Our brokers of this city claim this molasses to have no mixture of commercial glucose. One of them claims that Dr. Lehmann knows nothing about it. I consider the latter assertion to be false and made to cover up the dishonest and outrageous custom of adulteration of goods to reduce original cost and give the unprincipled merchants and brokers a special profit. I like to expose such rascals as well as the thieves who mix it in New Orleans. Is it absolutely certain that the 21 or 23 per cent of glucose found in these samples of new crop New Orleans molasses all comes from the addition of commercial glucose made from the starch of corn and added to the natural drippings of cane sugar? Again, do the natural drippings of cane sugar show any glucose at all, or all sucrose? Dr. Lehmann seems to be a little in doubt himself, as he finds glucose in maple sirup, but we know that maple sirup is one of the most outrageously adulterated articles on the market in the United States, possibly not quite so bad as the strictly pure communion wine made from unfermented grape juice, loaded down with salicylic acid in nineteen cases out of twenty. Very truly, yours, JORDAN STABLER CO. It is evident from the above that the Jordan Stabler Company are not in sympathy with the movement to protect fraudulent practices. The following reply was sent: JORDAN STABLER COMPANY, 705 Madison Ave., Baltimore, Md. GENTLEMEN: I think that the trouble which you have in regard to the analyses made by Dr. Lehmann arises from the fact that he uses glucose in one sense of the word and you in another. Formerly among chemists it was very common to speak of the invert sugar in molasses as glucose, and that is doubtless the sense in which Dr. Lehmann uses it. The term glucose commercially, however, is now applied to the sugars made from starch. It is evident that Dr. Lehmann does not use the word in this sense. Reducing sugar, or invert sugar, is a natural constituent of New Orleans molasses and can not be regarded as an adulterant. The addition of commercial glucose, made from starch, to molasses can be easily detected by the polariscope, by the method of double polarization before and after inversion. Pure maple sirup also contains reducing sugar, or invert sugar, but no commercial glucose. If this be present it is an adulteration. I quite agree with you about dosing unfermented grape juice with salicylic acid. EFFECT OF PUBLICITY ON FOOD ADULTERATION. It has been claimed that publicity from official sources and otherwise will prove a sufficient safeguard against the evils of food adulteration. I admit that publicity will do much to educate the consumer, and the adulterators of foods have uniformly admitted before this committee that if the public be educated and "get on to the game" food adulteration will be greatly hampered, if not entirely obliterated. It is, however, a matter of surprise how indifferent many people are to the character of the foods they consume. In the private family that may not be so, but in the boarding house, the restaurant, and the hotel is where the venders of adulterated goods find their most willing customers. I doubt if you can get in the finest hotel or restaurant in New York or in Washington a pure maple sirup for your breakfast pancakes. The purchaser in these cases are, it seems to me, sometimes in league with the food adulterator as if their interests were common. Again, a very small percentage of our people read official articles on food adulteration. In the last twelve years the Department of Agriculture has published twelve bulletins on food adulteration, covering the subject almost completely. The greatest number of prints of any one bulletin has never been over 10,000, and most of them very much less than that. It is thus seen that a very small percentage of our people can be reached by publicity of this kind. In the case of a con viction in court, the facts of the case do not seem to show that the business of the convicted party is injured. Very few people in the first place know about it, and those who do hear of it give it very little attention. The newspapers, the magazines, and the lecture platform help to popularize knowledge relating to food adulteration, but even in these cases the great masses of the people are still unreached. As types of information of the kind illustrated above, I submit for publication in the record a copy of a lecture delivered at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, and one before the American Health Association at Minneapolis. (Exhibits 7 and 8.) I have tried, Mr. Chairman, to show you the fallacy of every argument which can be made or has been made in favor of displacing the Hepburn with the Corliss bill. I have pointed out how the object which the Corliss bill purports to have in view is secured in every particular by the provisions of the Hepburn bill. There has been no denial of the real purpose of the Corliss bill, which is to defeat any legislation proposing to control fraudulent practices in the manufacture and distribution of foods. I believe it has been clearly shown. that the very best arguments which could be offered in favor of the Hepburn bill have been those presented to this committee by the advo cates of the other measure. I can not close this argument in any better way than by a brief extract from the speech of Senator Paddock in advocacy of his bill which passed the Senate in March, 1892: In the name and in the interest of public morality, I appeal to you to set legislative bounds, beyond which the wicked may not go with impunity in this corrupt and corrupting work. Let us at least attempt to perform our part in the general effort to elevate the standard of commercial honesty which has been so disgracefully lowered by these deceptions, frauds, and robberies, the malign influence of which is everywhere felt. Let us help by our action here to protect and sustain in his honorable vocation the honest producer, manufacturer, merchant, and trader, whose business is constantly menaced and often ruined by these unscrupulous competitors, who by their vile and dishonest arts, manipulations, and misbrandings are able to make the bad and impure appear to be the pure and the genuine; thus, by a double deception, both as to quality and price, making the worse appear the better choice to the unintelligent mass of purchasers. In the interest of the great consuming public, particularly the poor, I beg of you to make an honest, earnest effort to enact this law. At best a great multitude of our people are oppressed by a fear, a never-absent apprehension, which they carry to their work by day and to their beds by night, that perhaps at the end of the following day, or week, or month their ends may fail to meet. Under the strain of this grim menace life itself becomes a burden almost too grevious to be borne. But the thought of helpless wife and children, whose sold dependence he is, renews the courage of the wage worker from day to day, and so he struggles on, praying and hoping to the end. These, Mr. President, are the men, and these the women and children for whom, before all others, I make this appeal. If you could save to these the possible onethird to the nutritious element of their food supplies, which is extracted to be replaced by that which is only bulk, only the form and semblance of that of which they are robbed by the dishonest manipulator and trader, you would go a long way toward solving the great problem of the laboring masses, whether for them it is "better to live or not to live," whether it is "better to endure the ills they have rather than flee to those they know not of," that lie beyond in the realm of governmental and social upheaval and chaos. EXHIBIT NO. 1. [Senate Document No. 181, 57th Congress, 1st session.] ADULTERATION OF ARTICLES OF FOOD. A TABULATED STATEMENT PREPARED BY THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT (FOR THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON MANUFACTURES) SHOWING THE ADULTERATION OF THE MOST COMMON ARTICLES OF FOOD CONSUMED IN THE UNITED STATES. 279 |