then if you got them from somebody else you can put it on that other man, and we can hold him, unless he proves that he got them from somebody else, and so on. That is State law. Dr. FREER. Yes; but it imposes too large a cost on the small dealer. The CHAIRMAN. I wish you would find out who inserted that clause in this bill, I would like to know what his views are on this subject. Dr. FREER. I will endeavor to do so, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Twelve o'clock has arrived and we can not go on further to-day. Mr. COOMBS. That particular clause was not in the last bill. The CHAIRMAN. I think we had better take up to-morrow the principles involved in your bill, Mr. Corliss. Mr. CORLISS. This gentlemen has not concluded, has he? I wanted to ask one question. I would like to ask you, Dr. Freer, do you propose to stop all kinds of fraud in reference to foods; and if so, why not apply that to every article of merchandise throughout the country? Dr. FREER. Simply because in the case of foods the difficulties of protection are so large. Mr. CORLISS. Could you protect health by requiring pure food? Dr. FREER. Yes. Mr. CORLISS. Now, you want us to go on and say that no man shall fraudulently represent any food product. Why shall not the Government take hold of all other kinds of merchandise in the same way? The same principle would apply there. Mr. ADAMSON. All human conduct as well as this. The CHAIRMAN. You can not expect to make the world perfect in a dav. Mr. COOMBS. You have laws regulating morals anyway--- Mr. ADAMSON. I do not think the Federal Government was ever created to make the world perfect. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in recess until to-morrow. Adjourned. WEDNESDAY, March 12, 1902. The committee met at 10.30 a. m., Hon. Loren Fletcher in the chair. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. The chairman will not be here for a half hour or so and we will proceed with the hearing which was begun yesterday. Mr. CORLISS. Mr. Grosvenor will present his views on the bill I introduced and upon the other bills in reference to this subject pending before this committee. Mr. RICHARDSON. What is that bill, Mr. Corliss? STATEMENT OF MR. ELLIOT O. GROSVENOR, OF DETROIT, MICH. Mr. GROSVENOR. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I appear before your committee as the representative of the Association of Manufacturers and Distributers of Food Products, which is an organization embracing manufacturers of jellies, jams, pickles, preserves, etc., and also as a representative of the Picklers and Preservers' Association of the State of Pennsylvania. That there is a popular demand, and that that has been growing for a number of years, for the establishment of a national food law I think can not be denied. That there may be a necessity for some such law, perhaps, is equally true. There has been, both upon the Continent of Europe, in England, and in this country, for, say, twenty or more years a continued evolution of food laws. I refer to the principles of food laws. The outgrowth of that is seen in this country in the fact that at the present day all the States of the United States have a food law of some kind or description save three, and in nineteen of those States there is maintained a special department for the enforcement of that State food law. Mr. COOMBS. What three States are those? Mr. GROSVENOR. I think, sir, one is Mississippi, one is New Mexico, and, if I remember correctly, the other is Arizona. Mr. CORLISS. Only one State, then? Mr. GROSVENOR. I am including the Territories as States in making this statement. Mr. COOMBS. Then all the States and all the Territories have such laws except those three? Mr. GROSVENOR. Yes, sir. In fairness to myself, I must say that it is some time since I looked them up, but in 19 of them there has been a department established for the enforcement of these State laws. These State laws in these 19 and in other States, 29 in all, have taken the form of what I call an omnibus food law; that is, there has been laid down 7 definitions of what shall be considered an adulteration, and if your committee will spare a minute, I would like to read in a general way the requirements of the 7 subdivisions of that law. Mr. STEWART. What law, in what States? Mr. GROSVENOR. I am going to read, sir, from the law of Michigan, which is a fair sample. The language of all these laws is about this: An article shall be deemed to be adulterated within the meaning of this act: First. If any substance or substances have been mixed with it so as to lower or depreciate or injuriously affect its quality, strength, or purity. Second. If any inferior or cheaper substance or substances have been substituted wholly or in part for it. Third. If any valuable or necessary constitutent or ingredient has been wholly or in part abstracted from it. Fourth. If it is an imitation of or is sold under the name of another article. Fifth. If it consits wholly, or in part of a diseased, decomposed, putrid, infected, tainted, or rotten animal or vegetable substance or article, whether manufactured or not, or, in the case of milk, if it is the product of a diseased animal. Sixth. If it is colored, coated, polished, or