The fact that nearly every State in the Union has enacted more or less stringent laws against the sale of foods containing deleterious ingredients and against false branding of articles of food and medicine, shows rather conclusively that the conditions of the food and drug market are such that these precautionary measures are necessary. There is not a single enlightened nation in the world that does not seek to protect its people against the injury of poisonous and deleterious ingredients in foods and beverages and against the fraud of misbranded articles.

      We are living in an artificial age. Artificial agencies, therefore, are necessary to sustain life. The average man of sedentary occupation cannot retain his health and at the same time devote ten hours a day to confined labor; and yet nothing short of this is required of a good clerk, and still more is required to make a successful business man. We are compelled to adapt ourselves to these conditions. Now, we have in the last half of the century by scientific skill and artificial means, succeeded in prolonging the average life of man. This is due more particularly to successful treatment of diseases in infants and children. We are happily awakening to the fact that proper diet, varied to meet the necessities of each individual, is not only the greatest preventative of diseases, but it is also the most successful panacea for the ills of the day. Without sufficient leisure, sunshine and outdoor life, a deranged stomach, improper assimilation and an exhausted nervous system inevitably follow; a lack of discrimination in diet aggravates the weakness. The nation, however, cannot prescribe a dietary course for each individual; it cannot even enforce rules as to what each shall consume. But what it can do and what it morally should do is this: It should protect a man against all fraud and imposition, so that acting upon his own intelligence, supplemented, if need be, by the advice of a specialist, he may procure those articles of food, beverage, and drug necessary for his own physical condition; and what is more important, that he may avoid those which are deleterious. But in this age, no man can compound his own diet or drug or condiment; he is therefore, at the mercy of his fellow men. To protect him in his rights and shield him against the rapacity, greed and dishonesty of those he is compelled to rely upon, should be the duty which every government owes its citizens.

EXTENT OF ADULTERATIONS

      The Secretary of Agriculture, some years ago, estimated the sale of adulterated articles of food in the United States in a single year at $1,175,000,000, or about 15 per cent of our entire commerce in foods. He made this estimate upon reports from the food commissioners of the several States and from such other sources as he could command; and then to be conservative, adopted but 50 per cent of what the total results showed. Considering the vast amount of misbranded and adulterated goods consumed which escapes the attention of those engaged in the enforcement of the law, my judgement is that the results should be doubled rather than diminished. Now when we consider that the great bulk of our food products consists of flour, potatoes and vegetables, which are seldom adulterated, we can understand that the actual percentage of all other adulterated articles is enormously increased. I have before me a portion of a paper presented before the National Pure Food Congress and Convention of Dairy and Food Departments as St. Louis, during last summer, by Prof. E. F. Ladd, Food Commissioner of North Dakota. The condition which he finds in that State is probably true of every state in the Union. I cull a few extracts from this paper:

      "One might suppose that the meats offered for sale in the State would be generally pure and true to name, but while potted chicken and potted turkey are among common products, I have never yet found a can in the State which really contained in a determinable quantity either chicken or turkey."

      "More than 90 per cent of the local meat markets in the State were using chemical preservatives, and in nearly every butcher shop could be found a bottle of Freezem, preservaline or iceine, as well as Bull Meat Flour. The amount of borax or boracic acid employed in these meats varied to a considerable extent, and expressed in terms of boracic acid in sausages and hamburger steak would probably range from 20 grains to 45 grains per pound, while the medical dose is from 5 to 9 grains per day. The use of these chemicals is not confined to local butchers; scarcely a ham could be found that did not contain borax. In the dried beef, in the smoked meats, in the canned bacon, in the canned chipped beef, boracic acid or borates is a common ingredient."

      "Ninety per cent of the so-called French peas which we have taken up in North Dakota were found to contain copper salts in varying quantities, and in a few samples, in addition to copper salts, there were present aluminum salts."

MUSHROOMS

      "Of all the canned mushrooms on the market in North Dakota 85 per cent were found to be bleached by the use of sulphites. Our examinations do not seem to show that any definite rule was followed by canners of these goods with regard to the amount of sulphur or sulphites used. In some instances the contents of the can proved to be nothing better that the discarded stems of mushrooms, but there was nothing to show this on the labels."

