AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



77 



ticecL I am at a loss, of course, to ex- 

 plain such conduct, but evidently there 

 is a motive for it, otherwise they would 

 be willing to accept the facts, and help 

 the good work along. I am, 

 Respectfully, 



H. W. Wiley, Chemist. 

 Washington, D. C, June 20, 1892. 



Mr. Muth's reply to the foregoing 

 letter of Prof. Wiley, is as follows : 



The Analyst Publishing Co., 

 New York. 



Gentlemen : — Allow me to give you a 

 short history of my experience as a bee- 

 keeper, which will explain satisfactorily 

 to any one my "fraud on the commu- 

 nity," as Mr. Wiley pleases to term it. 



It was, I believe, in the spring of 

 1869, when the first honey extractor 

 made its appearance in America — a 

 wooden barrel with a revolving basket 

 of tin inside of it, imported, I believe, 

 by J. H. King, of New York. My friend, 

 I. H. Hill, of Mt. Healthy, O., bought 

 one of those extractors, which I used as 

 a pattern, and had, at once, one made 

 for myself. 



On the roof of my house at the foot of 

 the hill, at the edge of our city at that 

 time, was my apiary. The garret was 

 my extracting room, and the wooden 

 extractor became leaky, and the idea 

 offered itself, "Why not have the re- 

 volving basket in a tin can V" 



In August, 1869, Mr. Henry Stephen- 

 son, a bee-friend and tinner, made for 

 me a tin honey extractor — very likely 

 the first tin honey extractor in America. 

 The following year, 1870, Mr. Stephen- 

 son made a dozen or more tin honey ex- 

 tractors, which I sold to my bee-keeping 

 friends. 



Aided by the honey extractor, I had 

 produced over 500 pounds of fine clover 

 honey on the roof of my house, and, like 

 my friends, was surprised at the large 

 crop. We sell, now, a carload to one of 

 our customers every five or six weeks. 

 All of the 500 pounds were sold by the 

 time that the crop of 18J0 was har- 

 vested, which was larger than that of 

 1869. We bought some honey from 

 neighboring bee-keepers to supply our 

 demand, and increased our apiary. 



My labels of to-day are the same as 

 they were twenty odd years ago, plain 

 and unostentatious, and read : " Pure 

 machine extracted honey from the Ital- 

 ian apiary of C. F. Muth." The "Son" 

 was added afterwards, when my son be- 

 came a partner in the business. Fancy 

 labels were offered us many times, and 

 promptly refused, because, in my esti- 



mation, our pure honey did not need 

 them, and I knew that "snide" goods 

 were generally adorned with fancy 

 labels ; besides, our trade had become 

 accustomed to our plain labels, and we, 

 naturally, disliked to make a change, 

 considering the old labels our trade- 

 mark. I enclose samples of our labels, 

 the same we have had for twenty odd 

 years. 



Being in the mercantile business, we 

 had our own square-glass honey-jars, 

 made and sold them largely to other bee- 

 keepers, who bought also the same 

 labels that we used. We had them 

 printed, omitting the name of producers, 

 so that we could have their addresses 

 printed at short notice. Being a bee- 

 keeper; I had no more idea, 23 years 

 ago, than I have now, of imposing on 

 the public by the means of my labels. 



Our labels might be changed slightly 

 to meet the extra-nice criticism of some 

 fault-finder, but considering them a 

 trade-mark, we are apt to leave them as 

 they are. As we produce 8,000 to 10,- 

 000 pounds of extracted honey in a good 

 season, I leave it to the reader to judge 

 of the importance of the so-called fraud 

 by our labels. To me, the matter seems 

 ridiculous. 



Further, I deny the statement of Prof. 

 Wiley, that we ever labeled California 

 honey as coming from our own apiary. 

 If we ever had such labels printed, I 

 should know it, and we should still have 

 some on hand. 



When quoting Prof. Wiley's report, I 

 had not the least desire of misquoting or 

 doing an injustice to the Professor. I 

 merely quoted the sense of his report. 

 Its exact wording is as immaterial to mo 

 as the date when, or the place where, it 

 was made. It is immaterial to me 

 whether it was at Flint, Detroit, or In- 

 dianapolis ; but the fact is, that at one 

 of those places I gave the Professor, at 

 his request, a number of samples of 

 honey for analyzation. All of it was 

 pure honey, without any doubt about it, 

 i. e., if there is any pure honey at all. 



I do not know what standard Prof. 

 Wiley has for pure honey, but I verily 

 believe that my samples could have 

 served the Professor as a standard. 



Prof. Wiley reported at the next an- 

 nual meeting in person, in substance, as 

 follows, that most of those samples were 

 adulterated, and that one was probably 

 pure. Present were Prof. Cook, of the 

 Agricultural College at Lansing, Mich., 

 Mr. Thomas G. Newman, of the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal, of Chicago, and a 

 large number of other bee-keepers who 

 remember, and will verify my statement. 



