43 



so greatly in securing the passage of the food adulteration act) are 

 as applicable to the present condition of affairs in this country as they 

 were thirty years ago iu England, I give them in full. The second 

 paragraph, relative to taxation, is of course not applicable to the United 

 States at this time : 



Legislation on the subject is required 



First. For the protection of the public health. The evidence given before the 

 parliamentary committee on adulteration proves that the deadliest poisons arc; daily 

 resorted to for purposes of adulteration, to the injury of the health and the destruc- 

 tion of the lives of thousands. There is scarcely a poisonous pigment known to 

 these islands which are not thus employed. 



Second. For the protection of the revenue. This will be readily acknowledged 

 when it is known that nearly half the national revenue is derived from taxes on food 

 and beverages. It has already been shown that not long since adulteration was rife, 

 and it still exists to a large extent in nearly all articles of consumption, both solid 

 and fluid, and including even those under the supervision of the excise. 



Third. In the interests of the honest merchant and trader. The upright trader is 

 placed in a most trying and unfair position in consequence of adulteration. He is 

 exposed to the most ruinous and unscrupulous competition ; too often he is under- 

 sold, and his business thus taken from him. It is therefore to the interest of the 

 honest trader that effective legislation should take place, and not'only is it to his in- 

 terest but we can state that it is his most anxious desire that adulteration should be 

 abolished. In advocating the suppression of adulteration we are therefore advocat- 

 ing the rights and interests of all honorable traders. 



Fourth. For the sake of the consumer. That the consumer is extensively robbed 

 through adulteration, sometimes of his health, but always of his money, is unques- 

 tionable. It is, however, the poor man, the laborer, and the artisan, who is the most 

 extensively defrauded ; for, occupied early and late with his daily labor, often in debt 

 with those with whom he deals, he has no time or power to help himself in the mat- 

 ter, and if he had the time he still would require the requisite knowledge. The sub- 

 ject of adulteration, therefore, while it concerns all classes, is eminently a poor man's 

 question ; the extent to which he is cheated through adulteration is really enormous. 



Fifth. On the .ground of public morality. Adulteration involves deception, dis- 

 honesty, fraud, and robbery, and since adulteration is so prevalent so equally must 

 these vices prevail to the serious detriment of public morality and to the injury of 

 the character of the whole nation for probity in the eyes of the world. We repeat, 

 then, that some prompt, active, and efficient legislative interference is demanded for 

 the sake of public morality and the character of this country among the nations of 

 the world. 



I will conclude this portion of this report with two notable extracts, 

 one a speech delivered in the Forty-eighth CoDgress by the Hon. J. W. 

 Green and the other from a report iu the Fiftieth Congress by the late 

 Hon. James Laird of Nebraska, respectively. 



Said the Hon. Mr. Green : 



Who will say that he who stamps and passes off little bits of baser metal than the 

 standard bullion to put in your pockets is guilty of greater wrong than he who pre- 

 pares and sells to you base and counterfeit compounds, not to say deadly, to put into 

 your stomach ? Possibly the reason for imposing penalties in the one case and neg- 

 lecting to do so iu the other, is that our ancestors could not realize that human cu- 

 pidity could prompt such depravity as trifling with the health, well-being, and very 

 existence of myriads of their fellow-men. 



Probably every gentleman on this floor knows what steatite or soapstone is; if not, 

 I will state that it is a soft^ calcareous, easily cut rock, but probably surpassing any 



