40 



I hope you will get to the bottom and show the people exactly " where the scare 

 coinesin" and where it does not. Even water (spring and deep well) is under the 

 bane of adulteration with sevvage, bacteria, etc., and Hyatt and other tilterers pro- 

 pose a better plan than the natural one. 



The very excess of the cry will soon make people take the natural reaction, as in 

 the story of the "boy and the bear," and then the bear will have the best chance 

 because he is so rarely around when talked about. 



There are dangers real, important, and to be guarded .against, but they want defi- 

 nition and to be taken from the hands of "business men and experts " trading on 

 them into common knowledge and sanitary supervision. 



The Hon. F. B. Thurber, of New York, in a letter to the National 

 Farm and Fireside, which appears in that journal December 7, 1888, 

 says: 



There should be a general bill. Piecemeal legislation is not satisfactory, and an 

 executive bureau with an adequate appropriation to see the law is carried out, is an 

 absolute necessity. Laws do not execute themselves; if they did, a police force and 

 the machinery of our courts would be unnecessary. 



While there is probably not as much injurious adulteration as the public generally 

 think, there is enough to make a national law desirable, and there is a very large 

 amount of adulteration, which, while perhaps not very injurious, is a fraud both upon 

 the stomach and the pocket of the consumer. 



The general principles to be kept in view in such legislation is, is injurious adul- 

 teration prohibited, while non-injurious articles, which are adulterated simply to in- 

 crease bulk or reduce cost, should be permitted to be sold, provided plain notice is 

 given to the consumer of what he is getting. 



A very valuable feature of the Laird bill is the official publicity which it proposes 

 to give to the examination of food by the bureau established for that purpose ; for, 

 with official publicity, the competition between manufacturers and dealers will con- 

 stantly tend to raise the standard, while without such publicity competition would 

 work the other way. 



A dealer who desires to sell pure food products now is met with unscrupulous com- 

 petitors who claim to-sell just as good goods as he does at lower prices. If he ana- 

 lyzes their products and exposes them, they raise the cry of " trade jealousy " and his 

 exposures have but little effect; but with official publicity, the hands of the dealer 

 in pure goods would be greatly strenghtened, and, as above stated, this constitutes 

 one of the most valuable features of the Laird bill. The penalty of exposure is far 

 greater than any other penalty, for it always loses the trade and profit to the manu- 

 facturer or dealer in adulterated goods. 



The Hon. Erastus Brooks, in an address before the board of Penn- 

 sylvania, says : 



Take, for example, the simple article of candy, much of which is reported to be 

 made from grape-sugar, glucose, and terra alba, the latter being sold at 1 cent a 

 pound and the former at 4 cents. Where granulated sugar costs, by the barrel, 9 

 cents, the cheaper grades of this article may be depreciated in value over 50 to 70 

 per cent. (Page 363, Pennsylvania report.) 



Again, in the same report he says : 



It is a public duty to resist all impurities both in the food we eat, the water we 

 drink, and in the contaminated air we breathe in all dwellings and workshops and in 

 all that is around them ; and Jjet me say in speaking alike for the State and citizen 

 that Principiis obsta is the only safe rule of action. 



Mr. H. Wharton Amerling is the president of the American Society 

 for the Prevention of Adulteration, and in an address delivered by him 



