Dr.
Bronner’s
eccentric
philosophy
of
peace,
love
and
cleanliness
finally
wins
over
the
most
important
convert:
his
son.
“DON’T
BE
SMART,
RALPH.”
To
quote
his
father,
Ralph
Bronner
raised
his
voice
to
the
high
volume
at
white
Emanuel
Bronner
usually
spoke.
“He
used
to
say
that
to
me
a
lot.
He’d
be
talking
about
the
labels,
on
the
soap
bottles
being
a
message
to
all
nations,
and
I’d
say
‘So
what
language
should
it
be
in?’
and
he’d
say,
‘DON’T
BE
SMART,
RALPH.”
Emmanuel
Bronner
is
the
Dr.
Bronner
of
Dr.
Bronner’s
soaps.
If
you’re
into
health
food
or
backpacking
or
acoustic
guitar,
(“You’d
be
amazed,”
Ralph
said,
“how
many
people
who
love
health
food
love
*folk
music”),
you’ve
probably
heard
of
them.
If
you’re
not,
likely
you
haven’t.
The
elder
Bronner
died
two
years
ago
at
89.
He
was,
by
industry
accounts
a
brilliant
chemist
whose
genius
was
showcased
on
a
stage
of
soap.
He
was
also,
in
the
tradition
of
John
Harvey
Kellogg
and
others,
an
entrepreneuring,
crusading
eccentric,
a
breed
more
or
less
obsolete
today.
The
term
“obsessive”
hardly
does
justice
to
the
extend
of
his
mania,
focused
mostly
on
getting
out
his
world
peace
message
that
all
religions
are
one,
all
people
are
one.
His
soap,
through
labels
crammed
with
as
many
as
3,000
words,
carries
that
message.
He
was
also
a
father.
Ralph
Bronner
is
63.
His
white
van
sits
in
the
driveway
of
this
suburban
Milwaukee
home,
but
soon
it
will
be
on
the
rad
again,
criss-crossing
America.
He
hits
health
food
conventions,
health
food
stores
and
other
small
shops,
showing
retailers
that
there
are
real
people
behind
the
Dr.
Bronner’s
name,
that,
as
Ralph
always
says,
“It’s
not
like
Dr.
Pepper.”
“He’s
been
from
Yakima,
Wash.,
to
Clearwater,
Fla.;
from
Portland,
Maine
to
San
Diego,
Calif.,
never
as
a
salesman
nor
as
part
of
a
marketing
plan,
-because
there
is
no
marketing
plan
–
but
as
a
spokesman
for
the
soap
and
for
All-One-God-Faith,
which
is
not
just
the
name
of
the
Dr.
Bronner
philosophy,
but
also
a
compromise
name
of
the
company.”
“Dad
wanted
to
call
it
‘With
Bombs
and
Guns
we’re
all
one
or
none,’
Ralph
said,
“but
now
that
he’s
gone,
we
call
it
Dr.
Bronner’s
Magic
Soaps,
because
that’s
what
we’re
known
for.”
He
said
he
gives
shopkeepers
pamphlets
and
drops
off
some
free
bottles
of
liquid
soap.
“then
I
disappear
into
the
night.”
Ralph
has
fun
up
some
300,000
miles
and
gone
through
two
previous
vans
going
about
his
father’s
business.
The
license
plate
on
the
van,
“All
1
God,”
is
a
tribute
from
son
to
father,
a
sigh
of
the
triumph
of
love
over
enormous
odds.
“RALPH,
DON’T
INTERRUPT”
Ralph’s
mother,
Paula,
was
a
maid
at
a
Milwaukee
hotel
when
she
met
Emanuel
at
a
Germanic
club
dance
there.
Sickly,
in
and
out
of
hospitals,
she
died
in
1943
when
Ralph,
his
brother
Jim
and
sister
Ellen
were
very
young.
He
has
no
memory
of
her.
During
her
illness,
the
family
went
on
welfare
and
the
children
were
sent
to
a
series
of
foster
homes.
“I
was
in
15
different
homes
before
I
was
7,”
Ralph
said.
“One
day
I’d
wake
up
on
a
chicken
farm
in
Indiana.
A
little
while
later,
I’d
be
with
a
couple
in
Pleasant
Prairie,
Wisconsin,
or
at
the
St.
Joseph’s
Orphanage
in
Chicago.”
