76 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and laboring classes that this should be tolerated? There would be a 

 plausibility about this if the consumer got his vinegar cheaper by reason 

 of this commercial fraud. But he does not. He pays the price of cider 

 vinegar, and it is for the purpose of obtaining this price that the distilled 

 vinegar is thus artificially colored and branded, and the extra profits 

 resulting therefrom are shared by the manufacturer, the jobber, and the 

 retailer, and the poor consumer is the victim. 



BUTTER FRAUDS. 



What is true of vinegar is also true of butter. Some two or three many- 

 times millionaire corporations of Chicago, by the manufacture of oleomar- 

 garine or butterine, have driven thousands of cows out of Michigan as well 

 as other dairy states, thereby greatly crippling a very profitable farming 

 industry, resulting in the deterioration of farming lands, forcing dairy 

 farmers to produce other commodities with which the market is already 

 surfeited. Hog products are also depressed by counterfeiting lard with 

 cottonseed oil; and here, again, the farmers are the losers, to the full extent 

 of the profit gained by a few large packing-houses. 



OTHER ADULTERATIONS. 



Buckwheat flour is compounded with poor, musty, low-grade wheat and 

 corn. The hulls of buckwheat are used to adulterate ground black pepper. 

 Coffee in the berry is modeled out of a paste composed of flour, beef liver, 

 and chickory. Maple syrup is compounded with glucose. Jellies labeled 

 " pure fruit " are made from glucose, acids, and gelatine, matters so filthy 

 that no manufacturer of them would think of using them for himself or 

 family. Fruit jams are made from pumpkins or squash for their base, 

 fixed up with glucose and acids, flavored with fruit extracts, and seeds are 

 supplied by using timothy or clover seed to suit the flavoring extract and 

 the label on the package. 



Who is benefited by all this array of adulterated goods, of which I have 

 mentioned only an occasional one? Are the honest producers benefited, 

 or are they injured? To ask the question is sufficient. 



WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 



What is the remedy? I answer, create the office of food commissioner 

 in Michigan, with at least two assistants and a state chemist who shall 

 analyze all products of food or drugs submitted to him by the food com- 

 missioner; and supply sufficient funds to enable this officer to do efficient 

 work. Clothe the food commissioner with power to enter a man's place of 

 business and inspect, and in extreme cases to seize, in case of harmful and 

 unhealthful products; to prosecute offenders without unnecessary delay by 

 postponements and adjournments and the like means, by which the ends 

 of justice are so often defeated; and if laws and penalties as now upon the 

 statute books of the state are not sufficiently explicit and strong to enable 

 the food commissioner to stamp out this nefarious business, see to it that 

 they are so amended and strengthened as to render them efficient. I have 

 already made this paper much longer than I intended when I began. 



It is the duty of the state to prohibit all unhealthful articles of food or 

 drugs; to require all manufacturers and dealers in foods or drugs to make 



