Mr. Payess, a well-known chemist of 

 Paris, in liis Chimie Industrielle, says that 

 glucose is unwholesome on account of the 

 siilj)liate of lime that it contains. Sulphate 

 of lime, or plaster of Paris, is a compound 

 of sulphuric acid and lime. 



Charles Loudon Bloxan, professor of 

 chemistry in Kinj^'s College, London, in his 

 ^'Chemistry Inorganic and Organic," says 

 that it is easy to detect gl ucose in syrups and 

 honey, on account of the sulphate of lime 

 of the glucose. 



? Mr. Root admits that to manufacture glu- 

 -cose an acid is used. Bat he does not give 

 the name of the acid, as if intending to give 

 his readers the impression that some other 

 acid, less unhealthy than sulphuric acid, 

 could be used. He continues, speaking of 

 the petition : 



" I presume the Davenport factory uses car loads 

 of both the chalk and t)te acid in this chemical pro- 

 cess, and this may have given rise to the thoughtless 

 statement made above. If grape sugar (glucose) is 

 made in so slovenly a manner as to contain articles 

 prejudicial to health, the matter should, by all 

 means, be taken in hand."' 



I admire that " if" and the "thoughtless 

 statement^'! of my opponent. My state- 

 ment is based upon proofs given by the best 

 chemists of France, England and the United 

 States ; they all say that glucose always 

 contains more or less of sulphate of lime. 

 But Mr. Root simply exipresses his doubts ! 

 It is wonderful how foolish self esteem will 

 make a man appear ! He continues : 



" The refiners of cane sugar use tons of blood and 

 offal of the slaughter houses, as well as burnt bones; 

 but our sugar of commerce contains none of these 

 articles." 



I am very far from being a chemist, yet 1 

 can see the difference between a mixture 

 and a combination. In the manufacture of 

 glucose there is aconibination between corn 

 starch, water and sulphuric acid. The re- 

 sult of every combination is a new com- 

 pound: here it is glucose ! In the refining 

 of sugar there is but a mechanical process, 

 a mixture, not aconibination. The blood is 

 mixed with the syrup ; it coagulates, form- 

 ing a kind of net-work through all the syrup. 

 This net-work seizes and draws to the sur- 

 face all the impurities of the liquid, while 

 the burnt bones become a filter ! But the 

 comparison of Mr. Root is valueless, since 

 one of the processes is a chemical combina- 

 tion, the other a mechanical mixture. 



One of the main arguments of Mr. Root, 

 and reiterated by him, is that he can eat 

 glucose without bad results ! 



Some years ago, while traveling in Swit- 

 zerland, I noticed that the inhabitants of a 

 great many villages of Valais, were rtc/cet- 

 ish and goitered. The scientists assert that 

 such a deterioration in men comes from the 

 use of the water that runs down the valleys, 

 from the melting of the eternal snows which 

 ■cover the tops of the mountains. Some 

 medical authorities think that snow is not 

 the culprit ; but that these rivulets, in their 

 rapid course, run over ores of mercury. I 

 freely drank of the same water, and I would 

 have been laughed at had I said : " The 

 scientists are mistaken ; this water is whole- 

 some. I drank it for several days without 

 being rickety." Such is the reasoning of 

 Mr. Root J As glucose did not poison him, 



the quantity of sulphate of lime being too 

 small to act sensibly on his stomach, he con- 

 cludes that glucose is harmless ! Drops of 

 water, falling for years, will wear away 

 stones, and a poison, like sulphate of lime, 

 has a power of deterioration certain, al- 

 though at first in,sensible, on the human 

 organs, and on the organs of bees, too. 



My opponent not only takes sides with the 

 adulterators of honey, but he denies that 

 cane sugar can be adulterated. Of course 

 his reasonings are of the same kind and 

 strength as those on glucose (see Gleanings 

 for October). He puts a lump of sugar in" a 

 glass of water ; the water remains clear, 

 therefore the sugar is pure. Such is the test 

 of this editor ! This test is cheap and easy, 

 but it proves nothing ! Will Mr. Root take 

 a moment's rest, and read from the Chicago 

 Tribune of October 7th, a statement made 

 under oath by Mr. William T. Booth, of the 

 firm of Booth & Edgar, sugar refiners of New 

 York. The firm of Booth & Edgar enjoys, 

 morally and financially, the highest com- 

 mercial credit. Mr. Booth testified before 

 Fernando Wood, chairman of the ways and 

 means committee of Congress, Sept. 18. 

 The inquest had for its object to ascertain if 

 frauds existed in the refinery business. 



The sugars imported are taxed at the cus- 

 tom houses according to their qualities, the 

 most inferior qualities, such as the milado, 

 paying only one and a half cents, while the 

 refined pays five cents. It seems that some 

 unprincipled refiners have found a cheap 

 way to turn the inferior article into a good- 

 looking article, and thus defraud the govern- 

 ment of the greatest part of its duties. Mr. 

 Booth says : 



" I tell you, sir, that adulteration of sugar does con- 

 cern the committee of ways and means ; it concerns 

 the board of health.' it concerns everybody. Think 

 of it ; by-and-by, when the people of this country 

 have eaten enough of this sugar to become tin-lined, 

 so that the stomach and bowels shall be coated with 

 tin. What a pleasant thing it will be for us, fathers 

 of families .' Our children won't cry any more ; 

 there will be no more stomach-ache, for the stomach 

 will be tin-lined 



"What has been the history of this race in adulte- 

 ration in every business ? Why always tlie worst 

 man wins. It is the man who will go farthest, who 

 will sell himself body and soul to the d— 1 most 

 completely, who wins in that race 



" A man came to me some time ago and said : 'Doc- 

 tor, you are a fool !' I said : ' It may be ; but I am an 

 honest one." Said he, ' You know about that glucose 

 business, don't you ?' Said I, ' Do you think I am ig- 

 norant and don't know my business ? Do you think I 

 don't know what is going on in all these refineries ?' 

 'Well,' said he, ' you are a fool'! Why don't you go 

 into the glucose business ? Your firm has had the 

 reputation of making good, straight, honest sugars, 

 and you can put glucose into them, and nobody will 

 know about it !' ' But,' said I, ' when I die, I will die 

 honest.' I have had men come to me, week after 

 week, offering me this and that adulteration, and say- 

 ing 'others use it. I sell car-load after car-load of it 

 to this and that concern ; they are all using it in large 

 quantities.' My position as a refiner has been such 

 that I have been enabled to know just about what 

 was going on in regard to this glucose business ; and 

 1 think we shall all hear more about it by-and-by ? 

 No, sir ; this talk about the adulteration of sugars is 

 not bosh." 



Will my opponent be convinced by all the 

 proofs that I have gathered ? I dare not 

 hope it ; for none is more deaf, than those 

 who refuse to hear ! 



Mr. Root says that we have State laws. 

 Yes ! But they are dead letters ; they caa- 

 not be enforced. 



