290 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



these goods coming into tlie marlcets of Pennsylvania under the 

 names of different articles of commercial feeding stuffs compounded 

 as it may suit the manufacturer. 



On April 25th, 1901, Governor Stone approved a law that had been 

 passed by the Legislature, known as the law regulating the sale of 

 concentrated commercial feeding stuffs. This law was amended on 

 April 24th, 1905. The Department of Agriculture enforced these 

 laws. For several years the agents of the Secretary of Agriculture 

 visited the dealers and secured samples of the different feeding 

 stuffs that were on the markets, as the law directed, and gave copies 

 of the law to the dealers, trying by this means to have the dealers 

 and manufacturers comply with the law, but this did not do any 

 good. The manufacturers kept on making poor low grade feeds 

 and flooding our markets with the same. On December 4, 1905, your 

 Secretary of Agriculture, Hon. N. B. Critchfield, gave orders to 

 bring suits on each sample where the dealers had violated the law. 

 This was done and the Department was successful in securing con- 

 victions in almost every case. In some counties prominent attor- 

 neys were employed and cases were fought with a good deal of op- 

 position, but the courts and juries sustained the law and, with a 

 few exceptions, verdicts in favor of the Department were given. 



This work showed the manufacturers outside of Pennsylvania that 

 the Department of Agriculture meant to enforce the law as they 

 found it on the statute books. But you may ask, What were the 

 violations? If you will secure Bulletin No. 145 of the Department 

 of Agriculture in regard to concentrated feeds, it will give you the 

 analysis and will show you the adulterations. I might say that the 

 chemists found in wheat bran, rice hulls, corn cobs and other adul- 

 terants. In samples of chop were found coffee hulls and a number 

 of other adulterants; but the great adulterant coming into our mar- 

 kets at that time, was oat hulls. They were coming in by the car- 

 load and almost every dairy county had large feed stores handling 

 oat hulls. Not being satisfied to sell the oat hulls that came from 

 the oat grain, there was another feed that they combined with it, 

 known as oat dust, also the sweepings of the large mills. This feed 

 was sold in competition to oat chop, and you can readily see what 

 amount of deception there would be in this feed. 



In the trial of these cases, I frequently ask the question, What 

 is the feed value of a ton of oat hulls and oat dust? The answer 

 Prof. Fuller, our Chemist, gave, was |5.00 per ton, but at this value 

 to-day and what it shows in the market, it would be $3. .55 per ton. 

 This stock was retailing at |18 to $20 per ton according to the price 

 of oats chop. They would always sell it a few dollars less, and place 

 the analysis high in protein and fat. On this is what is based our 

 prosecution, as false analysis of protein and fat. Very few of the 

 oat hulls and oat feed people made a defense, as they had nothing 

 to stand on and they paid their fines without a contest. 



Another way of adulteration, men who are millers and feed deal- 

 ers, would buy a carload of these oat hulls and oat dust and mix it 

 with a small percentage of ground corn or glutten meal and sell it 

 for corn and oats chop. 



We have broken up this custom, and in our work do not find our 

 millers or feed dealers following out this practice. I would say that 

 the millers of Pennsylvania are making their chop of whole grain 



