The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1930-07-01

5 Formerly g. Logan Payne Co.
CHICAGO NEW YORK BOSTON
DR.. Wiley, a Shining Champion
DR.. Harvey W. Wiley is dead. Over at the Northern
Great Plains experiment station this death strikes a per-
fonal note. DR.. Wiley and Jim" Stephens, the station
head, were friends who understood each other In the old
COSMOS club days in Washington.
All over the nation the death of DR.. Wiley also has its
PERSONAL repercussion. DR.. Wiley was the champion Of
he people who are willing to eat canned food but pre-
er to eat it without the danger of being poisoned to
Heath by 1t. The fact that this can be done nowadays
S largely due to the war Wiley conducted on the canned
,oisoners. Otherwise people might be dying these days
ike the thinner family out at Sentinel Butte, last week,
,fter eating poisoned canned beans.
The people Of today do not realize what they owe to
his knight without fear and without reproach In the war
20 establish pure food in tin-can America. In an era Of
zig business corruption, with William Howard Taft en-
hroned in the white house in a feeble Righteousness that
permitted all sorts of exploitation scarcely less scandalous
han in the regime Of that other Ohioan, Harding, DR..
Wiley was the greatest champion the American people
lad since Theodore overwhelmingly of North Dako-
"a, remember.
The Wiley era was that when constituencies purveyors
If foods thought they could get away with the canning of
my refuse as something fit to eat. The nation was flood
ID with poisonous stuff in cans under fancy labels, but
scarcely less than pure sure death. Swin from tomato
canning, 1Or CyQlCdl example, WIS put VI ~ CdVouP, WILL
certain chemicals used as preservatives to make it pal
/ atable and salable. In the packing house district the pur-
/ ,eying of filth as preserved meats had led Upton Sinclair
] % write his philippe Jungle" Roosevelt had drawn his
: Big Stick from q CULVER which knew nothing so slen-
Ter as an arrow and had been welding 1t to good purpose
against criminal big business.
DR.. Wiley had been in the chemical department of the
department. Of agriculture since 1883 when the great war
against criminal big business broke in the Roosevelt adj
niric<rofion II n MT 1on0 hof0rc ha uaS dra MN from
,bscurity to WELD a shining lance against the malefactors
II great wealth. While Roosevelt tilted steel and rail-
,oads and Wall street, d.. Wiley fought the food poison
srs, the brigade Of benzoate Of soda, the rotten whiskey
buccaneers who were the predecessors of the Volsteadian
noonshineYs and all that ik exploiting the very lives Of
che people in a policy Of selling rotten food spiced up to
pass the teeth Of the public as genuine goods when but
waste by-products scarcely less than garbage.
n DR.. Wiley organized his famous poison squad and test
ID out preserved foods, with the result that a great war
developed over the use Of benzoate Of soda, a d~eleterious
oreservative. DR.. Wiley asked only that the use Of this
oreservative be indicated on the label Of the preserved
ioods, and the prisoners, fighting for an anbuscade from
which to sacrifice the health and lives Of the community
20 mere commercial gain. resisted exposing their hand In
hat way. Reservoirs Of editorial ink were spilled in the
controversy In those days.
Finally Dr.. Wiley was forced to resign. "They got
1im." william Howard Taft was in the white house and
ne made a feeble gesture Of protecting DR.. Wiley, but
Taft was the biggest friend the buccaneers Of poisoned
.ood had in America. He made a pretense Of protecting
sDr. Wiley. but when Wiley had defeated his enemies and
decided the people were too ohfuscated to understand
what ne was doing in their behalf and that he might as
we'll resign in a cause lost as long as the white house was
I open to suspicion, this so-called friend and protector.
Taft, let him go. 1t was one Of those instances where
Taft revealed his ~incapacity as president.
But DR.. Wiley had started something. The country
was aroused. The cause Of pure food, like John Browns
I 3ody a-moldering in the grave.w was marching on. Pack
.s came to see the light Of reason and to learn the les
! son that pure food paid. DR.. Wley's gospel leavens the
I ahole world Of food today. BY a special dispensation OF
Z tate he lived to see his work come to fruiton. What he
advocated the hostile forces of the canning and packing
industries have taken up and made their own cause.
When such roles as DR.. Wiley and chemical and bacte-
biological knowledge played in application to food and
sanitation and preventive medicine are understood. DR..
Wiley will rank high with the heroes Of science-higher
because he was, in addition, a hero of politics. He met
the best Of the modern Boreian brood and hypocritical
statesmen and he triumphed over them in time, though
At first apparently worsted by the ruthless and unscrupu-
lous elements Of the day when Big Business didn't realize
that common honesty pays best. DR.. Wiley was a scien-
list and he approached the subject from that side. He
proved science superior to politics and crookedness. He
created q new era in the nation as its progress from sim
pie life to complex evolved. He should always be re-
naembered along with Roosevelt, for he was Of that galaxy
AZ edVeO We I'LL from pelnH plunQere0 ana poisoned
n . day Of mad apostasy to the creed Of Mammon-the
: era when the peak was reached In the heresy that
pothing matters as long as It pays. r..
p. Wiley was more than himself. He epitomized the
! Entire crusade for social and national righteousness that
vlstaIted with the advent Of Theodore Roosevelt in the
-spgeadency and by its own inherent dynamic common
Ssanss finally converted to its side those whom selfish
31rped ct first rallied Is rebels against the best interests
xof The people and the nation and business.
NJ
Ocean Flights Still Thrill
II may be quite true, as the critics have been insisting,
&that ocean airplane flights are no longer useful to avia-
ztton because they neither prove nor reveal anything that
rs not known already: but there is still a big thrill in
then.
The flight Of the Southern Cross has been quite as
fspectacular Is. any OF them. No one. picking up an after
En000 nAner and tracing tho rlono.s nroorace ovor <ha