The Dairy Commissioner’s War on Adulterated Food

Needed Legislation to Foster and Protect Farmers from Adulterated Products.

You might draw the conclusion from what I have stated that I am a pessimist. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I do not wish the artist to make the photograph more beautiful than the original, neither do I want all the lines which nature has drawn to be removed, nor all the scars which recklessness has caused to mar the features to be covered up with paint. Let us look at legislation as we have it, not as we wish it was, and the remedy will be more quickly applied. Needed legislation is a broad subject and I can only discuss it in a general way, for the candle of my life and yours will have burned out and there will be need for legislation.

My subject, as I understand it, should have read: “Needed Legislation to Foster and Protect Farmers from Adulterated Products.” The first question which my subject suggests is: Are the farmers entitled to legislation to protect and foster their line of industry? We can answer this question by referring to the proceedings of the State Board of Equalization of 1896. We find in the abstract of assessments on personal property that the cattle of the state were assessed at $2,543,655, and that railroad stocks and all railroad personal property was assessed at $2,269,749, showing that the assessment on the former was $273,906 more than on the latter. Again, we find that the assessment on horses, mules and asses was $2,361,290; assessment on bonds, stocks, shares of banks, gas, wharf, capital stock of insurance companies, etc., was $2,123,710, so that the assessment on the former was $237,580 more than on the latter. Lastly, the assessment on sheep was $514,038, and the assessment on telephones, telegraphs and electric lines was $502,777, the former valuation being $11,261 more than the latter. You can rest assured that the assessed valuation of the farm stock was higher in proportion to its cost and profit than the other property mentioned, for the reason that every influence possible was brought to bear on the assessors and commissioners of the state to lower the assessments of the latter. Could anything more clearly demonstrate the rights of the farmers to have legislation which will protect their products from adulteration?

I have had persons whom I was prosecuting state that the farmers are demanding too much, but the facts go to prove that the farmers demand too little. Do not the lumbermen and coal miners demand a protective duty on their products? Then by what course of reasoning do you arrive at the conclusion that the farmers are unjust in their demands? During the year 1897 we have heard much of returning prosperity, and it is mostly attributed to the higher price of farm produce, proving that the prosperity of the nation depends largely on the prosperity of the farmer. Have those prices been advanced by normal or abnormal conditions? Was not the shortage in other countries the cause of the high prices here? If so, then farmers of one nation can only be prosperous at the expense of another. Is it possible that we have reached that age when the tillers of the soil cannot be all prosperous, whether on this side or on the other side of the Pacific? If this is true the natural and positive law which I defined in the beginning of this article has been set aside and all law may be summed up in four words, “Survival of the fittest.” Having been forced to draw this conclusion by following out my line of thought, I say to you, farmers and dairymen, demand your rights. Do not knock timidly on the door of the legislature, like a beggar asking for bread, but knock loudly, with no uncertain sound, in the majesty of your rights, so that warning will be given to that man or class of men that if they oppose your just demands their political heads will fall in the basket and their political corpses will be buried so deeply that resurrection will be impossible.

