DR. BRONNER'S ORGANIC INTEGRITY ENDURES THROUGH HIS GRANDSONS

You read Harper's Magazine for the writing. For glossy ads, you flip
through Vanity Fair or Vogue. But this month, at least to my eye, the most
compelling reading in Harper's is a full-page color advertisement touting
the "organic integrity" of Dr. Bronner's soaps, creations of mega-messianic
businessman Emanuel Bronner of Escondido.

Long before his death six years ago at 89, Bronner was the idiosyncratic
savant of the '60s back-to-nature movement, a flinty hippie icon.

I think it's pretty safe to assert that Bronner was the only soap-making
shaman ever to co-star with Jimi Hendrix in a documentary.

So it's little wonder that Bronner's life's work endures at his Escondido
company, which is still bottling a premium product that appeals to those
who eschew manmade chemicals, in their stomachs or on their skin.

No, the real wonder here is that Dr. Bronner's soap, as well as an organic
snack food studded with nonpsychoactive "hemp nuts," is the subject of a
national advertising campaign.

You see, Bronner always relied on his cockeyed charisma, not advertising,
to promote the "magic soaps," sold mostly in health food stores and known
for labels crammed with thousands of words about his "All-One!" philosophy
of cosmic unity.

Right off, David and Michael Bronner tell you that they saw very little of
their grandfather when they were growing up in Glendale. The man was on his
own ... wavelength.

"It was weird," says David, 30, the soap company's president. (His mother,
Trudy, is the company's financial officer; Michael, 28, the vice president.
An uncle, Ralph, travels around the country with his guitar espousing the
soap, but he is not involved in daily operations.)

A year after Dr. Bronner died, his son, Jim, also passed away, leaving the
reins to David, a Harvard graduate who intended to go into mental health
counseling. A ponytailed vegan who dresses in hemp clothing, a
self-described "social progressive," David soon realized he was to the pure
manner born. He joined the company shortly before his father's death. "I
made the choice to come in before I was compelled to come in," he said.

Younger brother Michael, a Brown alum, grew up around health product
conventions - Jim was a noted soap maker in his own right - but "it wasn't
until I went to college that I realized what a big deal Dr. Bronner was."
After teaching in Japan for three years, Michael joined his brother in 2000.

Three years later, the Bronner brothers are taking one of the world's
strangest ventures, one that did about $9 million worth of business last
year, to a whole new level of purity.

Dr. Bronner's is aggressively phasing in soaps that are 100 percent
organic, which is the health industry's pure gold standard. But if the
Bronners are to avoid losing price-conscious customers, they figure they
have to get the word out fast regarding the new soap's revolutionary degree
of difficulty.

Organic body products are roughly where organic foods were decades ago.
It's just now becoming financially feasible to squeeze oils from organic
crops such as coconut, olive, hemp and jojoba. Keeping up the volume is key
to keeping Bronner prices within reason, the brothers said.

Industry standards are slippery, however. Many soaps and creams claim to be
organic when, in fact, they're laced with synthetics, the Bronners say.
This is rank deception and diffuses the word "organic."

Creating consumer awareness of what pure organic means in the world of body
products is the purpose of the $200,000 advertising campaign. (The ads
refer readers to eight Web sites.)

For the rest of this year, Bronner ads will appear in Harper's, Mother
Jones, The Nation, the Utne Reader and other publications.

"The liberal intelligentsia," Michael smiled.

Piggybacking on the organic soap pitch is one of David's personal passions
- the return of industrial hemp to America's fields.

Proceeds from Alpsnack, a health food snack created by San Diegan Gertrude
Spindler, are being donated to the movement to legalize the cultivation of
nonintoxicating hemp, which is stupidly lumped in with marijuana, David
said. Omega-3-rich hemp nuts (i.e. shelled seeds) and fiber are legal to
import but not to grow.

As you can see, these green apples did not fall far from grandfather's tree.

Though they disagree with the more outlandish riffs of the messiah they
barely knew, they promise to preserve his label sermons as "memorials."

I suspect Dr. Bronner - if he would ever stop haranguing the celestial
choir - would be proud.