ed many absurd rulings, and the only instance given of the absurd rulings is that a foreign meat extract may be sold by the grocer but cannot be used to flavor food products made in the United States.

With certain restrictions and qualifications this is true. This charge and illustration has its inception in statements made by Dr. Wiley in the conference between the manufacturers and the representatives of the government in 1906, to the effect that the meat inspection act, in not protecting the United States. packers from the importation of uninspected meats and sausages, was incomplete and that it would need to be supplemented by regulations under the food and drugs act.

The meat inspection act, so called, requires all meat and meat food products entering the United States to be inspected, examined and marked "Inspected and Passed." It is the guarantee of the government that they are pure and wholesome. Any meat food product such as meat extract or presumably any food product made with meat extract, if such gives a meat character to the product or is made in a packing house, must be marked, “U. S. Inspected and Passed," to entitle it to transportation in interstate commerce, and if so marked, of course, it must have had necessary inspection. To change this provision on meat. products manufactured in this country would annul the act. It would be a flagrant abuse of the act to allow a manufacturer of a preparation into which beef extract enters to label his goods "U. S. Inspected and Passed," whereas neither the meat portion nor the factory had been subject to inspection by our government officials.

However, this country cannot control the sanitary regulations of foreign governments. The meat inspection act requires the Secretary of Agriculture to inspect only domestic meat products. Yet foreign meat products, if pure and wholesome, should not be excluded and probably could not be excluded under our commercial treaties with foreign governments. This phase of food inspection is covered by the national food and drugs act, section eleven. According to regulation 32 of the food and drugs act of 1906, relating to imported food and drug products. section II of the food law, meat and meat products which would include, of course, meat extracts, may be admitted through the customs if accompanied by a certificate of official inspection of a character to satisfy the Secretary of Agriculture that they are not dangerous to health, and if bearing a label identifying the goods with the certificate. And meat and meat products so admitted may be transported in interstate commerce. Hence, under the food and drugs act an inspected, unadulterated, healthful and properly labeled meat extract may be imported into this country and sold.

If there is anything incongruous in these laws or in these regulations we fail to find it. If there is anything absurd we are unable to distinguish between the wise and the preposterous.

Even if there were any absurdity or incongruity in the aforesaid rulings, with the meat inspection act, even if there was any injustice in not allowing an American manufacturer to use in American products sold in interstate commerce foreign inspected material, or in allowing the sale in this country of foreign inspected material, sold on its merits and not as "U. S. Inspected and Passed," the fault could not be laid to the workings of the meat inspection act or demon

strate the folly of this act or any other governmental sanitary measure. The objectionable ruling which is charged to the meat inspection act is not a ruling under that act but under the national food and drugs act. Therefore, the only illustration of the many absurd rulings created under the meat inspection act turns out to be a ruling under an entirely different act made by Dr. Wiley, to whose service and a prominent conserve manufacturer the American Grocer devotes its reading and advertising columns, acting for Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, acting with representative of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor and the Secretary of the Treasury.

As regards the sale of secrets, a sanitary bill might be prepared which would guard against the possibility of any peddling of this character, and as the preparation of food products is in but few instances, and these mostly illegitimate and clandestine in character, open and above board and according to well known processes in the trade, the injury to the packer is rather hypothetical and imaginative than real.

After all the objections advanced against sanitary inspection, while trivial indeed, are but subterfuges to disguise the real objection, which crops out in the last paragraph of the editorial in the American Grocer:

"No manufacturer of unreliable food products can do business for any great length of time, for merit is the only winner of public confidence. Men who seek by deceit or fraud to gain a foothold invariably reap what they sow. It has been so for all time, and will always be the result so long as publicity and competition exist."

It is, then, governmental control of the manufacturer and sale of food stuffs that is iniquitous, and the remedy lies in publicity and competition. The education of the grocery trade to the beneficence of food laws has been slow and at times disheartening. Some, like the American Grocer, facing the inevitable and with one eye on their largest advertiser and the other on the food officials, pretend to favor food laws after they are enacted, but are particularly prone to fall from grace.

HEINZ & CO. SPENDING FORTUNES TO SAVE WILEY'S POSITION.

