As seen in the idioms “butter up” or “grease one’s palm.”
Good find. That prompted me to look earlier and I found something.
Back on November 20, 1903, a front page article in the [Covington] Kentucky Post about another Jim O’Dowd party also mentioned the “whole schmear”.
Everyone was there, from the Schnapps Band down. Und vat getrinken there vas! The whole schmear was feeling “sehr gut.”
No question that schmear was taken from the German rather than the Yiddish. Schmear kase was an Amish term for a kind of cream cheese, used both as a spread and a base for cheesecake.
The phrase “whole schmear” or “whole darn schmear” also pops up in the Norfolk [NE] Press on Dec. 24, 1909, The Kansas City Post on July 12, 1911 and October 26, 1916, and the [Mandan, ND] Morning Pioneer on April 21, 1921. Interesting that all are midwestern papers, since “schmear kase” was used across the country.
Ah, cool!
The first appearance of the “schmear” that I could find given a cursory look was in 1842 in the context of “schmear case/kase.” Surely many older, though.
Outside of that I found a reference to “schmear people,” which also seems to be “spread” related.
Creamery men are after [US Rep. from Kansas] Chester I. Long’s scalp. He made them promises two years ago that he would fight the oleomargarine people, and got about 8000 votes of patrons in this district on the strength of these promises. But when the oleo bill was up in Congress, instead of opposing the packing house schmear people, he favored them, not only in his vote, but in his speeches.
–Barton County Democrat, August 31, 1900
I decided to actually read “The Doom Pussy” in which the phase was once thought to have been first printed.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with belts of ammo.
The man who used it was a navigator in a B57 bomber. He was talking about getting out of a drunk marriage, not firing guns.
(the B57 used 33 foot long belts of 20mm ammo, but the “Doom Pussies” flew very dangerous Nighttime recon missions over North Viet Nam, and in any case, the guns were designed to be used for strafing, which the “Doom Pussies” didnt do. The name came from their special badge which had a big yellow cat with one eyepatch, and how dangerous their missions were).
The quote (regarding the Majors work to get out of the marriage)- “Slipping out of the knot was expensive but Smash was eventually able to entangle what he called ‘the whole nice yards’”. So, related to legal issues, not machine gun ammo.
There ya go. So that theory is laid to rest.
If that’s not a typo, I’m more confused than I was before reading this.
It is. 
The yards in Nice happen to be larger than the yards in America. That’s why the whole Nice yards became an expression.
Getting their newsprint in 27ft sheets – same as the wallpaper.
I’ll show myself out..