354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



reality belong to more than one class, as milk, oatmeal, green beans, etc., 

 could be assigned according to their analyses and according to the 

 judgment of a referee board of physiologists, which would then have 

 a constructive economic function to perform instead of a reviewing 

 function which has been discharged by the Remsen Board ; for to deter- 

 mine the real physiologic and therefore the real economic value of 

 certain foods would require long and careful experimentation. The 

 regulations as to labeling would naturally be different for the different 

 classes. 



Obviously there should be no relaxation of the present vigilance of 

 the law as to preservatives which have been proved harmful, nor as to 

 the permission of unwholesome constitutents nor as to the presence of 

 adulterants — meaning by that term anything which reduces or impairs 

 the food value. But the bureau of chemistry of the Department of 

 Agriculture should be enlarged into a bureau of food economics so 

 that its function should become more constructive in the sense in which 

 the bureau of plant industry and the bureau of animal husbandry is 

 more economic. It has become a truism that the government pays more 

 attention to the health of pigs than it does to the health of men. Unless 

 we mistake the spirit of true progressivism this will not properly express 

 the functions of government a generation hence. A very material 

 advance, educative in its influence and highly economic in its results, 

 would be the establishment of this new standard of purity in foods. 