The American Grocer, in a full page article of January 6, 1909, quotes the New York Times (Dem.) and an advertisement in the Ladies' Home Journal of H. J. Heinz Co., vegetable packers of Pittsburg, to show that Dr. Wiley would make a good secretary of agriculture. True The American Grocer did not say that the article in the Ladies' Home Journal was a twopage advertisement of the pickle firm, but such it proved to be, at least in part. The latter part of the article, purporting to give reasons why Dr. Wiley is "hated," seems to be the inspiration of the editor of The American Grocer himself, although no indication that such is the case is shown in the alleged quotation from "the January number of the Ladies' Home Journal." The argument of the paper is that Dr. Wiley made experiments with benzoate of soda and copper sulphate, found them deleterious to health and thereupon ruled against their use. Food producers protesting, the President appointed a referee board of distinguished chemists to appease them, which remained inactive until after the fall elections.

Meanwhile Dr. Wiley's two associates on the Board

of Food and Drug Inspection signed a bulletin approved by Secretary Wilson allowing the use of .1 per cent of 1 per cent benzoate of soda if the name and amount be stated on the package. Dr. Wiley refused to sign. This is insubordination. The article in the Ladies' Home Journal (actually display advertisement of Heinz & Co.) is relied on to show that benzoate of soda is deleterious to health, which advertisement in turn quotes a late bulletin of Dr. Wiley (Part 4, No. 84) to the effect that benzoate of soda should be excluded from food products, which conclusion is advertised as being that of the United States government authorities.

After completing the circle of argument in which its preface is offered as its proof the editor of the Ladies' Home Journal (actually The American Grocer) intimates that Dr. Wiley is much abused.

This style of presentation of the case of Dr. Wiley, embellished and even less accurate than the article in the New York Times, is seen in Hearst's chain of newspapers and others who can be reached through his sensation producing press bureau. Of course the cart is before the horse. Dr. Wiley of himself has no authority to make rulings under any law. He has made no experiment on copper in foods. He and his associates, commissioned in behalf of Secretary Wilson, did make rulings allowing tentatively and temporarily the use of a limited quantity of benzoate of soda in food products. The entire proposition was then placed by the President in the hands of the referee board, consisting of Dr. Ira Remsen of Johns Hopkins University, chairman, and four of the leading chemists of the leading universities in this country, to settle disputed questions, who individually are now making studies and tests. Dr. Wiley, in publishing the results of his partisan investigations and announcing his conclusions and opinions as to what should be allowed in food products under the food law was discourteous to the President and unfair to the referee board who were commissioned by him to make the decision. Yes, one might call it insubordination, as he, working under the President, did precisely what the President had expressly, for good reasons, taken out of his control and placed in other hands. In not signing Bulletin 101, which reaffirms the position of the Government as announced in Bulletin 89, which left the question of the prohibition of benzoate of soda in foods open pending the decision of the board of referees and which bulletin was properly signed by him Dr. Wiley again showed his contempt for the board and the authority which formed it. He, of course, has the right not to sign any bulletin with which he is not in accord, and this in itself cannot be considered insubordination, but when he is acting as in this case by appointment of the Secretary of Agriculture for and in stead of the Secretary of Agriculture, as agent, when his views do not coincide, but conflict, with those of his principal, it is time to resign, and any honorable man would resign his commission, to so act for him.

This is the real issue, not the question of the wholesomeness of any preservative or any article of food. The false issue is, of course, raised by Dr. Wiley to further his ambition to become Secretary of Agriculture, first announced to several food commissioners at the last convention at Mackinac, and at which meeting he suceceded in getting through some resolutions uncomplimentary to the Secretary of Agriculture. The

present crusade lead by The American Grocer and the Heinze company (and their allegiance is well deserved) will scarcely commend itself to the people. But why did The American Grocer use the Heinz advertisement in the Ladies' Home Journal in preference to their own, which says in display caption: "Dr. Wiley Condemns Preservatives. When the Order Prohibiting Their Sale Comes Will You Be Prepared for It."

THE FOOD JOURNAL AND FOOD LEGISLATION.

Would that the universe might be governed by the law of love rather than the reign of law. Unfortunately it is necessary for the serenity of society. to put a curb on man's passions, his greed, his avarice, and even his unnatural cruelty. It is also necessary for our position as an independent and powerful people that all this be done under forms of law and within the scope of the constitution under which we are banded together. Among the abuses which was unknown in ancient days but has become more obnoxious in recent years is fraud in the manufacture and sale of commodities, or, as it is known in German, as Unlauter Wettwewerb, or the abuse of illegitimate competition.

