The San Francisco call., 1898-12-16
THE VALUE OF COMMERCIAL HONOR.

Ot dollars invested III II, ana us prosperity requires wide market outside our own borders
 The shipper of the adulterated product from Los Angeles should be held to strict account for his offense.
 | Navarro the dealer in the City of Mexico, whose goods were seized says of the affair that he cated with a couple of young business in Los Angeles in the importation to Mexico of wines from that locality. This implies partnership with the Los Angeles members thereof engaged in shipping to their partner in Mexico for the joint and profit of the firm. If this be so there should be in quiry to ascertain whether this commercial partner ship responsible for the sophstication of the wine in which 1t dealt, or whether 1t made the victim of the vintner or blender.
 More than any other State in the Union California requires strict observance of commercial honor the part of those who deal in her characteristic products There is profitable market for every pound of our dried and canned fruits and for every pint of our wines and brandies, provided they to the consumer in strictly frstclass and wholesome condition.
 Our fruit products largely luxuries, and in this country and the countries with which in com mercial touch there enough consumers who want them, and in good times and bad able to pay rst-class price for rstcass article to take all that send In regard to horticultural products, there need seldom be time of depression If our pro- ducers and dealers will bear this fact in mind. The California vintage is old enough to be thoroughly dersood. There is no lack of experience in fermenta- tions in their pecuarities produced by local IS experience lacking to the localities in the State fitted for the growing of special classes of wine As wine country the State is spotted just all wine regions are. The same quality of wine cannot be grown everywhere from the same grape. Nor can all kinds of wine red and white sweet and dry, clares ports Reislings and Sauternes, be grown in the same vineyard, under common conditions. One thing that cast suspicion upon whole wine pro- ducton was the attempt to do this
 It Is now known that for frst-class dry, red wines of the Bordeaux type, which call clarets, name unknown in France the cooler and moister climates, the coast and around the bay, must be sought, and not the arid and hot localities in the interior val eys and Southern California, The latter will pro- ducc ports sherries and the alcoholic wines but not claret. When attempt is made to grow wine in region suited to it. its defects are overcome by some form of sophstication of aduteration
 The Viticultural Commission did great work in locating the various wines in the field suited their production, thereby removing the temptation to over come the loss of misocaton by adulteration While that commission in existence 1t checked adultera ton and spread abroad a fund of knowledge and spirit Of commercial honor in the wine business.
 It IS not many years since sacyc acid was
  fruits and no doubt it was for time largely used in such fruits. It IS known now, however, that, taken in food drink 1t produces diabetes and various dis orders Of the liver and kidneys. Instead of being harmless antiseptic 1t IS a dangerous poison. Its adulterant of wine or cider is to arrest fer mentation. The natural lamentations of dry wines will continue for three years. They the of constant purfcation and preparation of the wine for use by freeing it of organic matter. When they are arrested by this adulterant they go the consumer charged with its poison but carrying also the danger organic matter which should be preciptated by fermentation.
 One cannot conceive of a viler dose than such wine The man who prepares and sends it to the consumer IS not only enemy of the commerce of his State and destroyer of every vine in its vineyards but he is an assassin aiming deadly blow at human life and killing people by the sinister and dreadful form in which disease can assail man.
 There is trial in this city a woman charged with killing two people in distant State by sending to them arsenic through the mails in candy. If she be guilty, she is less guilty than the men who are killing their kind in distant communities and coun- tries by sending to them worse and slower poison in these adulterated wines through the channels of commerce. The victims of arsenical poisoning had few hours of agony and entered upon peace The vic tims of salicylic wine enter upon months and some
 
 nephritis, finally to die in the convulsons of uremc poisoning.
 The authors of this commercial dishonor and adulteration guilty of greater variety of crimes than the arsenical posoner she be guilty her mo- tive not sordd gain, but arose in human weak ness and passion uncurbed
 But the wine adulterator kills for gain, to add to his profits While he is murdering scores of con sumers to increase his wealth, he is mpoverishing scores of producers by casting the vruent shadow of commercial dishonor upon the production which is their means of living
 Along his track stalk the gaunt specters of disease and poverty, his sin falls upon the innocent and his victims fill the madhouse, the poorhouse and the charnel-house He is a conspirator against the health and happiness the food and shelter of human ity and should be marked for every mans detesta- ton and be made to feel the penalties of the out ragged law.