The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-05-02

grown-ups as shall not be poison but
food. At this early point in my investi-
cation required to that impressive,
II not novel or original. conclusion
that milk is. on the whole. the most
important constituent of human ma
lures daily food. and 1t was not ap-
parent that in the fall of 1858. at the
close Of the successful crusade of
Frank Leslie, he had provided any
pure milk to take the place of the
distillery-fed article-until my atten-
ton was attracted to an advertisement
in the issue of May %. 1858 where in
appeared for the first time what may
have been the first advertisement ever
written by the late Gail Borden. re-
lative to his condensed milk. AS a
matter of timely interest and in con-
nection with the discussion of pure
milk as pure food, the following fac
smile of the notice referred to is
Introduces:
Borden's Condensed Milk. Prepared in
Ltch!ield County, Conn. is the only
milk ever concentrated without the ad-r
mixture of sugar or some other sub
Water 'nf f IS Simply ef Fresh s0 coantrg
milk, from which the water is nearly
all evaporated. and nothing added. The
purity. durability and economy. is
hitherto Nth, nne,qualled in the annals of the
One quart. by the addition of water.
makes 2 IL quarts, equal to cream
quarts rich milk, and quarts good
For sale at 173 Canal street. or de-
iivered at dwellings in New York and
Brooklyn at 25 cents per quart. 1923
Here was the man, surely, who ought
to have shared with Frank Leslie the
erro ;SIo of no ~,
of New York.
AS matter of fact. neither New
York nor any other section of his
country had at that time realized that
any gratitude was due to this man.
The short but effective advertisement
states that he did business chiefly"
on Canal Street, for his milk-much
the same quality of that Still made by
his successors, for which the wary
householder nowadays has to contend
strenuously lest his grocer substitute
something alleged to be lust as good
and one cent cheaper"-was then
actual peddled by Gail Borden and an
assistant through the streets of New
York and Brooklyn. Doubtless many
a housewife, ignorantly content with
the distillery product, objected to the
noise of the bell which Borden himself
used to ring to attract attention to
his wholesome and necessary COM
modify. The advertisement was an eff
fective substitute for the itinerant bell
But before reaching even the stage
of the peddiing-cart and bell, he had
already labored much and thought
much in the interest of pure food for
civilized man.
He was only little younger than
the century-being we'll on in his fifty
seventh year-when Frank Leslie be-
gan the Pure Milk crusade in May.
1858, and he had lived his life strenu-
ously and we'll. Since the beginning
of that life. in that picturesque and
productive Chenango valley surround
ing Norwich. N. Y.'lhis birthplace), our
public benefactor had seen American
history in the making and at close
range Down in Texas, when those in
ternational troubles were brewing
which ended in the addition of Texas,
California. and other vast territories
to this Republic. Gail Borden, farmer
and stock owner. was one of the
delegates to the convention OF San
Felipe, which in 1888 presented what
may now be regarded as the Texan
declaration of independence to the
Mexican government, and, curiOuSly
enough. the district which he repres-
ented in that convention bore the name
of La Vaca-"The Cow" Life on that
border, amid the perils and difficulties
of travel and warfare in the great
wildernesses, impressed him very deep
ly with the Importance of providing
pure food for man in a portable form,
and the mind of the practical genius
for such he unquestionably was-show-
ed itself in his earliest nutritious in
ventiOn, the Borden meat biscuit This
admirable cOntrivance for supply ra-
tions to caravans of travellers and to
armies on the plains. destined, as it
was. to be eventually appreciated at
it's true value, was not commercial
success in the early 'forties of the last
century. Not only the meat biscuit
appeared in the world-like other great
improvements in the means and ways
of human living-a generation too
soon. This might appear disastrous;
in truth. it was blessing, if not to
the Texan settlements and the pioneers
of the West, certainly to the mothers
an dbabies of New York. for it trans
ferred his effective activities of mind to
the great question of milk supply in
thickly populated countries.