powdered whereby damage or inferiority is concealed or if by any means it is made to appear better or of greater value than it really is. Seventh. If it contains any added substance or ingredient which is poisonous or injurious to health. Mr. RICHARDSON. Do you think that is a good definition of adulterated food--that law in Michigan? Mr. GROSVENOR. I would prefer, sir, to say that that covers every possible mixture. Mr. RICHARDSON. And it is enforced, is it not? Mr. GROSVENOR. The law is fairly well enforced, in many States, particularly in some of the middle Western States. Mr. RICHARDSON. If all of the States do the same thing what would be the use or necessity of the National Government taking it up? Mr. GROSVENOR. The condition among the different States that now have a food law and a department to enforce it is this: Almost this exact language is used in these 29 States to embrace adulterations. Now, the language is, right down to the punctuation, almost exactly the same in the State of Ohio, in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and still in not one of those States is there any mixture or compound which can be sold in all the States under one label. In other words, the power given the commission in those States is such that they have ruled differently under exactly the same language. Mr. STEWART. Is not the Michigan bill you have just read similar to this Brosius bill? Mr. GROSVENOR. Yes; I think it is. I do not mean to say that the Brosius bill is modeled after the Michigan law, but the two may have a common origin. Mr. RICHARDSON. Your purpose is, then, in asking the National Government to take hold of the matter, to get unity of action upon the part of the courts and unity of construction; is that it? Mr. GROSVENOR. No, sir. Mr. RICHARDSON. What is it, then? Mr. GROSVENOR. My idea is that a national law should depart very radically from this style of a law, because of the conditions that now exist in these States to which I have referred. For this reason, if the national law shall be modeled on these same lines and the national commissioner given the same power as the State commissioners, suppose he says that a certain mixture shall be labeled in a certain way, and suppose that is sent from Illinois to Ohio and a man there sees that he can not sell that under the label that is on it. Can he sell it at all? That is one of the principal reasons why I object to a national law modeled upon the lines of the State food laws. You can not sell in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio under precisely the same law the same product under the same label. Mr. COOMBS. I suppose the advantage of a national law regulating interstate commerce is that the vendo can be reached, although he might be in a different State from where the food is finally lodged and sold, and distributed, or, vice versa, the people who sell it and engage in selling it can be reached. Mr. ADAMSON. You mean you could take him up and try him and convict him in the State in which he has not been? Mr. GROSVENOR. No; I say a Federal law Mr. COOMBS. A Federal law covering vendor and vendee can reach anybody anywhere. Mr. GROSVENOR. I think, sir, that is true. That has been urged as the principal reason in the food congresses which was referred to yesterday. It was the difficulty of reaching a man who shipped into a State Mr. COOMBS. One State shipping might have one law regulating certain things and it might not touch the vendor who sends his goods out: they might arrive in the State where the law would reach him, but the law of the State might only apply to the vendor. Mr. GROSVENOR. Yes, sir: of course the law of the State could not apply to the original packages anyway, but as long as those goods remain in the original packages the State police power could not touch them. Until that package was broken the State law would not operate, and that is the reason which has been strongly urged for national legislation --to acquire the ability to handle original packages. I want to dwell upon that just long enough to show where the large manufacturer lands who, for instance, ships goods into the city of Chicago, granting now that the manufacturers in Missouri ship into the city of Chicago goods labeled to conform to the Illinois law, and the Chicago jobber ships those goods, we will say, to some point, Detroit, if you please, or Toledo, and those goods are not labeled properly for Ohio, nor for Michigan, but when the manufacturer sends them out he sends them to the State of Illinois and he has labeled them properly for that State, and he had a right to believe that whoever handled them afterwards would handle them in Illinois. Instead of that they were shipped to Ohio, and the manufacturer's name being on the goods, he is published and his business is hurt because of that reshipment, which he can not possibly know anything about. Mr. CORLISS. How could this legislation prohibit that practice? Mr. GROSVENOR. I do not think that any national legislation can absolutely do away with it; but I believe that a national law modeled upon reasonable lines will eventually result in the enactment of that law as a police power by the different States. MR. CORLISS. I understand