We need legislation not only to protect the farmer from adulterated dairy products, but from adulterations of every kind. Adulteration is a deadly enemy of the farmer, seeking to fatten on products manufactured to imitate the products of the farm, to sell the unnatural for the natural and thus practice a fraud upon the public. The little busy bee, that improves each shining hour and adds to the coffers of the farmers, is to be deprived of half its earnings by mixing its product, which is one of the most healthful of foods, with indigestible glucose. The fermented juice of the apple — pure cider vinegar — is to be driven out of the market by nothing less than colored concentrated acetic acid. Pure sugar syrup, the product of the sugar beet, for which the soil of some parts of our state is adapted (the beet sugar industry, if fostered and protected, will eventually prove a great source of revenue to the state), is to be supplanted by the unhealthful, indigestible glucose syrups. The pure juice of the maple, the sugar cane and sugar beet, which is manufactured into candy for the sweet teeth of the little darlings of our firesides, is adulterated with terra alba, barytes, talc, poisonous colors and flavors, destroying their young lives and bringing them to an early grave. The fermented juice of the grape, which exhilarates but does not intoxicate, is condemned because poisonous drugs and chemicals are used, which by degrees undermine the health and fill our land with physical and moral wrecks. The hop vine which has made the valleys of Puyallup and Yakima famous must be pulled up and burned, because beer, which should be the product of hops and barley, is so often adulterated with poisonous substances, which send so many of our promising youths to drunkards’ graves. I have only mentioned those foods which are the products of our own state, in which we are more directly interested. Coffees, teas, baking powders, spices, etc., are all more or less adulterated; in fact, almost everything we eat is adulterated. Let us pass laws which will purify our foods and our drinks and we will have taken an important step in promoting the morals and health of the citizens of this state.

I now come to that part of my subject in which you are more directly interested, needed legislation to foster and protect the dairy industry. My subject naturally divides itself into two parts: laws which need repealing; and laws which need enacting. For the reasons mentioned in the former part of my article, many laws are enacted which should be repealed, and more care should be taken in making laws. There are three things which should be considered before laws are made. First — Will the law be constitutional? It is true that the constitutionality of a law too often depends on the moral ideas and mental conceptions of one man, whose judgment may have been warped and mind moulded by his environments until the glass he looks through turns everything to gold and hypnotises him so that he is no longer a free moral agent. Such appears to have been the case in the decision of the constitutionality of the income tax, and others might be mentioned which would bring a blush to the cheek of every loyal son and daughter of our republic. Second — Will the law be ambiguous? The English language has so many words to express about the same meaning, that the removal of a comma, the dropping out of a word, will sometimes change the entire meaning of a sentence. Therefore laws should be written in the simplest words; the ideas should be clearly expressed, and the punctuation should be perfect. If these suggestions were carried out there would not be so much litigation. Lawyers too often view the law wholly from a technical standpoint, instead of looking at the intent or spirit of the law. Third — Class legislation. This is the great hue and cry. It would not be wise for the farmers to build a wall around their farms and starve out every other class, or demand such prices as would amount to confiscation of the property of others, yet we have recently read of miners giving up valuable mines for something to eat. Trusts and monopolies act on this principle when they combine to destroy the property of others in the same business. It amounts to confiscation. This policy leads to dangerous results. In making laws let us carefully consider the above points.

Our dairy law will compare favorably with the dairy laws in other states, but in my judgment it has many imperfections. I will devote a short time to criticism of the present dairy law. Section 2 of the dairy law of 1895 was amended, making it lawful to sell milk from cows fed on undried brewers’ grain. Immediately after my appointment to office, I forbade the dairymen of Pierce and King counties using it, as it was a violation of the law. Mr. Sweeney, of the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company, wrote me a letter, which was printed in the Pacific Coast Dairyman and Ranch and Range, stating that they had instructed their patrons to continue feeding it, and they would defend them in case of prosecution. He invited me to call at their office, which I did, and make an investigation of the grain. I read some articles which he had from feeders of these brewers’ grains in New York and New Jersey. I came to the conclusion that before a cheap food should be condemned and litigation begun that I should have a better knowledge of their injurious effects. I will now read a number of letters bearing on this subject, which may aid us in arriving at some conclusion in regard to the repealing or enforcing of the law. From the letters read you will notice that the general opinion of those learned gentlemen who should be authority on this subject is that if undried brewers’ grains are fed with other foods in limited quantities, in a sweet condition, they are not injurious, but beneficial. My construction of the law is that I could not exercise my judgment in enforcing the law where the grain is fed in a fermented and decayed condition, because the law condemns it even in a sweet and wholesome state. I leave this question for your discussion as to what course you would suggest that I should pursue.

