18 



the above-quoted decisions from Diisseldorf and Halle, protesting that lie had 

 imported and sold American evaporated apples in large quantities during the past 

 fifteen years without ever receiving or hearing of a single complaint from any retailer 

 or consumer of such fruit; that no objection had ever been raised against American 

 apples in any European country except Germany, and, after urging that since the 

 recent tariff reductions in the United States such discrimination against a standard 

 American product was at least ill timed, he asked that the prohibition which the 

 Frankfort police authorities had put upon his trade should be overruled and can- 

 celed by departmental authority. To this petition, which was sent on the 19th of 

 February last, no answer has yet been received, and Mr. Roelker's imports of evap- 

 orated apples have been discontinued. 



About the same time — January, 1895 — two boxes of similar apples from a lot received 

 by another Frankfort importer from Chicago were sold to a local retailer named 

 Wiegand, who exposed them for sale in his store. A policeman came, purchased a 

 small quantity, and afterwards returned with a warrant summoning Wiegand to 

 appear for trial at a specified date for violation of the law. Such of the apples 

 as remained unsold were sealed up by order of the court and their further sale 

 forbidden. The trial has been postponed and fixed for four successive dates, the 

 last of which is the 31st of this month. So far as can be ascertained, these repeated 

 postponements have been due to the inability of the court to reconcile or decide 

 between the conflicting analyses of the chemists who have tested the fruit and the 

 diverse opinions of medical experts as to where the danger line in zinc adulteration 

 should be drawn. 



The wholly different analyses which may be honestly derived from samples taken 

 from one box of apples, or even from different portions of the same sample, are 

 readily explained by the fact that any sample of say half a pound may contain 

 pieces which have rested upon the tray while drying, while the overlying pieces, 

 not having touched the metallic bottom of the tray, are wholly free from any trace 

 of zinc. But as the presence of one or more contaminated pieces in a box may be 

 sufficient under the present German system to condemn an entire box or shipment, it 

 follows that the future dried apple export trade to this country will depend upon 

 such merchandise being made absolutely free from any trace of zinc. 



Meanwhile, earnest protests have been submitted, November 30, 1894, by the cham- 

 ber of commerce at Hamburg to the committee of the Reichstag on commerce and 

 navigation, and by the chamber of commerce at Bremen to the sanitary bureau in 

 that city, both disclaiming against the present methods of surveillance, declaring 

 the alleged danger from American dried apjjles to be imaginary, and protesting 

 against a system which if continued will practically exclude from Germany an 

 article of trade which other nations accept without question. 



Nine leading firms at Berlin, Breslau, Strasburg, and Frankfort have signed a 

 circular letter declaring that they have each during the past fifteen years sold annu- 

 ally from 500 to 1,000 boxes of American evaporated apples, and tliat so far as is 

 known to them not a single case of illness has ever occurred from their consumption 

 by persons of all ages and physical conditions. It is further urged by those who 

 protest against the present system that if dried apple imports are to be controlled 

 at all, the inspection should take place at the frontier, and exclude all that are found 

 to be impure, whereas they are now allowed to be entered and are condemned and 

 confiscated only after they have paid duty as imports. 



The general situation may therefore be summarized as follows: The importation 

 of American dried fruits to Germany on a large scale began about fifteen years ago, 

 and now amounts to about a million and a half pounds per annum, of which perhaps 

 one-third are evaporated apples. 



Against sun-dried fruits of all kinds, no objection whatever is known to exist, but 

 as the record shows, artificially evaporated apples, when dried in zinc or galvanized 

 wire trays, may develop from contact sufficient salts of zinc to be detected when 