Such abuses affect the people in two ways: First, as consumers; second, as legitimate producers.

The only frauds of this nature that nations have legislated against are those that concern the direct manufacture and sale of adulterated, misrepresented and substitute food products. This movement begar in the early century in England at the instigation of the consumer, and concerned itself chiefly with those products which were injurious to health, but gradually encompassing misrepresentation of all kinds of food. In this country the movement began at the instigation of the producer or manufacturer and concerned itself principally with substitute or misbranded foods, prohibited under the cloak of protection to public health. The laws first formed by several states in the early eighties have been enlarged to include adulterations and misrepresentations of all kinds of food and have been adopted with a slight change of form by almost every Northern and Western state. Up to the time of the passage of the National Food and Drugs Act few of the Southern states had joined the procession. However, complaint soon came from the manufacturers that they were required to obey too many diversified laws, and from the state food commissions that they could not enforce the law of their state without injustice to their constituents in the case of goods entering the state from beyond its boundaries. Therefore the demand for a national law to aid in the enforcement and in the unification of the state laws. No strong demand for this law seems to have come from states without food production and could not well have come as they had not taken the preliminary precaution to first help themselves by passing a state law.

In the wake of the legitimate agitation and demand for a national law which would be useful to the states came the agitators and officeholders, who saw in the proposition an opportunity for increasing their power and perquisites. By means of misrepresentation and the mighty machinery of the government they were able to secure a law which in a measure served their purposes, by giving them the power of saying what was legitimate and what was illegitimate competition in the preparation and sale of food. The law was of

course unsatisfactory and would be even although its enforcement had been left in disinterested hands. Only the wisdom and conservatism of the present Secretary of Agriculture has saved it from the widespread condemnation of the people and the censure of the courts. In so far as the National Food and Drugs Act was founded on the New York and other state laws it is undoubtedly good as a model for state food laws. In its departure there from it is generally a failure, and aside from the question of its constitutionality has proven to be a hindrance rather than an aid to the enforcement of state food laws. If all the states should pass a uniform food law, a national law conforming thereto might be passed which would aid and not hamper state food work. Until that time we still advocate The American Food Journal's National Food Law requiring goods entering interstate commerce to be labeled according to the law of the state into which they are shipped. Uniformity, or such uniformity as is compatible with the different desires and interests of the various sections of the country, would come in time. Manufacturers would be glad to adjust their business to conform to the laws of the states in which they do business, and the cost of such additional care would be infinitessimal compared with the cost of doing business with the present law in the face of the persistent hammering of American manufacturers and American food material.

BEER FREE FROM CHEMICALS.

The agitation against alcoholic liquors has led to many erroneous impressions. One such impression is that beer is made with chemicals. To those familiar with the relation between synthetic and organic products it would matter little whether the building up of compounds took place in the living cell or in the alembic. To many, however, the thought of an artificial product is obnoxious. It may relieve this class of people who may drink a glass of beer occasionally to know that it is from first to last a product of life. Beer belongs to the great fermentation industry which furnishes our bread and butter, our cheese and wine and vinegar and honey and tea, not to mention sauer kraut.

Beer is made from malted barley, hops and water, with often a portion of the barley replaced by some other amylaceous substance. The reason for using unmalted barley or other grains in place of all malted barley is that the diastase or ferment, or enzyme in malted barley is more than sufficient to convert all of the starch into sugar, therefore, for economy as weli as other reasons, the correct proportion is maintained between the malt and starch. Beer as thus prepared has all the starch converted into sugar and all or almost all the sugar converted into alcohol and needs no preservative whatever to keep it sweet, palatable and wholesome. Beer contains the extractives of the grains used in its preparation, which consist in considerable part of nitrogenous or muscle building substances and in alcohol in diluted form capable of being utilized in the body for the production of heat and energy. Beer, like milk, may not agree with some individuals, and therefore they should deny the temptation of the palate even on a hot day. Others may object to all alcoholic foods on sentimental or ethical grounds, but there is no ground for the objections to beer on the ground that chemicals are used in its preparation.

THE BLEACHED FLOUR DECISION.

