What role did Tootsie Rolls play in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?

Have you ever stopped to think about the role that Tootsie Rolls played in Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

I hadn’t either until the other day while I was re-reading Chapter 23. This is the chapter that begins with Miss Stephanie Crawford describing to Jem, Scout and Dill the encounter between Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell in front of Maycomb’s post office. This took place in the summer of 1935, shortly after the conviction of Tom Robinson for the rape of Ewell’s daughter, Mayella. Scout would have been eight years old at the time.

Later in that chapter, Atticus’s sister, Alexandra, is sitting in the living room “hooking a rug” and listening to Jem and Scout talk about the Cunninghams of the Old Sarum community. Scout and Alexandra get into a back-and-forth in which Alexandra calls Scout’s schoolmate Walter Cunningham “trash.” Alexandra tells Scout in no uncertain terms that she will not be playing with Walter or inviting him to their house.

At that point, Jem, who is 12 years old, takes Scout by the shoulders, puts his arm around her and leads her “sobbing in fury” to his bedroom. Atticus stuck his head in the door only to have Jem tell him that everything was okay, at which point Atticus leaves. It’s then that Jem did something unexpected to help calm his crying sister.

“Have a chew, Scout,” Jem said as he dug into his pocket an extracted a Tootsie Roll. Scout took the candy, popped it in her mouth and began to chew. She noted in the next line that “it took a few minutes to work the candy into a comfortable wad inside my jaw.”

This short paragraph caused me to wonder if it was historically accurate. Today, you can walk into any gas station or grocery store in town and buy Tootsie Rolls by the bagful, but did they exist in 1935? This question launched me down a rabbit hole that resulted in me learning more about Tootsie Rolls than I ever imagined.

Research reveals that Tootsie Rolls are a lot older than I thought. In fact, they have been made in the United States since 1907 and were the first penny candy in America to be individually wrapped. The candy was developed by an Austrian-Jewish immigrant named Leo Hirschfeld, who named the candy after his daughter, Clara “Tootsie” Hirschfeld.

The candy that Jem likely gave Scout was one of the small, bite-sized Tootsie Rolls, which are called “Midgees.” The other type of Tootsie Rolls that readers have no doubt seen are the larger, longer Tootsie Roll “logs.” Sources say that about 65 million Tootsie Rolls are made every day.

As things go, Tootsie Rolls aren’t the only candy specifically mentioned in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In Chapter 4, Scout finds two pieces of Wrigley’s Double-Mint gum in the knothole of a live oak on the edge of the Radley lot, and rather than share the gum with Jem, she crams both pieces in her mouth. Perhaps the Double-Mint gum and Tootsie Rolls were both purchased from the same candy rack at Maycomb’s Jitney Jungle?