Charles F. Wenneker, wealthy owner of a St. Louis candy company and president of the Million Population Club, thought the best way to grow the city was to promote it like crazy.
“He’s deeply, desperately determined that St. Louis shall have a million people for the census taker to take next year,” the Post-Dispatch reported on May 2, 1909, giving Wenneker the entire Sunday front page to expound on his marketing ideas.
At the time, Wenneker had it in his head that 770,000 people already lived in the city. Getting 230,000 more to move in by 1910 would take an aggressive campaign employing billboards, buttons, stickers and rubber stamps.
The 1900 census recorded a population of 575,238 in the city. In subsequent years, civic promoters derived wildly inflated population estimates from the annual city directories. And while the 1910 census revealed considerable growth, with a final tally of 687,029, it fell well short of 1 million, or even 770,000 for that matter.
Wenneker was the consummate promoter, who couldn’t understand why, as the Post-Dispatch reported, “any native or adopted citizen does not love the city as he does.”
“‘This is a home city,’ he says. “St. Louis is preeminently a city of household gods, and we stay in the house to worship them. Our men are deeply domestic. They are home-loving, and it is hard to get them out at night. You can hardly get them to attend a Million Population function, they love home so well.’”
Wenneker was an unusual figure. Stock speculation in 1915 left him broke. Humiliated, he left town abruptly on March 1 — and his disappearance was a mystery, even to his wife, Johanna.
In December of that year, Wenneker was discovered in Chicago, running a small candy manufacturing firm. The news came as a shock to Johanna who said she hadn’t heard from him in nine months.
“I am glad to hear he is safe, of course, but I cannot say now what position I will take,” she told the Star. She said she’d make up her mind about taking him back “‘perhaps’ only after a long talk.”
Charles F. Wenneker died in 1936 at the age of 83. Johanna followed in 1946.
Roland Klose 