The 1907 Interview with John Harvey Kellogg

The College View Bakery Experience

An illustration of what is involved in verifying one of Kellogg’s stories, as well as how the selected presentation of facts can misrepresent the actual turn of events, is the Doctor’s account of the College View Bakery. IJHK 4.3

As Kellogg told the story, when Union College was started, permission was sought from the Battle Creek Sanitarium to open a bakery with selling privileges to everyone west of the Mississippi River. This permission was granted with the mutual understanding that if a sanitarium was started there later, the bakery business would be turned over to that sanitarium. Later a sanitarium was, in fact, started, and Kellogg wrote to the General Conference Association explaining the agreement and asking for control of the bakery. The G.C.A. appointed a committee which made its report to the effect that the bakery should be turned over according to agreement. IJHK 5.1

Kellogg related that when N. W. Kauble, the new president of the College, looked at the situation, he felt that the Nebraska Sanitarium had no right to receive the profits in as much as the College was running the entire program. After laboring unsuccessfully with the local committee, Kellogg took the issue back to the General Conference, and asked the secretary to find the original resolution. Upon finding the previous action, the issue was settled. Only Morrison, Santee, and Westphal voted against the decision. IJHK 5.2

Kellogg reported in the interview that he met S. N. Haskell shortly after this meeting and asked him what he thought about the situation. Haskell replied, “Of course you are right about that, they ought to do what they agreed: the sanitarium food business belongs to the Sanitarium.” Kellogg then made a “prediction” to Haskell that Santee would write to Mrs. White telling her the same misinformation he had been circulating, and that he would soon receive a testimony condemning him for his attitude and demanding that he turn the bakery back to the College. IJHK 5.3

According to Kellogg, in less than three months a testimony came saying, “You have robbed the College View College.... The General Conference should have been ashamed to have allowed you to intimidate them. One was present and heard your threatening words.” Kellogg was commanded to turn the bakery over, and the General Conference was commanded to rescind its action, but neither it nor he ever tried to reverse the situation, because they all saw the inequity of the testimony. Kellogg protested to Mrs. White about the testimony, and W. C. White told him, “I don’t think you will ever hear anything more about it.” Kellogg ended his story by saying that that was indeed the last he had heard about it, nor did anyone else ever do anything about it. IJHK 6.1

Unlike many of the other incidents Kellogg related in his interview, this story deals with a number of events and communications that lend themselves to verification. A full discussion with documentation is available from the E. G. White Estate (see “The College View Bakery Issue”), but we will here only summarize the results of comparing Kellogg’s version against the historical record. IJHK 6.2

Kellogg is correct in stating that the General Conference stood behind his claims in 1900 when it re-affirmed its previous resolution in 1895 to return the profits of the bakery to the Sanitarium. But what he selectively omitted in his story is the fact that when Bauble became administrator of the College and pressed the bakery ownership issue in 1898, a committee re-studied the question and recommended “that the former [1895] action of the General Conference Association giving the profits of the College View Bakery to the Nebraska Sanitarium be rescinded, in compliance with the requests presented by the brethren representing District No. 4, unless satisfactory arrangements can be made with the Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association to divide the profits between the Nebraska Sanitarium and Union College.” IJHK 6.3

The minutes reveal that Kellogg came into the meeting at that point and made a speech against the motion—claiming the Sanitarium’s right to the profits. Nevertheless, the motion carried. Apparently this action was not brought into the discussion in 1900 when Kellogg again pressed his claims; certainly, he did not bring it up in his interview, giving the impression that there was no doubt about the agreement. Having only the 1895 action, which Kellogg asked the General Conference secretary to find, it is understandable why the committee felt that the only fair thing to do would be to honor the original resolution. And anyone unaware of the 1898 rescission would have to agree with Kellogg’s argument—including S. N. Haskell. IJHK 7.1

Kellogg surmised that Santee wrote to Mrs. White, which he did, giving an account of the meeting and substantiating his appeal by including copies of the previous General Conference actions. The next month Ellen White addressed the first of several communications to Kellogg in which she reproved him for his attitude toward the control of the Bakery. IJHK 7.2

The fact that the 1895 action had been rescinded upon re-study of the question sheds a considerably different light upon the charge that Ellen White’s testimony was misguided. But Kellogg claimed more. He stated that the leaders balked at doing anything about the testimony because they all saw its injustice. The facts are that the General Conference leaders had intense confrontations with Kellogg over this and related issues, and that a solution to the ownership controversy was worked out between the parties involved without any need for General Conference intervention. (See paper referred to for documentation.) As for Ellen White, she never retracted the truthfulness of her testimony. Speaking of Kellogg’s visits with her, she wrote: IJHK 8.1

He gave me his account of the scene at the meeting at College View. He presented things contrary to the way in which they had been presented to me by the Lord. He related matters as if he were the one who had been wronged. I said, “The Lord has instructed me in regard to that matter. When I am convinced that it is the Lord’s will for me to change my opinions, I will let you know.” ... “I wish you to understand, Dr. Kellogg, that every word that I have written to you in regard to that scene, is correct.” But he would not accept the way in which I presented the matter as being correct, and I would not accept his statement.... There the matter stands. But every word of the presentation regarding the scene at College View is true.—Lt 160, 1902.

The fact that Ellen White many times received initial information about events in the church from human sources, such as letters or conversations, caused great difficulty in Dr. Kellogg’s mind in accepting her counsels as from the Lord. Kellogg seemed unable to recognize the difference between the source of her facts and the Source of her counsels. This formed the basis for much of his criticism of Ellen White’s authority. In none of the letters she wrote to Kellogg about the bakery issue did she claim that the information that the meeting was held came by revelation, but she did claim that the counsel reproving his actions came from “One of great dignity.” IJHK 8.2

When challenged on this question earlier in her ministry, Ellen White pointed to the letters Paul wrote after receiving reports of problems in the churches. She explained that although “the Lord had not given him a new revelation for that special time. ... The reproof he sent them was written just as much under the inspiration of the Spirit of God as were any of his epistles.” Yet, some took the position that “he had merely given them his opinion as a man” (Testimonies for the Church 5:65-66). IJHK 9.1