Finally,
having
bounced
all
over
the
Midwest,
the
children
were
placed
with
a
Bavarian
immigrant
family
in
Milwaukee
who
raised
them.
Emanuel,
working
as
a
soap
consultant
then,
was
mostly
poor
but
sporadically
rich
when
a
manufacturer
would
buy
something
he
had
invented.
He
would
show
up
from
time
to
time
in
a
black
1941
Buick
and
give
the
kids
thrilling
rides
on
the
hood
of
the
car.
“I’ll
never
forget
that
car,”
Ralph
said.
“It
always
smelled
of
apples
and
peppermint
Lifesavers.”
Emanuel
also
had
begun
speaking
publicly
about
a
plan
for
world
peace
and
apparently
mad
a
great
impression
on
some
in
his
audiences.
On
March
9,
1945,
according
to
the
next
day’s
Chicago
Tribune,
a
man
was
found
under
the
elevated
tracks
in
the
1600
block
of
Clybourn
Avenue.
He
had
been
crucified.
The
injured
man,
Fred
Walcher,
was
hoping
to
call
the
attention
of
world
leaders
to
Bronner’s
peace
plan,
and
idea
that
came
to
him
after
hearing
Bronner’s
speech.
When
police
and
press
came
to
his
hospital
room,
there
was
Bronner,
handing
out
pamphlets
and
the
authorities
began
to
take
an
interest
in
the
soap
consultant.
After
an
incident
in
which
Bronner
created
a
disturbance
in
the
dean’s
office
at
the
University
of
Chicago,
he
was
jailed.
A
week
later
his
sister
signed
the
necessary
papers,
and
he
was
taken
to
Elgin
State
Mental
Hospital,
strapped
to
a
concrete
slab
and
given
electroshock
treatments
he
would
blame
for
the
blindness
that
would
accompany
the
last
30
years
of
his
life.
For
the
next
decade,
Ralph
and
Emanuel
had
little
contact.
Ralph
would
come
to
view
his
father
as
a
“ranting
man
who
was
wasting
his
talent
as
a
chemist.”
Emanuel
was
in
Elgin
for
six
months.
On
his
third
try,
he
escaped.
He
had
no
money
except
for
$20
stolen
from
a
purse,
but
he
found
a
classified
ad
seeking
a
companion
to
share
the
drive
to
Los
Angeles.
That
would
be
good,
he
though.
No
one
knew
him
there.
By
the
time
thy
go
to
Las
Vegas,
Bronner
figured
he
could
reveal
the
fact
that
he
was
an
escaped
mental
patient.
As
Bronner
watched
the
car
drive
hoff,
he
was
lucky,
go
to
L.A.,
spent
his
nights
sleeping
on
the
roof
of
a
YMCA
and
his
days
fighting
forest
fires
for
pay.
Thus,
Dr.
Bronner
–
the
doctorate
was
self-awareded
honor
of
his
deep
knowledge
of
soapmaking
–
began
his
climb
to
become
what
later
media
reports
would
often
term
him,
the
Pope
of
Soap.
‘RALPH,
YOU
ARE
NO
SON
OF
MINE
IF
YOU
DON’T
GO
TO
RUSSIA
AND
TELL
THE
LEADERS
ABOUT
THE
ALL-ONE-GOD-FAITH”
Spring
vacation
1956.
Ralph
was
a
student
at
the
University
of
Wisconsin,
Milwaukee.
He
hadn’t
often
seen
his
father
since
Emanuel
had
moved
to
California,
but
when
he
got
a
letter
asking
that
he
“come
deal
with
the
bills”,
he
felt
obligated
to
fly
out. “He
was
living
in
a
10
–
story
apartment
building,
the
last
of
it’s
kind,
in
a
seedy
part
of
Los
Angeles,
in
a
room
stacked
high
with
thousands
of
photo
stats
of
materials
about
his
philosophy,”
Ralph
said.
“He
was
sleeping
on
blankets
over
big
drums
containing
mineral
salts,
which
he
made
and
sold.” He
also
believed
in
them.
Ralph
remembers
that
his
father
insisted
he
bring
mineral
salts
to
restaurants
to
put
on
ice
cream
and
watermelon,
to
neutralize
the
sugar.
The
reunion
of
father
and
son
pretty
much
confirmed
Ralph’s
feeling
that
Emanuel
was
hopelessly
the
bend.
When
Bronner
opened
the
door,
he
was
wearing
a
leopard-print
bathing
suit.
