VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 121 



must be punished because it is the only way in which the law can be en- 

 forced. A national law would reach the man who makes the goods. 



This subject has been before Congress for nearly thirteen years. 

 Senator Paddock introduced a pure food bill in 1891. Up to the present 

 time at different sessions of Congress there have been introduced forty- 

 three pure food bills. 



In the last Congress a measure known as the Hepburn bill passed the 

 House and died in a Senate committee. Mr. Hepburn will endeavor to 

 secure the passage of his bill the present session, and Senator Mc- 

 Cumber has introduced a similar measure in the Senate. These bills are 

 both seriously defective. Each provides that the work shall be done 

 under the direction of the Secretary of Agriculture, which is right; but 

 that the executive head of the pure food division shall be the chemist 

 of the Department of Agriculture. 



A national food law is one of wide importance. It will affect every 

 food manufacturer in the country, every dealer and every man, woman 

 and child who eats or drinks. The choice of an executive officer should 

 not be confined to the gentleman who happens to be the national chemist. 

 Ordinarily the training of a chemist is not that which specially fits him 

 lor executive functions. It so happens that Dr. Wiley, the present 

 chemist, is a man of broad culture and of general accomplishments, but 

 we have no assurance that he will live forever, and his successor might 

 be entirely unfit for handling a work that would go into every State 

 and Territory, dealing with lawyers and courts and great business in- 

 terests and the construction of statutes. 



It is urged that there is a prejudice against the creation of new 

 offices. That is true. But it will cost no more to do the work of a pure 

 food division with new men occupying new offices than to take the force 

 now employed in the division of chemistry, divert their time and talent 

 to pure food work and thereby make necessary the appointment of new 

 men to old places. If the work is done as it should be done, it will cost 

 a large sum of money. No subterfuge of placing the work in the 

 hands of the present officials of the Department of Agriculture will 

 fool anybody. The department officers have all they can do now. 

 They are doing it well and are earning the gratitude of the country. 

 No money can be saved by placing them in a new field of action. 

 The necessity of a national pure food law is great enough to warrant a 

 large expenditure of money. We spend enough upon one battleship 

 that will probably rust upon the waters to enforce a national food law 

 for ten years. We can afford to protect the public health. We cannot 

 afford to let deception and fraud prey upon the rights of either pro- 

 ducer or consumer of food. The great agricultural interest which will 

 be specially affected by this legislation need not be particularly meek 

 in making its wants known to Congress. It furnishes the larger part of 

 the votes and the larger part of the political morality of this country. 

 The farmer does not bear all the burdens of the world, as is sometimes 

 said, but he carries his share, and when he finds one that a law can 



