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That bottle was a sample of thousands of adulterated or entirely spurious "foods" for which American men and women had been for a long time spending good money in the belief that they were getting what they paid for.

A quarter of a century ago the food poisoners and adulterators spread a net of fraud across the United States, the like of which the world had never seen; and for a long time the American public, with the meekness (up to a certain point!) for which it has become notorious, submitted to this abuse, eating the drugged food and suffering the daily pangs of indigestion, wondering vaguely what was the matter—why Europeans found us a nation of dyspeptics—and paying fortunes to doctors, and to vendors of patent medicines, without being able to avert the final general breakdown.

Then something occurred which made the worm turn on its tormentors—the "embalmed beef" incident.

Major-General Miles, backed up by other officers, declared positively that most of the canned beef supplied to our soldiers during the war with Spain was unfit for human food, and that he was convinced that the refrigerated beef supplied was highly deleterious because of the introduction of chemicals for preservative purposes. The court which investigated these charges, while admitting some of the alleged evils, indulged, many people thought, in whitewashing; so the public at last made up its mind that "something was rotten in the state of Denmark."

Particularly was it impressed by the statement that the food supplied to the army was "not different from that generally sold to the public." That admission made people ask themselves: "What, then, are we eating?"

The result was a general awakening and investigation, a countrywide search which revealed the shocking fact that the community was harboring thousands of seemingly respectable citizens who were piling up fortunes by plying the deadly trade of modern Borgias, slaughtering infants and invalids and making even the robust feel uncomfortable most of the time.

The chemicals used were formalin, boric and salicylic acid, fluo-sylicate of ammonium, aniline dyes, and a number of secret compounds that were sold to packers and dealers, enabling them to doctor spoiled meats and other foods in such a way as to deceive the purchaser and consumer into thinking them fresh and wholesome.

To realize the full extent of this nefarious traffic one has to go back to the newspaper reports of the investigations and food tests, especially in the year 1899, after the "embalmed beef" inquiry. I have before me clippings that would fill fifty pages with gruesome details; but a mere peep into this culinary chamber of horrors must suffice.

"The use of antiseptics as preservatives is becoming alarmingly great," declared Prof. A. S. Mitchell, analytical chemist of the Wisconsin Dairy and Food Commission, before the Senatorial Committee on Pure Food Investigation. Among the preservatives he named was a liquid called "freezene," which he said, was almost pure formic-aldehyde, the substance that several chemists at the military inquiry had claimed to have found in the beef furnished the army. It acts disastrously upon the tissues of the stomach, but was often put into the milk and butter supplied to families. Butchers employed freely, especially in "Hamburger steaks," sulphite of soda, which not merely arrests digestion, but is, as another Government expert remarked, practically the same he had used as a medical student to preserve corpses, and later to disinfect houses where smallpox patients had lived.

The New York "Herald" of June 4, 1899, contained a page and a half of exposures, with these headlines:

POISON AND ADULTERATION FOUND IN ALL FOOD PURCHASED BY THE "HERALD." FORTY SAMPLES ANALYZED AND NOT ONE OF THEM WHAT IT PURPORTED TO BE. TEA THAT CONTAINED ALMOST EVERYTHING BUT TEA LEAVES. SOME FACTS THAT EVERY HOUSE-KEEPER SHOULD KNOW. THE CITY AUTHORITIES DO LITTLE.

One of the samples of what was sold as "tea" was "composed of refuse of many kinds—hair, mouldy leaves from everything that grows but the tea plant." Another sample contained "dust, seed-pods, foreign woody stems, and unidentified refuse."

To cite one more of the two-score analyses made by the "Herald's" expert (James C. Duff, consulting chemist to the New York Produce Exchange): "The sample of American macaroni contains artificial yellow coloring matter, egg-yolk color, composed of flour and the coloring matter. This coloring matter has as its base chrome colors—substances very poisonous. The genuine Italian macaroni contains nothing injurious to health."

"Reports from analysts in other cities show that 92 per cent. of the allspice examined is adulterated, 50 per cent. of cinnamon, 60 per cent. of ginger, 100 per cent. of mustard, and 70 per cent. of pepper.... It is a matter of record that the demand for the materials for adulteration has called into existence a branch of manufacturing industry having for its sole object the production of articles known as 'spice mixtures' or 'pepper dust.' They are sold by the barrel as 'P. D. ginger,' 'P. D. pepper,' or 'P. D. cloves.' These manufacturers openly advertise themselves as 'assorters and renovators of merchandise....'"

The New York "Tribune" printed a report of an address made by a representative of the Benchmen's Association of Retail Butchers who said, regarding the upper West Side: "Decayed meats are chemically treated to counteract odor and outer discoloration and are hawked on the street corners on Saturday nights. The shoppers of that locality are after something cheap, and here they get it. Resulting illness is ascribed to a mysterious Providence or anything rather than the 'nice tender broilers, two for a quarter,' that they had for Sunday's dinner. The police say the matter is one for the Health Department, and the Health Department refers your complaints to its inspectors. These are paid from $1,200 to $1,400 a year, and to my positive knowledge not one of them has entered our shops for the last seven years. For all the Health Department knows, we might have been selling spoiled meat all that time."

A Philadelphian investigator of adulterated food, H. Wharton Amberling, wrote: "There has been adulteration for ages. It is born of the same parentage as robbery, perjury, arson and murder. It has grown in enormity because the law has not dealt with it as it has with other crimes. The rapid progress of chemistry has attained most grateful accomplishments, but the leprous hand of adulteration is using it to fill our blood with the poison of disease and death."

"It is estimated," said the New York "Evening Post," "that the people of the United States spend no less than five billion dollars a year for food and that nine-tenths of this money is paid for articles of food which are more or less adulterated. All food adulterations are not injurious, though a great majority of them, probably nine-tenths, are so, in greater or less degree.... The art of adulterating food has been carried to a very fine point by American ingenuity and has proved immensely profitable to those who practise it, while it has undoubtedly worked great damage to the general health.... It is a wise man who knows what he is eating nowadays."

A matter for the Health Department

A report of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station called attention to the fact that eighty-nine samples of tea were all found pure as a result of the federal law of 1897, which established a board of seven experts to enforce the statute and forbade importation of the adulterated article.

The American products were on the other hand in a woeful condition. Sixty-three samples of fruit jelly examined showed adulteration in two-thirds of the cases by starch, glucose, aniline dyes, and salicylic acid. Pure jellies cost 25 cents a pound while these artificial jellies cost but five cents. Out of 40 samples of marmalades and jams only three were pure. Examination of nineteen samples of sausages and oysters showed "embalming" by boric acid.