by raising standards for food labeling. This law would eventually prove foundational for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The Humke Sanitary Bakery was among many businesses that adapted their advertising to address public health concerns. In the December 4, 1927, edition of the Telegraph-Herald and Times-Journal, the bakery invited consumers to “visit our plant, see how clean we keep all baking utensils, floors, walls, ceilings, and dough tables; also salesroom and delivery trucks. Sanitation, Cleanliness, Plus Quality, our Motto.” The bakery emphasized its use of so-called pure lard, milk, flour, and ingredients prepared with modern equipment.
In addition to loaves of bread, the bakery offered a wide variety of products, including electric-fried lard doughnuts, icebox cookies, springerle, gooseberry pies, Cinderella cookies, taffy butter rolls, oatmeal hermits, prune cake, pocketbooks, foam candy, cococanut dainties, Maryland rolls, loganberry pastries, pfeffernüsse, butter jumbles, and much more. The bakery even acquired a license to sell Potato Dogs from the Potato Dog Corporation based in Chicago, which consisted of Dubuque-made sausage served in a whole potato in a “sanitary bag,” as reported in the July 27, 1924 edition of the Telegraph-Herald.