62 RECREATION, 
trade as “black jack.” This is a tasteless, 
hard, tough, and exceedingly black coffee. 
It is not allowed to be sold in Germany, 
but is picked out by hand (children gen- 
erally doing the work) glazed, mixed with 
other coffee, and sold to us by the German 
coffee merchants. Millions of pounds of 
this adulterated coffee are sold in the United 
States every year, and a law should at once 
be passed prohibiting its sale. Not only 
do the Germans sell us adulterated coffee, 
but they also sell us “black jack’ pure 
and simple. When the coffee arrives in 
Hamburg from Brazil. children are at once 
set to work to pick out the coffee beans 
that are worthless and wunwholesome. 
These worthless beans are put aside by the 
children, and are then glazed and polished. 
The finished ‘‘black jack” is shipped to 
America where it is mixed with good 
coffee by the dealers and sold to consumers. 
Graeme Stewart, partner in the wholesale 
grocery house of W. M. Hoyt & Com- 
pany, of Chicago, recently declared that 25 
per cent. of the 11,000,000 132-pound sacks 
of coffee shipped in to this country last 
year consisted of “black jack.” As a writer 
in one of our great daily newspapers tersely 
puts it, “it all goes to show that if there is 
anything in the way of food that other 
countries reject, it can be foisted on the 
people of the United States, who take any- 
1”? 
thing and who can be easily deceived! 

POISONS IN FOODS. 
Recently before a sub-committee of the 
United States Senate Pure Food Investi- 
gating Committee, Dr. H. W. Wiley, chem- 
ist to the National Agricultural Depart- 
ment, brought out the fact of the use of 
poisons in foods in a very striking and con- 
vincing manner. In fact, his testimony as to 
the use of poisonous ingredients in the pre- 
parations of certain articles largely in use 
in this country for the table is alarming, to 
say the least. The poisons most frequently 
in evidence are borax, boracic acid, formal- 
dehyde and alum. With few exceptions, the 
baking powders in general use throughout 
the United States contain alum. This sub- 
stance is an irritant poison, and, when used 
for any length of time is bound to produce 
disease of the stomach. Nine-tenths of the 
dyspepsias met with in America are direct- 
ly due to the use of alum baking powders. 
Another dyspepsia producer is salicylic 
acid, which is frequently, and to an alarm- 
ing extent, used as a fruit preservative. 
This acid is commonly derived from car- 
bolic acid, a well-known poison. Formal- 
dehyde and borax, both deadly poisons, 
when taken in sufficiently large doses, are 
also used as preservatives. 
When vegetables are cooked before can- 
ning them for the market, they lose their 
coloring matter. In order to restore this, 
manufacturers of canned vegetables use the 
salts of zinc and copper, all of which are 
irritant poisons. Dr. Wiley found these 
poisonous substances in hundreds of 
samples of foods purchased by himself in 
the open market. 

A PECK OF DIRT. 
When a man eats his fore-ordained peck 
of dirt, which the myths of our forefathers 
tell us he can by no means escape, he pre- 
fers to eat it au naturel; yet many a man 
of the present generation will go to his 
grave having swallowed not only his allotted 
peck, but a bushel or so in addition, of 
which he had no knowledge. Dirt, in the 
shape of “white earth,” is to be found in 
almost all the pulverized sugars, while, in 
the form of the cellulos of, peanut shells, 
cocoanut hulls, etc., it makes up by far the 
larger portion of the spices with which he 
seasons his food. Asa matter of fact, there 
is a large factory in Cincinnati which is de- 
voted wholly to the business of grinding 
peanut hulls, and cocoanut shells for the 
spice dealers. This form of dirt, 1. e., the 
ground shells are used by the dealers as 
adulterants for ground spices. If one 
wishes pure ground spice he must buy the 
unground article and pulverize it himself; 
he can escape the additional dirt only by 
this method. 
Another form of dirt is ground chicory, 
which enters into the composition of all of 
the cheap “blends” of coffee that are so 
extensively advertised. ‘“‘Dead berries” or 
coffee berries which have never matured 
and which are, consequently, absolutely 
worthless, are used to adulterate the un- 
ground article. Even the _ celebrated 
wooden nutmeg of Connecticut is here sur- 
passed, for berries made of clay (genuine 
Simon pure dirt this), are sometimes used 
to adulterate coffee. 

FRAUDS-ON THE BUBELE: 
In his evidence before the sub-committee 
of the Senate “pure food’ investigating 
committee, Dr. Wiley adduced the fact 
that many restauranteurs are in the habit 
of serving sparrows to their patrons as reed 
birds. He also declared that minnows 
masqueraded as imported sardines, and 
common turtles as diamond-back terra- 
pins. Domestic wines are boldly and un- 
hesitatingly served as imported vintages. 
On one occasion a hogshead of domestic 
wine was shown him, and when he asked 
for 2 cases “the dealer liberally offered to 
put on either Chateau Bordeaux or Bur- 
gundy labels.” Wine merchants ‘ “import” 
most of their foreign wines from the Pacific 
slope, where the wine-makers unhesitating- 
ly use foreign labels, such as “Hoch- 
heimer,” “Rudesheimer,” etc, 