CATSUPS

      "When the food law went into effect in North Dakota there was but one brand of catsup, so far as I am able to find by my records, which was pure-that is, free from chemical preservatives and coal tar coloring matters. Many of the catsups offered for sale in the State were made from the waste products from canners-pulp, skins, ripe tomatoes, green tomatoes, starch paste in considerable quantity, coal tar colors, chemical preservatives, usually benzoate of soda or salicylic acid, the whole highly spiced and not always free from saccharin. In other instances the basis for the catsup was largely pumpkin." . . .

NECESSITY FOR A NATIONAL LAW

      Should the subject of food adulteration be dealt with by the United States? The Federal Nation, it seems to me, should ever realize that the citizens of the several States are also citizens of the United States; that the relation of Government and governed carries with it at all times the relation of guardian and ward. Not merely is a political duty imposed upon the Government to perform every act necessary for the most complete protection of its people, but this relation carries with it a further duty, that it should not abate its efforts so long as it has information that there is a single wrong to be remedied.

      The Federal Union must, it seems to me, recognize the existence of the evil of food adulteration throughout the land; it cannot shut its eyes and conscience to that fact. The prohibitory laws of nearly all the States must be taken cognizance of by the country, and strenuous efforts of the several States through their food commissioners to stamp out these frauds should keep that subject constantly before the nation.

From "The Exaggeration of Food Adulteration," The Independent. 58: 2927 (January 5, 1905). 49-51.

      Probably very few reform laws would gain sufficient popular momentum to be passed unless the people had an exaggerated idea of the evils to be prevented and the efficiency of the proposed laws. We have no hope of changing any such established and perhaps indispensable method of legislation in a democracy, but we have faith to believe that a knowledge of the actual condition of things is really better than the most inspiring and exciting misconception. The American people are too much in the habit of never doing anything unless they are scared into it. A stampede is not a good thing in itself even if it goes in the right direction.

      So while we are in hearty sympathy with the movement against the adulteration and misbranding of foods and drugs and in favor of one at least of the bills before Congress for national legislation against these practices, we feel it necessary to call attention to some common errors on the subject. One is that conditions are now much worse than they used to be. On the contrary, it may be safely said that our food is now on the whole purer and more wholesome than that of our ancestors. Our evaporated apples are whitened with sulphites, but they are better that those dried by stringing them across the living room. Our macaroni is colored with turmeric, but it is not hung in Italian huts. The water supplied by the city water works is less likely to contain disease germs that that from country wells. Pewter mugs were worse than our tin cans. The meats of the packing house are more carefully inspected than that killed at home. Biscuits made with saleratus are apt to be worse than with any kind of baking powder.

      Much is justly said against the use of preservatives, but it is well to bear also in mind that no chemical ever added is so poisonous as the ptomains which develop in food which is not properly preserved. The city health officers are doubtless right in prohibiting the use of any preservative in milk because that is unnecessary if it is fresh or kept cool and clean, yet in most poor families milk is not fresh or clean, and many more infants have died from drinking spoiled and germ-laden milk than have been poisoned by borax or even formaldehyde. . . .

      In the common language of the newspapers the word adulterated means containing some novel or unusual ingredient; the word artificial means the use of some process unknown to our ancestors; the word chemical means a substance of recent introduction. If these definitions are borne into the mind not so many people will be scared into indigestion. It is very fortunate that sodium chloride and potassium nitrate were in use as meat preservatives before the days of food adulteration laws, because otherwise no one could introduce the custom of using such "chemicals" as common salt and saltpeter. The only way nowadays to make a change in the composition or preparation of a food product is to invent a new name on which there is no legal standard. . . .

      The substitution or misbranding of medicine is a dangerous practice. The misbranding and adulteration of foods is in most cases more of the nature of commercial fraud. To put ground cocoa-nut shells into pepper is just as injurious as it is to put cotton threads in woolen clothes or a pine back in an oak bookcase. Adulterated food harms the consumer only when it contains ingredients more unwholesome than the ordinary; it cheats the customer only when it is sold at as high a price as the pure article. Positively harmful adulterants are now, thanks to the diligence of our chemists, quite rare, and sophisticated articles are usually cheaper than the pure, altho not always as much cheaper as they should be. The truth is bad enough without making it any worse by exaggeration or misconceptions.