PURE FOOD LEGISLATION 53 



from problems which the manufacturing interests are honestly en- 

 deavoring to overcome. As a further result of tins meeting, it was im- 

 pressed upon all that food-control legislation should he correct labeling 

 rather than prohibitive, except where substances are positively in- 

 jurious to health. 



The Saint Paul meeting was followed by a similar and larger meet- 

 ing at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in the nature of an Inter- 

 national Pure Food Congress, and an exhibit showing adulterated 

 brands of foods. The Saint Louis meeting was the largest of its kind 

 ever assembled, and was a week, day and evening, of frank, honest 

 discussion among officials, scientists and representatives from the 

 several manufacturing interests. The congress discussed antiseptics, 

 artificial colors, fruit, vegetable, dairy and meat products, confection- 

 ery, baking powders, wines, beers, distilled liquors and drugs. Special 

 committees reported resolutions on the various questions, and among 

 the resolutions adopted was a unanimous endorsement of the Hepburn 

 Pure Food Bill which had passed the United States House of Eepre- 

 sentatives the previous winter. 



For more than twenty years the Bureau of Chemistry of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture has thrown the weight of its in- 

 fluence to the investigation of food and drug adulteration and its 

 effect upon health. This bureau has had the cooperation of the asso- 

 ciation of Official Agricultural Chemists in perfecting methods of food 

 analyses and in collaborating on a set of food standards. It is the 

 agricultural chemist who has detected and called the country's at- 

 tention to the evils of food adulteration. Formerly laws regulating the 

 sale of foods were left to the boards of health to be enforced, but it 

 is only as the states have created divisions of chemistry in the Depart- 

 ment of Health, or have turned the work over to their experiment 

 stations, or have organized state food commissions and equipped them 

 with laboratories, that results have been obtained under state laws. 



Food and drug adulteration has grown up because interests have 

 been permitted to violate certain principles of identification in the sale 

 of their products. When purchasers know where a product was made, 

 when it was made and who made it, and are informed of the true nature 

 and substance of the article offered for consumption, it is almost im- 

 possible to impose upon the most ignorant and careless consumers. 

 Trade-mark law requires correct labeling as to who made an article 

 and establishes the principle that a man is not to sell his goods 

 under the pretense that they are the goods of another man, nor 

 can he use any means which will contribute to this end. This prin- 

 ciple has been upheld in courts as not only necessary to secure to each 

 man the fruits of his own toil, but also as a protection to the public 

 against fraud. Only the one, however, whose trade-mark is infringed 

 has a cause of action before the courts, and where there is a business 



