With few exceptions, nearly everything we eat or drink—in fact, nearly everything we buy—is liable to be substituted for what we want, or to be mixed with something else that we do not want—at all events, at the price we have to pay for it.
There is thus considerable excuse for the amusing blunder made by a counsel who was cross-examining Mr. Siemens, the electrical expert, in a case in which there was a dispute about the working of some electrical plant.
“I think, Mr. Siemens, that you have had a long experience in connection with electricity?”
“That is so.”
“Well, now, I want you to tell me whether in the course of all your experience you have ever known electricity to be adulterated?”
“In only one instance,” replied the witness.
“And when was that?”
“In the phrase ‘greased lightning,’” was the instant witty reply of the electrical expert.
But there are few commodities which can be bought or sold that have the clean record of electricity. In every direction, competition is daily becoming keener, and rival firms “cut” the prices, each forcing the other to sell either with the minimum of profit or to stop selling altogether.
Under these conditions there is a strong temptation for a small firm in danger of being crushed out of existence by its competitors to avail itself of the additional profit afforded by adulteration, and thus be able to sell its goods at a lower price than its more scrupulous rivals.