Later
when
businessmen
asked
to
meet
with
him,
Ralph
was
asked
if
he
had
not
been
put
off
by
such
a
greeting.
It
could
have
been
worse,
he
said.
“Sometimes
Dad
wore
nothing
at
all.”
For
his
vacation,
Ralph
go
to
prepare
and
send
out
thousands
of
dollars
worth
of
billings,
not
the
“few”
bills
he
expected.
He
also
had
made
the
mistake
of
taking
tying
his
high
school,
so
Bronner
had
him
type
for
the
printers
the
jambalaya
of
messages
that
would
appear
on
this
soap
labels.
Here
is
just
a
tiny
taste,
seasoned
liberally
by
Bronner’s
fondness
for
the
exclamation
point:
Small
minds
decay!
Average
minds
delay!
Great
minds
teach
All-One
today!
Win
victory,
&
all
stand
by
you;
give
up?
All
deny
you!
Remember
the
only
difference
between
the
brave
and
the
coward,
the
brave
has
an
ideal
to
fight
for,
such
as
teaching
the
moral
ABC,
that
at
once
unites
the
human
race,
in
All-One-God-Faith!
As
teach
Abraham
&
Israel,
sigh
of
the
messenger
of
God’s
law,
Halley’s
comet,
the
Blazing
Star
of
Buddha
–
Bethlehem
–
Mohammed!
The
labels
also
contained
mention
of
Lenin,
Rabbi
Hillel,
Carl
Sagan,
the
importance
of
planting
trees,
the
threat
of
Halley’s
comet
hitting
the
Earth,
some
love
poetry,
a
revision
of
Rudyard
Kipling’s
“If”
and
always
the
caution
“Dilute!
Dilute!
OK!
The
whole
message
is
parceled
out
over
various
labels
in
the
product
line,
with
the
entirety
of
I
coming
to
some
20,000
words.
Bronner,
looking
at
the
text
as
the
final
truth,
tinkered
with
it
incessantly,
always
finding
a
few
worlds,
maybe
a
hyphen,
that
wasn’t
quite
precise.
“He’d
ask
me
to
retype
the
whole
thing,
over
and
over,”
Ralph
said.
“There’s
only
so
much
you
can
do
with
white-out.
Later
when
anyone
would
come
to
visit
him,
he’d
have
them
read
it
to
him,
capitals,
punctuation,
every
bit,
searching
for
mistakes.”
Finally
Ralph
had
had
it.
He
called
the
All-One-God-Faith
document
“crap.”
“I
was
cruel
and
cocky
from
college,”
he
said.
He
already
had
made
fun
of
the
soaps,
using
samples
his
father
sent
to
him
to
load
quirt
guns
for
dormitory
fights
with
his
friends.
Ralph
returned
to
Wisconsin
(which
he
had
grown
to
love),
where
he
later
would
marry,
have
children,
teach
in
an
inner-city
Milwaukee
school
and
make
his
home
in
the
area
rather
than
join
the
soap
business
in
California.
“Dad
was
impossible
to
work
for,”
Ralph
said.
He
recalls
arguing
for
two
days
over
the
precise
meaning
of
“You
reap
what
you
sow
(was
it
ten
times
of
a
million?).”
“Finally,”
Ralph
said,
“I
threw
something
against
the
wall
and
walked
out.”
Another
time
they
argued
about
the
birth-control
recipe.
It
called
for
lemons,
and
Ralph
said
it
couldn’t
be
a
universal
recipe
because
lemons
weren’t
universally
available.
His
father
looked
stunned,
“THEY’RE
NOT?!?
Ralph
said
how
about
Eskimos,
could
they
get
lemons?
Again
Bronner
looked
stunned
for
a
moment,
and
then
said
in
triumph,
“THEY
COULD
GO
TO
A
FISH
FRY.”
“ALL
ONE,
RALPH”
In
the
late
60’s,
a
funny
thing
happened.
The
soap
started
to
sell.
The
young
people
of
that
decade
discovered
that
his
Pure
Castile
18
in
1
soap
was
good
for
shampooing
their
hair,
washing
their
bell
bottoms,
defeating
their
cats
and
scrubbing
down
their
VW
buses.
Sitting
in
a
sudsy
tub
with
no
other
reading
material
in
hand,
they’d
pursue
the
labels,
and
the
words
would
speak
to
some
of
them.