In the same section my powers are not clearly defined in regard to condemning milk within stables which are not in a sanitary condition. I refer to the following part of the section: “And if it shall appear that cows kept for the production of milk or cream for the same, for market, or for sale or exchange, or for manufacturing their milk into articles of food, are kept in a crowded or unhealthful condition, etc., the milk or cream from the same is hereby declared impure and unwholesome.” There are many stables which in my judgment should be condemned as unhealthful. It is easy to lodge a complaint or swear out a warrant for arrest, but not so easy to convict. When you appear in court it is not what you believe, but what you know, that is admissible as evidence. What condition would constitute a healthful stable and surroundings is a question which allows a wide difference of opinion. I would like to have this point discussed, as I realize that some action must be taken to cause dairymen to improve their stables and surroundings, so that at no distant future the state of Washington will lead all other states in the purity of her dairy products, the high standard of her dairy barns and the completeness of her creameries.

Section 2 also imposed a penalty for selling milk from diseased cows. I have condemned the milk from four diseased cows, two having tuberculosis and two actinomycosis, but the law does not give me power to order the diseased animals killed, so that the disease may spread among other cows and eventually our state would be permeated with diseased cattle. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In all four cases I succeeded in persuading the owners to kill the cows, but I should have the power to order all cows having a contagious disease killed and the state should pay a certain valuation to the owner. The whole state is benefited in the prevention of the spread of disease, and an appropriation should be made for that purpose.

Section 3 says: All cheese shall be stamped in full-faced capital letters not less than one inch high, etc. I have not enforced this law, because in many cases it is impossible to get on all of the brand, where the firm name and the place manufactured have a large number of letters, and especially is this true with regard to Young Americas. I do not think a cheese presents a clean appearance when it is daubed all over with inch letters. I believe that the law of California is a good one. All cheese-makers must obtain a stamp from the Dairy Bureau, which are all similar in design, and are numbered, so that the bureau has knowledge as soon as a new cheese factory is opened. I also believe that every creamery should have a brand for butter, and that the brand should be registered with the dairy commissioner, and no one should be allowed to use the brand of another. This would also inform the dairy commissioner of the opening of new creameries.

Section 5, which relates to the use of oleomargarine, is not sufficiently explicit. I refer to that provision in the section “that nothing in this act shall be construed to prohibit the manufacture or sale of oleomargarine in a separate or distinct form and in such manner as to advise the consumer of its real character free from coloration or ingredient that causes it to resemble butter.” In the law of 1891 it was clearly stated that those using oleo were obliged to have signs hung in a conspicuous place or have printed on the bill of fare, “We use oleomargarine.” The law of 1891 was repealed by the law of 1895, so that the provision of the section I read is all the authority I have. What is a separate or distinct form? You can easily see that courts and juries might disagree as to what would be sufficient notice to the consumer of its use.

Section 9 should be amended. The dairy commissioner should have two assistants or deputies, one of whom would be the state veterinarian and the other a chemist. The state veterinary and chemist should not be professors in any institution, nor should they be compelled to devote all their time to the duties of the office. The advantages of this plan would be that the dairy commissioner would have the general management of the office. The veterinary would inspect dairies and test all animals supposed to be affected with a contagious disease and report to the commissioner. The chemist would analyze all products sent to him by the commissioner. In this way the work could be done much more satisfactorily and at about the same expense. There would be no separate appropriation for expenses of state veterinary. I also approve of all fines being paid to the Board of Dairy Commissioners, which would go to paying the additional expense.

Section 2 should also be amended, making it necessary for all dairymen to have all cans in which skimmed milk is carried marked “Skimmed Milk Can,” so that the temptation may be removed of using it too freely. In addition to these numerous changes, there should be a law regulating the use of test bottles for testing skimmed milk, pure milk and cream. I believe that there are a great many test bottles which have not been correctly graduated. A slight variation would enrich the creamery man at the expense of his patrons or vice versa.