Frauds by R. W. | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1886

Frauds.

By R. W.

PLINY, the historian, laments that in his degenerate times men had learned to imitate realities and practice frauds upon the people. In proof of this he mentions a case in which Egyptian priests, who understood the natural sciences better, perhaps, than any others in the world at that time, had palmed off on the public counterfeit precious stones. They had learned to color glass, and take stones of varied values and cement them so that the untrained eye could not distinguish the combination from real gems. But what would Pliny think if he lived to-day, and found what progress had been made in the art of imitation? We have laws against counterfeiting money, but not against adulterating food. I believe that thousands of people every year are seriously injured, if not killed, by the use of impure food.

I have recently had some personal experience in this matter. I tried in vain to get pure butter at prominent groceries in this city. It was oleomargarine or something else every time. Then I sent to the country, and procured some real butter from a family that I knew; but when it came it was artificially colored and wholly unpalatable. At last by writing to the interior of Iowa to a personal acquaintance, I succeeded in getting pure butter. The time was, until recently, that if one got honey in the comb he was sure about it. But all that is changed. Men have learned not only to manufacture the comb much more rapidly and cheaply than the bees can do it, but now fill it, capping the so-called honey cells by machinery, and sell it at a lower figure than any at which the real honey can be produced.

Some of our readers know unscrupulous men in the country, who, having bought a few hives of bees, almost immediately began selling great quantities of honey in the comb. They procured it from the manufacturers of the adulterated article; but any one familiar with the taste of real honey easily detects the fraud. I went to one grocer in this city, who had recently purchased, from Ohio, a thousand pounds of what he honestly supposed real honey, and convinced him in five minutes that almost the entire quantity was made up of syrups deftly secured in the comb. He simply said, "What are we coming to?" We have no State laws sufficiently guarded in their provisions to reach these rascals, and punish them as they deserve. It may be permissible to manufacture the stuff called oleomargarine or butterine, but to sell either as butter should be made a criminal offense, and punished accordingly.—R. W., in Advance.