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principled dealers were able to undersell 

 the bee-keepers. My figures were based on 

 a mixture of honey and sugar syrup, and 

 on this the profit was handsome, but no 

 doubt those dishonest dealers sneered at 

 me, for their profit by using glucose was at 

 least four times greater. No wonder that 

 some of those dealers, poor a few years be- 

 fore and nearly unable to pay for the honey 

 bought, became suddenly rich while we 

 bee-keepers had to work hard to produce 

 and sell pure honey. 



Persuaded, as I then was, that sugar was 

 used to adulterate honey, I thought that 

 this base competition would cease as soon 

 as the increased production of honey would 

 compel us to sell our crop cheaper, and I 

 anticipated that the day was not far distant 

 when the sale of this injurious article 

 would be no longer profitable ; the main 

 damage to the bee-keeping community be- 

 ing, in my mind, the prolongation among 

 the consumers of the false idea that candied 

 or granulated honey was a spurious article, 

 while liquid honey was pure. The adultera- 

 tors, being unable to manufacture a mixture 

 that would candy or granulate, took the 

 greatest care to warn the retail dealers, and 

 these in turn to warn their customers, 

 against candied honey. This prejudice is 

 alive yet in the minds of most of the con- 

 sumers, and is the most tedious cause of the 

 difficulties we meet in the sales of our pure 

 extracted honey. 



This rapid enriching of the adulterators 

 was too apparent not to tempt some of the 

 dealers, who make a living by adulterating 

 everything in which adulterations can be 

 made profitable. Many of these dealers, 

 eager to be rich, took up the nefarious busi- 

 ness, and soon the whole continent of North 

 America was found too narrow for their 

 operations ; they reached their dishonest 

 hands across the sea to sell their fraudulent 

 products in the markets of the Old World. 

 But most of the countries of Europe have 

 strict laws against the sale of adulterated 

 articles. Not long since a grocer of Glas- 

 gow, Scotland, was fined for having sold 

 spurious honey from America, adulterated 

 with 57 per cent, of glucose. I wrote imme- 

 diately to Glasgow, and was answered that 

 two American dealers, Thurber & Co., of 

 New York, and Bradshaw & Wait, of Chi- 

 cago, had sold adulterated honey. 



A few months after, while in St. Louis, I 

 bought a bottle of extracted honey labeled 

 " John Long." This name means Thurber 

 & Co. This honey, which I bought in St. 

 Louis, was adulterated with glucose, like 

 that which was confiscated in Glasgow. 

 While in St. Louis I found liquid adulter- 

 ated honey in nearly every grocery. I there 

 became convinced that our business was 

 doomed, unless some steps were taken to 

 stop this dishonest competition. 



Most of the members of the convention 

 know what followed. At our meeting last 

 year, at Burlington, I proposed to have a 

 committee appointed to frame a petition to 

 Congress against the adulteration of sweets. 

 My proposal was unanimously accepted, 

 and I was appointed the chairman. A pe- 

 tition was prepared and printed, and several 

 thousand copies of it were distributed. 

 Then having been informed that the Com- 



mittee of Ways and Means in the House of 

 Representatives was making inquiries as to 

 frauds committed on sugars by some refin- 

 ers of New York, to cheat the custom house 

 and the consumers, I corresponded with sev- 

 eral honest sugar refiners who had de- 

 nounced the fraud, and we aimed to help 

 each other in obtaining from Congress a 

 law against adulteration of sweets in every 

 form. The petition, filled with names from 

 every State, was put in the hands of ener- 

 getic representatives of several States, but 

 a vote of Congress referred it to the Com- 

 mittee of Ways and Means, and it is among 

 its other papers waiting for a report, which 

 perhaps may never come. 



Another attempt was made by presenting 

 a bill against adulteration of articles of 

 food and medicine, but Congress was too 

 much occupied with partisan discussions to 

 look at the bill, which was also referred to 

 the same committee and buried. 



Such was the result. No, I am mistaken 

 for something of real importance has been 

 obtained. The legislatures of Michigan, 

 Minnesota, Kentucky and New Jersey have 

 passed laws against the adulteration of 

 honey. Of course these disseminated ef- 

 forts will greatly benefit our business, but 

 they are insufficient to stop altogether the 

 adulteration, and we propose to you to help 

 us in persisting in our attempt to obtain a 

 general law against adulteration. A law 

 from Congress alone can entirely stop adul- 

 terations, for a dealer in New York, after- 

 selling adulterated honey in the West, will 

 almost never be prosecuted ; while an hon- 

 est retailer here may be fined for having 

 sold, without knowledge, a spurious article. 



What we want is a law similar to that of 

 England or France, with the appointment 

 of officers to enforce it and presecute the 

 fraud everywhere. By the encouragement 

 that we have received from every part of 

 the country and by the number of signatures 

 that were obtained in every place to which 

 the petition to Congress was presented we 

 are confident that such a law is desired by 

 all, and that it will be enacted sooner or 

 later. But to reach such a result we need 

 renewed efforts to keep this idea in the 

 minds of the people. 



A great number of papers supported us by 

 publishing the petition in their columns, but 

 we regret to say that we have found one op- 

 ponent to our move in the editor of a bee- 

 periodical which we had considered as a 

 friend to our cause. We will not here re- 

 new the criticism that we have written on 

 his course, for it seems that he now acknowl- 

 edges that he was following a wrong track. 

 We, therefore, hope to see him seconding 

 us in our new efforts to obtain the law de- 

 sired. The editor of a new-born bee-paper, 

 called the Bee-Keepers' Exchange, pub- 

 lished especially to help the sale of bee-fix- 

 tures (we have already too many of such 

 papers) seems to care very little for the 

 welfare of bee-culture, for instead of cen- 

 suring Thurber & Co. for having killed the 

 exportation of extracted American honey to 

 Europe by sending adultered honey, he ex- 

 tols them for their endeavor to export comb 

 honey to England. The motive of such 

 flattery is evident ; the editor hopes to have 

 his share of the money paid by the firm for 



