The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1899-03-23
* HICAGO, March 22.-The mem
bers of the Government court of
inquiry finished their labors In

* HICAGO, March 22.-The mem
bers of the Government court of
inquiry finished their labors In
~ Chicago to-day and left for New
York this evening. The testi-
mony of Governor Roosevelt will there
be received, after which the court will
proceed to Governors Island.
The evidence brought forth to-day
was largely cumulative in its character,
consisting mainly of criticisms Of the
canned beef and refrigerated beef from
soldiers who ate it and watched its
effects in Cuba and Porto Rico.
David Fleischman, a bellbCy in the
Hotel Morrison, told of a visit to the
stockyards in the company of an un-
known man, whose purpose he supposed
to be an experiment in the matter or
preserving beef by chemical treatment.
w c.. Marshall, the provision special
list, whose testimony was expected to be
sensational threw no additional light
on the question, his evidence being prin-
cipally the expression of the opinion
that canned beef as now put on the
market is totally unfit for human 1000
Lieutenant ]. D. L. Hartman or the
First Cavalry, who was acting reg1mental
ouartermaster while the regiment was
stationed
refrigerator beef was received from Ar
mour & Co. 1t was brought to Lakeland
in cars. At first it was very good and
there was no objection to 1t, but in three
or four days it began to get poorer IN
quality. In two instances a board Oh
survey rejected the beef. In one case
the witness rejected whole carload.
The stencil was observable before the car
was opened. The beef was not received
because decomposition had set in. The
rejected beef was not accounted for in
the vouchers.
David a FIeischman testified that he
was employed as bellboy at the Hotel
Morrison, Chicago, during the month of
June, 1895.
lone day in June" he said. "a gentle
man in room 131 asked me If l would be
at leisure to go to the stockyards with
him l went out there with him and
helped to carry two boxes. He went out
to see some man about meat, he told me.
where there were three or four rows OF
meat. In each of the boxes there were
four smaller packages, containing, as
recall it, a black or rather light gray
colored substance. He put this into per-
forated trays made for that purpose, set
fire to it and placed it under the meat.
asked him what that was done for and he
said it was done as an experiment to pre-
serve the meat. Next day l was to go
back and get the cans.
Il asked himA whether it was to kill
germs or anything like that, but he, said
no. simply TO pressEve the meal. meat I put put
it buried the end Xof my tongue. I
called attention to thS fact that the meat
looked rather larger thsR when we were
there before. He said tffSJ was simply
an enlargement of the meat from the ice.
There was a sulphurous smell in the car
and another odor, which cannot de-
scribe. / took the cans back to the hotel.
II noticed in one end of the car there
was a card marked Tampa, Fla This
was at Armour's packing house. There
rows of beef; l think it was halves. 1
asked him who he was, and if l am not
mistaken, he told me he was a quarter
master or a quartermaster general. or
something like that. He was about 5
feet 10 inches tall, wore eyeglasses, and,
should judge, was about 45 years of
dressed in plain clothes I understood
from what he said that he had some con-
neetion with the military service ;.
years president of the auxiliary medical
staff in the Chicago Health Department.
ne had made several examinations of
both canned and refrigerated beef. dating
back several years. In the latter part of
June, 1898, he said, some canned meat was
brought to him TO determine it's charac-
ter. He found that the meat was appar
emily boiled beef. 1t probably had been
boiled before ii was sealed in the can and
somewhat after. There was in the can
nitrate of potash, otherwise saltpeter.
These presentations, said the witness,
must have been in the can before the
saturated the fiber of the meat and har-
dened il.
Have you ever found horsefesh put up
in cans and sold on the market here in
Chicago?"
Not put up in cans, but I have had
samples brought to me purporting to be
fresh beef from the market, and have
found some of these samples TO be horse
flesh instead of beef. 1 had no means of
knowing whence they came. An investi-
cation with that result once led the
Health Department to suppress an estab-
lishment in the outskirts of Chicago"