64 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



I do not believe that this legislation will lead to the end which some men 

 fear. I believe that the ultimate effect will be to promote a better understand- 

 ing among the railroads and the people. I believe that when it is made the 

 railroads do the people justice, the people will feel less resentful toward the 

 railroads ; and we will deal with these questions with more of reason and less 

 of passion. It will take the railroads out of politics and we will hear no more 

 about railroad senators. I want to see every corporation driven out of politics. 1 



In opposing the pure food bill the senator says : 



Thus it is that bureau after bureau is built up and we vest them with such 

 extraordinary power, until the American people will become a bureaucracy in- 

 stead of a democracy — a government in which the bureaus and not the people rule. 



If the federal government has the power to pass an act regulating the use 

 of adulterated, misbranded and imitation foods, it ought to stop when it writes 

 upon the statute books that it will be a crime to commit such a commodity for 

 shipment between the States and the foreign nations, and leave it to the integrity 

 and efficiency of its judicial officers to vindicate the authority of its law. 2 



Why should not the senator's argument in favor of the rate com- 

 mission also apply to the food commission? Why should not also the 

 liquor corporation, the drug corporation and the packing corporation 

 be ' driven out of politics ' ? Why should rate experts, with extraor- 

 dinary powers, be trusted to make ' the railroads do the people justice,' 

 and food experts, with no limitation upon the courts, be expected to 

 build up a bureaucracy antagonistic to the people's interests? 



But, aside from these questions and the ' efficiency and integrity ' 

 of the judicial officers, the district attorneys and federal judges can 

 not enforce a pure food law without facts and these facts can only 

 be secured through a ' bureau ' or staff of trained chemists, working 

 in well-equipped laboratories under methods of analysis which have 

 been established beyond doubt to be correct. There may be some oc- 

 casion to fear that errors will be made in securing this evidence. There 

 is greater occasion to fear that the investigation will make public the 

 deficiencies and adulterations which some interests know to exist in 

 their misbranded products. 



The pure food issue is not altogether an issue of ' fraud ' and 

 ' poison,' but it is more largely a question of scientific and business 

 problems — problems attending the preservation, packing and distribu- 

 tion of what the people live on; problems which the colleges and 

 universities have too long left out of their courses, and problems which 

 the experiment stations and government departments have too long 

 neglected to study in connection with the production of the fruits, 

 grains and other products from which foods are made. 



1 Before TJ. S. Senate, April 10, 1906, Congressional Record, April 13. 



2 Before U. S. Senate, February 21, 1906, Congressional Record, February 21. 



