The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1879-11-06
Food AdulteratiOn.

Everybody has heard the old story of
the pious, but thrifty grocery man who
was accustomed, each morning, before
the opening of the store to customers,
to interrogate his assistant or appren-
tice on the subject of q task he was set
to accomplish. SAM" the grocer,
would ask: Have you put water in
the whisky, sand in the sugar and
gravel in the coffeeP'' Then, on re-
ceiving a satisfactory reply from Sam
g Come in to prayers" This was in
the good old times when an honest
storekeeper sought to add to his profits
on goods by increasing their weight
and volume by the addition to them of
certain articles which would exercise
no deleterious influence on the health
of the consumer, even if they depleted
his pocket. Water did not entirely de-
stroy the virtue of the whisky in those
good old times, while the sand remain
ing undissolved in the bottom of the tea
cup did no actual harm to the drinker;
and the gravel stones were sure to be
picked out of the coffee by a careful
housewife before it was ever prepared
for the table. Adulteration in other
articles of prime consumption was I'M
known, and as q consequence our
grandfathers were a sturdy, solid, hard
working, hara-drinking set of old fell
lows, to whom dyspepsia was unknown
and delirium tremens almost an impos-
sibility.
| To-day we live in different age.
The chemist, whose earliest essays in
his occult science were devoted to the
effort to transmute base metals into
gold, has at last found means, meta
phorically speaking, to accomplish this
by Transforming vile and most unwhole-
some substances into the necessary con-
stituents of our daily bread. When we
consider that dangerous drugs and un-
clean garbage can be made into the
semblance of every article consumed
for food by human beings, and that
these Fictitious products and spurious
alimentary substances, with all their
unwholesomeness, are so ingeniously
prepared that they can deceive the
Judgment and defy the investigation of
any save experts, it will be understood
how harmful are the arts, and how
great the greed for dishonest gains,
that can procure the prostitution of
science to this base business.
The arts of food adulteration have
been brought to SO high q state of in
genuity and skill that we cannot be
| sure tndt any tnlnS we eat ana drink Is
not the product of Fictitious and dis
honest processes. Our bread is made
of flour. of wheat ground with alum to
whiten the product and to disguise the
flavor of mold and incipient decay. A
further addition of alum and saleratus
to make it rise, completes the unwhole-
someness of the staff of life. DAM
aged grain, treated with sulphuric acid
and muriate of tin develops an abun-
dant product of glucose, technically
grape sugar, which is largely used to
mix with cane sugars, and for the man
ufacture of sirups which have been
largely sold under the attractive names
of " gold and silver drops" and which,
unless made with the incest care and
most scientific accuracy, are highly
poisonous.
The manufacture of spurious butter
or oleomargerine is so extensive and the
bogus article enters so largely into con-
sumption, that it is safe to say there are
few people in cities who do not, some
time or other spread it on their drugged
bread. Beef tallow. fresh brains and a