UNIFICATION OF ADULTERATORS

From this time on all the interests seeking to paralyze the enforcement of the food and drugs act acted as one body under the leadership of the Department of Agriculture. The rectifiers were perhaps the best organized of the enemies of the pure food and drugs legislation. The interests that supported and demanded the use of benzoate of soda represented only a minority of the manufacturers of ketchup. Those who demanded the free use of sulphurous acid and sulphites were confined to the manufacturers of cane molasses and of dried fruits. Those who demanded the use of saccharin were only a very small part of the interests engaged in the canning and preserving of our foods. The people who were anxious to use alum, however, represented a great majority of baking-powders. Those manufacturers who made baking powder out of phosphates and tartrates were not so numerous and did not do so big a business as the makers of alum powders. The whole body of adulterators and misbranders of our foods who were depressed by the results of the decision of the question of what is whisky were restored to optimism and tremendous activity by the appointment both of the Board of Food and Drug Inspection and of the Remsen Board. By this time, however, public sentiment which had been so unanimously in favor of food and drug legislation was awakened to the danger which came from the betrayal of the cause of pure foods by these executive proclamations. The daily, weekly, and monthly press of the United States were almost solidly opposed to these illegal activities of the executive officers in charge of the pure food and drugs legislation. Not a day passed without numerous attacks upon this laxity of administration appearing in all parts of the country.

I will return to this condition of affairs later on. The Secretary of Agriculture was perfectly acquainted with the incident just described in regard to the origin of the Remsen Board. Nevertheless, in the following statements to the fruit growers of California he ascribed the origin of the Remsen Board to a totally different cause. I quote from page 847 of the Moss Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Agriculture:

I went out to the Pacific Coast, I think it was in 1907 to look at the forests which had just come to our department. Telegrams began to come all around me, and finally reached me that something was seriously the matter at San Francisco, and I wired back that I would be there at a certain day, and I went there. I found the mayor, the bankers, the business men and the farmers in a very great commotion. They wanted me to talk. I said, "I do not know what to say, I will listen; you talk, gentlemen." "Well," they said, "we have a $15,000,000 industry here in the growing and drying of fruits. These dried fruits are contracted for by the big eastern merchants. Our people borrow money from the banks, and when the fruit is sold everything is straightened out and things go on, but you people in Washington say we can only use 350 milligrams of sulphur to the kilo, and the eastern men who have contracted for our fruit will not make their contracts good; they are afraid it will not keep."

After listening to these good people all day I said, "I see the condition you are in, gentlemen. I do not think the American Congress in making this law intended to stop your business. We have not learned quite enough in Washington to guide your business without destroying it; we will know better by and by, but I will tell you what to do. Just go on as you used to go on and I will not take any action to seize your goods or let them be seized or take any case into court until we know more about the number of milligrams to the kilo, and all of that. In the meanwhile I shall send a chemist from our Bureau of Chemistry out here, and I want to get the best chemist in your state at your State University at Berkeley, put the two together and try to get the facts," and we did that. They worked that summer; and before I think they completed all they would like to have done the Referee Board came * * * I think that about answers the question why the Board was created.

When the chemists made their report, Secretary Wilson promptly refused to have it printed because they had found a harmless substitute for sulphur fumes.

The hearings accorded the users of saccharin, after the report on saccharin by the Referee Board had been published, developed the following curious incident.

The President selected the alleged discoverer of saccharin as Chairman of the new committee to revise the findings of the Bureau of Chemistry. This committee entirely reversed President Roosevelt's decision that benzoate of soda was a harmful substance. They did not, however, agree with him entirely in regard to the harmlessness of saccharin. In their report they permitted the use of a sufficient amount of saccharin to sweeten foods, but they were of the opinion that if one consumed over 3/10th of a gram of saccharin at any one time it might prove injurious and that also as a sweetener it was a fraud. The manufacturers of saccharin asked for and secured a hearing on this point. The hearing was held before Secretary Wilson and Secretary Nagel. Addressing the saccharin manufacturers, Secretary Wilson (Page 908, Moss Committee) made the following statement:

I want to say frankly to you gentlemen that the Referee Board was organized and put in action for the very purpose of conserving the interests of the manufacturers, by insuring them a sane hearing, and, that being the case, it is the best the Government can do.

To the users of burning sulphur he promised complete immunity until the Remsen Board made its decision. In point of fact, that came only after many years. It was never published by the Department of Agriculture. The indulgence has continued for twenty-two years and bids fair to go on forever. Now to the makers of saccharin he says the Remsen Board was created to be sure manufacturers get a "sane hearing." The plain inference is that the hearing specified in the Act is not "sane."

Of course Secretary Wilson was right in so frankly stating the purpose for which the Referee Board was created. Manufacturers of adulterated goods were never shut out from a full and fair hearing. That was always available before the Courts when they were cited to appear as violators of the law. The Referee Board was an effective buffer for all this class of manufacturers. It prevented a full and fair hearing of the case before a jury and a United States Court. It was the most baleful influence toward the degradation of the food supply of our country that ever existed. The Referee Board has passed away, but the evil effects of its activities will be felt for all time to come. Its decisions and its activities are still regnant in the mal-administration of the pure-food law. The only hope of the future lies in the possibility of some day getting a Secretary of Agriculture who with one stroke of his pen will erase forever from the records of the Department every decision of the Referee Board and every regulation made in conformity therewith, and remove every administrative officer who willingly carries these decisions and regulations into effect.