On account of the importance of the case, the magnitude of the industry affected, the relation of the decision to probable action in other states and to the ruling of the Secretary of Agriculture on the same goods, we print the decision of Judge Pollock in the North Dakota bleached flour case in full. It will be remembered that a few years ago Dr. Winton, in a paper on the food work of foreign countries, called attention to the bleaching of flour and the experiments made in Europe to determine its quality and wholesomeness. About a year ago Commissioner Ladd of North Dakota prepared a bulletin on bleached flour, in which he condemned the practice of bleaching as contrary to the North Dakota food law.

The millers, learning of this bulletin, secured an injunction against its distribution. Mr. Ladd took the case to the Supreme Court on a writ of prohibition. That body held that Judge Pollack had jurisdiction and that the case should be heard on its merits. The suit was then started and expert testimony offered on both sides, and at its conclusion Judge Pollack took the case under advisement.

Apparently the decision pleases both sides of the controversy; the millers, in establishing the purity and excellence of their product, and Commissioner Ladd because it enables him to force it off the North Dakota market. The admission of the millers that bleached flour contained an infinitesimal amount of nitrous acid was fatal to their case. The general impression will be that the case, terminating as it did in favor of the food commission, and requiring the millers to pay all court costs, was a decided victory for Food Commissioner Ladd.

HON. JOHN G. CAPERS.

Hon. John G. Capers, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who in connection with Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and Renick W. Dunlap, Assistant Chief of the Division of Chemistry, have been commissioned to review the whisky controversy, is a southerner by birth and education, and is still a comparatively young man. He was born in Anderson, S. C., in 1866, and received his education in the South Carolina Military Academy, Charleston, and Columbia University, from which latter he graduated in the law school in 1887. He was admitted to practice in the same year.

In political affairs he was first a Democrat, but in 1896, on the nomination by the Democrats of William Jennings Bryan for President, cast his fortunes and his vote for William McKinley.

In 1901 he was appointed U. S. District Attorney for South Carolina. He was delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1904, and a member of the Republican National Committee since 1904.

He was made U. S. Internal Revenue Commissioner June 1, 1907. On the passage of the denatured alcohol law it became necessary before adopting regulations for the enforcement of the law for representatives of the department to go to Europe to study the way similar laws were enforced there. Commissioner Capers and Charles A. Crampton were selected for this responsible work. As Commissioner of Internal Revenue Commissioner Capers has had many hard knots to untangle but he has done his work in an energetic and progressive manner.

NO. 2 OATS.

A case has just been tried in the District Court of the United States, Eastern District of Tennessee, Judge Sanford sitting, against the Bartlett Commission Co., for violating the National Food and Drugs Act, in shipping through interstate commerce a consignment of oats.

The oats were represented to be No. 2 mixed oats, which, according to the standards of the board of appeals, "shall be sweet, reasonably clean, and reasonably free from other grains."

Mr. Shanahan of the Bureau of Grain Standardization, Department of Agriculture, defined the words. "reasonably clean and reasonably free" as used to include a mixture of oats to which other grains have been added in an amount not to exceed 15 per cent. The oats in litigation contained 75 per cent oats and 25 per cent barley by weight, and the oats were adjudged misbranded. A judgment notice on this case is in preparation and will soon be published. The case is of the greatest interest to the grain world, as it establishes authority for the government officials to enforce arbitrary standards of quality when goods are marketed according to those standards.

CHANGES IN ILLINOIS FOOD COMMISSION. Mr. H. E. Schucknecht has resigned his position as assistant food commissioner to accept a position as western manager of the Worchester Salt Company of New York City. His headquarters will be in the Northwestern building, Chicago. The position is regarded as not only more remunerative than state work but offers a chance for further advancement with a strong company. Judge Eagleton, who has been the legal adviser of the food commissioner and conducted most of their successful suits, also resigns and enters the law firm of Eagleton & Parker at Robinson, Ill. His growing law practice in the old firm and the advantages of the new alliance necessitated the resignation as attorney for the food commission.

Mr. Rodenberg of East St. Louis, a brother of the congressman from that district, has been appointed an inspector.

NEBRASKA FOOD COMMISSIONER IGNORES TRADE RULES.

The Nebraska food commissioner construes the label law of the state to apply to wholesale as well as to prepared retail packages.

