ADULTERATION OF EXTRACTED HONEY. 193 
ADULTERATION OF EXTRACTED HONEY, AND HOW 
CAN IT BE PREVENTED? 
EUGENE SECOR, FOREST CITY, IA. 
This is an age of shoddy and deceit. Competition in business has be- 
come so sharp, and the profits so meager, the temptation is to cheapen the 
article in order to cut the price of honest goods. And the blame is not 
altogether on the shoulders of the seller. The ambition to ape one’s neigh- 
bors when one hasn’t the means to do it is at the bottom of a good deal of 
this cheap-John business. It leads one to buy the counterfeit at a lower 
figure in order to appear as well-to-do as some one else with more wealth. 
When the price of an article is the chief inducement to purchase, it is 
not to be wondered at that the merchant and manufacturer should try to 
make the price right by substituting an inferior article. If they can make 
it look just as nice as a better quality of goods they satisfy, in some degree, 
the almost universal desire to get something for nothing or to appear to be 
what we are not. 
The purchaser wants cheap goods because he isn’t honest, because he 
wants the producer’s and dealer’s legitimate profits, or he wants to pass 
as a wealthier man than he really is; and the manufacturer and merchant 
supply the cheap counterfeit goods because they are not honest, for they 
rarely admit the truth of the fraud practiced. 
There is no denying the fact of the widespread adulteration of foods, 
medicines and condiments. Matters that affect the health of a community 
are of vital importance; and since it is the province of law to compel people 
to do right, or at least to be honest in their dealings with others, the 
necessity is plain that some adequate measures ought to be enacted to pro- 
tect the health of the innocent public. While I admit that some people 
ought to and do know better than they practice in buying, there are thou- 
sands too young to protect themselves from the wiles of modern trade. 
The present age has not gotten beyond the need of the ten command- 
ments, but the decalogue might be modernized by the additional injunction: 
Thou shalt not fool thy neighbor’s stomach. 
Buckwheat flour three-fourths wheat or rye middlings—or -satienheees 
worse; maple syrup as innocent of maple as the moon is of the weather; 
so-called butter from Armour’s packing houses, and liquid honey from the 
fruitful cornfields of Iowa or Illinois, are only samples of the nefarious 
practices in vogue to deceive a confiding public. 
No matter whether all these food frauds are injurious to health or not, 
we have a right to demand that things be called by their right names. If 
I am blind and ask for a violin, no man has a right to take my money and 
deliver me a corn-stalk fiddle; and if my palate craves butter and honey I 
am defrauded if I get a mixture of lard and cotton seed oil for the one 
or pure glucose for the other. 
Legislators have long recognized the need of pure food laws, but they 
are slow to vitalize the enactments with proper methods of enforcement. 
Laws never did and never will enforce themselves. Every law which is of 
public benefit ought to have a public officer whose duty it is to enforce it. 
The state not only has the right, but it is the state’s duty to protect its 
people. It asserts this right in the attempt to prevent the spread of con- 
tagious diseases, and the duty of looking after such matters is not left to 