“People
would
soak
off
the
label
for
framing,”
Ralph
said.
He
has
a
letter
from
a
Dr.
Bronner’s
fan
claiming,
“Your
label
is
my
bible.”
When
he’d
visit
California,
he’d
be
amazed
to
find
hippies
gathered
around
Bronner,
“like
a
guru.”
Such
indications
of
devotion
to
a
product
and
a
philosophy
began
to
make
him
look
at
his
father’s
life’s
working
in
an
entirely
new
light.
“There
are
other
labels
with
messages,”
Ralph
said.
Celestial
Seasonings
has
some
pretty
safe
sayings,
but
we’re
the
only
one
to
say
“Stalin
was
a
greater
mass
murderer
than
Hitler.”
Emanuel
Bronner
had
come
to
America
after
a
falling-out
with
his
strict
Orthodox
Jewish
father
in
Germany.
The
senior
Bronner
wanted
his
son
to
stick
to
the
family
trade,
soap
making,
and
not
get
involved
in
politics.
Young
Emanuel,
however,
often
brought
up
political
issues
with
other
workers
at
the
soap
factory.
The
last
communication
Emanuel
had
from
his
parents
came
from
the
concentration
camp
in
which
they
died.
It
was
a
post
card
that
said,
“You
were
right.
Your
Loving
Father.”
“his
father
had
always
told
Dad
not
to
enjoy
himself,
“
Ralph
recalled.
“When
Dad
started
to
make
money,
he’d
send
me
a
check
from
time
to
time
with
‘enjoy
or
you’re
not
my
son’
written
on
it.”
Bronner
went
blind
and,
later,
began
to
show
the
tell-tale
signs
of
Parkinson’s
disease.
He
also
became
calmer
and
easier
to
deal
with.
Ralph
spent
more
time
helping
out
with
the
business.
Now
being
run
by
Ralph,
his
sister-in-law,
Trudy
is
the
CEO,
and
her
eldest
son,
David
is
the
president.
Ralph’s
brother
Jim
dies
in
1998;
sister
Ellen
died
many
years
before.
The
business
has
grown
so
that
it
now
has
sales
of
$5
million
a
year,
and
as
Ralph
put
it,
“We
live
the
label.”
That
means
more
than
just
using
the
soaps
faithfully.
IT
means
paying
for
wells
to
be
dug
in
impoverished
villages
in
Ghana,
giving
gigantic
bonuses
to
the
15
employees
at
the
factory,
donating
a
1,200-acre
plot
near
Mt.
Palomar
Observatory
in
Southern
California
to
the
Boys
and
Girls
Club.
Bronner
had
bought
the
land
thinking
that
viewing
the
stars
made
one
aware
of
God’s
majesty
–
and
also
it
was
a
good
place
to
keep
track
of
Halley’s
Comet.
“RALPH,
WHY
AM
I
ALIVE?”
“He’d
ask
me
that
in
the
last
years
of
his
life,”
Ralph
said,
“and
I’d
tell
him
it
was
so
he
could
hear
what
he
had
done.
I
‘d
tell
him
about
all
the
glowing
letters
and
comments
about
the
soap
and
his
message.” Ralph
recalled
after
attending
the
speeches
his
father
gave
on
his
usual
subjects
(fluoridation,
communism,
etc.),
“He’d
go
on
and
on
and
then
switch
from
fluoridation
to
peace
or
to
some
remembrance
of
the
family.
Slowly,
people
would
get
up
and
leave.
Dad
was
blind;
he
didn’t
know.
After
a
while
there’d
be
only
a
couple
of
people
left,
and
someone
would
have
to
tell
Dad
it
was
time
to
go.
He
just
didn’t
know
when
to
stop.”
Seven
years
ago,
Ralph
visited
Elgin.
“I
looked
at
the
picnic
tables
and
imagined
Dad
sitting
there,”
he
said.
He
was
asked
if
he
ever
had
longed
for
a
father
who
was
more
normal. “Normal?”
Ralph
said.
“Many
of
my
neighbors
up
and
down
the
street
are
normal.
They
want
to
get
rid
of
their
crabgrass.
They
want
the
Packers
to
win.
They
bithch
about
the
government.” Ralph’s
eyes
glistened,
and
he
put
out
a
hand
to
steady
himself.
“I
don’t
love
normal.”
*
Ralph
plays
guitar
and
has
helped
run
a
non-profit
coffee
house
for
over
33
years.