In a numbers of cases wholesalers have made arguments both by letter and in person to the food commissioner, setting forth certain rules long established in the business and urging that the enforcement of the pure food law should take into consideration these rules which are well understood and agreed to by retailers and that the law should be so administered that these rules would not be interfered with. The holding of the deputy food commissioner, however, is that these rules in business wherever they interfere with either the letter or the spirit of the law should be ignored in the enforcement of the law so that new rules may be established that will bring business up to the law instead of asking the law to go down to and adjust itself to the old established rules.

Mr. Taft's administration will get its farming lore. from the man who invented agriculture, Secretary Wilson.-Chicago Daily News, December 21.

declared to be unconstitutional and a dead letter. The new bill as explained by Commissioner Foust, who fathers and fosters it, specifies the percentage of preservatives or varieties of preservatives that are injurious, thus dispensing with expert testimony in prosecutions.

The guarantee clause has been eliminated in the new bill but provisions for a hearing similar to the Illinois law has been inserted to satisfy the retailer. The retailer is thus to be given an opportunity to stop selling adulterated goods before prosecution can be commenced.

A very important decision was recently handed down by the Supreme Court involving the right of the state or municipality under its "police power" to enforce any necessary regulations for the protection of the public health.

The federal tribunal sustains a Chicago ordinance which authorizes the condemnation and destruction of tainted foods in addition to preventing their sale. The destruction of food is the destruction of property, but the power to protect public health includes the power to order the seizure and destruction, even without a hearing, of unwholesome food that is unfit for human consumption. Not to destroy such food is to put too much temptation in the way of weak or careless dealers.

* * *

Investigation shows that Secretary Wilson must serve until November 29, 1909, in order to equal the record for long service in the cabinet of Albert Gallatin, who was secretary of the treasury for twelve years, eight months and twenty days.

HON. ANDREW FRENCH. Dairy and Food Commissioner of Minnesota.

PURE FOOD AND POLITICS.

We note with interest the attitude of some of our Massachusetts contemporaries in taking up the cudgels in behalf of Dr. Wiley, chief of the pure food department of the agricultural department at Washington, whose official light nowadays is not burning so brightly as formerly. When Dr. Charles Harrington, secretary of the State Board of Health, died, a few months ago, every one of these papers was most eulogistic of praise of his services to the state and nation, the cause of science in general and pure food in particular; yet if Dr. Wiley is the model health officer and the world's champion of pure food, the praise given Dr. Harrington during his life time, and after his death, must be undeserved because in method and character he was Dr. Wiley's exact opposite.

Dr. Harrington built up a set of pure food regulations for Massachusetts which stand to-day as the model of this country, and the best results which Dr. Wiley achieved have been by adopting Dr. Harrington's rules for the nation. Dr. Harrington regarded Dr. Wiley not as a pure food scientist, but somewhat of a political bully seeking political advertisement all the time.

President Roosevelt and Secretary Wilson have apparently wakened up to the fact that Dr. Wiley has been building up a machine to influence public sentiment, and is rapidly getting into a position where his acts, no matter how unjust, cannot be overruled, thus making himself greater than the President of the United States or the Secretary of Agriculture, whose subordinate he is.

This pure food propaganda has been a great thing for the public, which has been taught the dangers of adulteration, but this result could have been accomplished equally well without using the method of issuing silly regulations to-day to repeal them to-morrow, until the food manufacturers never knew whether they were afoot or on horseback, and have been put to millions of dollars of needless expense without doing the people any particular good.

The people need at the head of the pure food department at Washington a scientific man of Dr. Harrington's type, who, without prejudice for, or against, any special food product, or craving to advertise himself, will protect the stomachs of the people by insisting on pure food and will not keep jumping from one fad to another. Dr. Wiley's temperamental disabilities. make him wholly unfit for the position he holds.Boston Traveler.

STUDENTS TO TEST FOOD.

The Kewanee Illinois Star-Courier favors the suggestion made by Illinois food inspectors that the "City Health Department purchase the simple apparatus needed for testing milk and other foods about which any suspicion is raised. Then when tests are made and evidence of adulteration is found quick action can be obtained through the State Department. The High School laboratory, it suggests, might become a public benefactor by making the tests.

The Illinois food inspectors at least are fertile in suggestions. However, State Analyst Dr. Brian will hardly relish the idea of the high school laboratory performing the tests which, in the judgment of the inspectors and the editor of the Star-Courier are necessary to protect the public from adulterated food, and by use of simple apparatus which has cost the state approximately $10,000 in the last two years.