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.