your purpose is to secure a national law for the preservation of public health, and to prohibit the sale of any kind of food that is deleterious to health? Mr. GROSVENOR. Yes, sir. Mr. CORLISS. Do you desire to go farther and prosecute for any attempt at fraud? Mr. GROSVENOR. Well, if I may be allowed to answer that, I would prefer waiting a few minutes until I come naturally to reading definitions of adulterations. Mr. CORLISS. All right. Mr. RICHARDSON. Wherein and how, then, according to the answer you have just made to Mr. Corliss, do you differ with the gentleman who appeared before us yesterday; what is the difference between you and him on this subject? He is for pure food and so are you? Mr. GROSVENOR. And so are we. Mr. RICHARDSON. But you differ from him, and I would like to know what is the difference. I just ask for information. Mr. GROSVENOR. We differ very radically, and I think it will be shown very clearly if you will let me read the definition of "adulteration" as shown in the Century Dictionary, which various States and supreme courts have held to be authority in this country [reading]: The act of adulterating or the state of being adulterated or debased by admixture with something else, generally of inferior quality; the use in the production of any professedly genuine article of ingredients which are cheaper and of an inferior quality, or which are not considered so desirable by the consumer as other or genuine ingredients for which they are substituted. And then the Century Dictionary goes on and says there are three kinds of adulteration, in this language: In commerce there are several kinds of adulteration; conventional, to suit the tastes and demands of the public That is, the public desires a certain amount of sugar in a jelly; they desire a certain amount of starch mixed with mustard, because the pure mustard is too rank, is not pleasing to the taste, "to suit the tastes and demands of the public. I ask you whether any law which will regulate to absolute prohibition, as some statutes will-the State statutes in many instances-an article which is called for to suit the taste and demands of the people fraudulent, for deception and gainful purposes— In my judgment, that is the only kind of adulteration which it is competent to regulate by law, either State or national; but I shall attempt to show a little later on that that is absolutely unnecessary only so far as it is necessary to protect the health of the people against deleterious or injurious foods. Then he mentioned a third and accidental or unintentional adulteration arising from carelessness in the preparation of the staple or commodity at the place of growth or shipment. The best illustration I know of of that are some kinds of pepper. I am not thoroughly posted on the subject, but I am told that certain kinds of pepper when the berry shrivels or at the cutting of the berry it laps over onto a small percentage of sand; that a manufacturer in this country imports that pepper and grinds it, and he can not, absolutely can not, get rid of that sand, and under that kind of adulteration there is never found but a very small percentage of any substance foreign to the goods themselves. I think this committee should distinguish very sharply between one who mixes two specified ingredients to make up a third and the man who mixes a cheaper or inferior substance with a specified one for gainful purposes. I do not think the position is at all tenable that the man who mixes two products to procure a third article, say baking powder Mr. RICHARDSON. Then you do not think a man who mixes ought to be required to denominate everything he puts in? Mr. GROSVENOR. I do not, because we know a product of baking powder, we know it under that name, we know it has a certain effect, a certain strength, and we soon learn by using different brands-and they are all branded-that a certain brand is better, because a small quantity of it produces a given result. I do not think it is any more necessary than it is to brand a buggy with the kind of timber in the wheels. It is a mixture a mixture of paint, wood, and iron, and we have a right to believe it is hickory, and we may be told it is hickory. We have no way of judging Mr. RICHARDSON. You can see that with the naked eye, can you not? Mr. GROSVENOR. Yes; but as I understand it, a buggy wheel painted, as most of them are nowadays, and well varnished, does not disclose enough grain to allow the ordinary person to tell the kind of wood in the spokes. You can also see a cement, but you can not tell anything about its quality by looking at it. Mr. STEWART. But it does not injure the eye, while these ingredients do injure the stomach. Mr. GROSVENOR. That is the point exactly. We believe these things should be dealt with so that they should not have an opportunity of injuring the stomach. The Corliss bill makes no claim to originality. It was prepared by the association to which I have referred, and is believed to contain the better or best features of these different bills, State and perhaps national. Its administration is placed under the direction of the Department of Agriculture, and in our humble judgment we believe it ought to go there, but we realize that |