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Size: 4.62 x 14.12 inches ~ Unused. They vary a little one to the next.
🍅 Defy The World Tomato Can Label -- Kelty & Son, Quinton NJ, c.1910s-1920s
An original, unused \"DEFY THE WORLD\" Brand tomato can label, packed by Sam\'l L. Kelty & Son of Quinton, Salem County, New Jersey -- a long wrap-around sheet made for a tin can. A large red tomato in cream script lettering fills the left half; a gable-fronted Victorian farmhouse fills the right, under an orange evening sky.
📋 Every Word Printed
Transcribed verbatim: DEFY THE WORLD / BRAND / CHOICE / Cold Packed / Tomatoes / FIRST QUALITY / CONTENTS 2 LBS. 1 OZ / Packed By / SAM\'L L. KELTY & SON, / OFFICE: QUINTON, SALEM CO., N.J. No printer\'s imprint is legible on the sheet.
🕰️ Dating The Label
Three things point to c.1910s-1920s. The printed net-weight line, CONTENTS 2 LBS. 1 OZ, only became a federal requirement under the 1913 Gould Amendment to the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act -- an 1890s label had no legal reason to carry one. The packer\'s own 1910 paste label read \"Sam\'l L. Kelty\" with no \"& Son,\" so the \"& SON\" printed here is later still. And the can this wraps is a No. 3, a three-pound tin.
🏭 Kelty & Son, Quinton
Samuel Lewis Kelty, born in 1843, was canning at Quinton by 1884 and packed 80,000 cans in 1885. By 1888, as Kelty & Ayars, the partners were packing under the brand \"Pride of the Farm.\" The Salem County Cultural & Heritage Commission counts his Beasley Neck Road cannery among South Jersey\'s most successful of the 1890s, with a crew of twenty-five women doing the picking. The sheriff sold his factory fixtures in 1896, but he rebuilt, bought a second cannery at Claysville in 1904, employed 75 people by 1909, and by 1910 was shipping \"Defy the World\" tomato paste to the Italian trade. At 79, in 1923, he climbed the scaffold himself while his smokestack was raised to about 76 feet and was overcome by the heat -- back at work the next day. He died in 1926 and is buried in East View Cemetery in Salem; his executors sold the plant and the \"Defy the World\" name in 1928.
🏘️ Quinton, Salem County
Quinton takes its name from Tobias Quinton, a Fenwick\'s Colony settler who died in 1705. The township was formed in 1873, and the British fought here at the Battle of Quinton\'s Bridge in 1778. Salem County was the heart of the Jersey tomato, and \"Cold Packed\" on this label is real period language -- packed raw, sterilized after the can was sealed.
📦 Why These Stayed Flat
Can labels had two fates at the cannery: pasted onto a filled can and shipped out, or held back as surplus and left flat in storage. These are the ones that stayed flat.
📦 SPECIFICATIONS
- Defy The World Brand tomato can label, Sam\'l L. Kelty & Son, Quinton, Salem Co., N.J.
- Date: c.1910s-1920s
- Format: can label (wrap-around), not a crate label
- Unused stock, never applied to a can
