The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum
Following the Coca-Cola debacle, Wilson was reluctant to rush into another industry showdown. He accepted both points. Following the meeting, and without consulting either Wiley or Ira Remsen, the secretary announced that the saccharin ban would be delayed until January 1912. He also reassured the business leaders that the Remsen Board had not been co-opted by the overly purist Wiley faction. “I want to say frankly to you gentlemen,” Wilson told the assembled group of saccharin industry representatives “that the referee board was organized and put into action for the very purpose of conserving the interests of manufacturers.” He then took a sly swipe at Wiley. The board, he added, was there to give industry a “sane hearing.”
The conversation was meant to be private, and Wilson would deeply regret both that it didn’t stay that way and, even more so, the reason it became national news. The exchange would soon be reported during a Senate investigation of a scandal at the Agriculture Department, one that would eventually involve not only the secretary and his underlings but also the president, drawing unwanted comparisons to the political storm over Taft’s 1910 firing of forestry chief Gifford Pinchot.
* * *
—
This new mess—and it would be publicly revealed to be one of many in the Agriculture Department—grew out of a plot hatched by Dunlap, backed by McCabe and Wilson, with the goal of removing Wiley and his allies from the department. The ill-managed conspiracy was rooted in the Coca-Cola trial and particularly focused on the government’s prominent expert witness, Henry Rusby, the prosecution’s prized critic of caffeine.
At first Rusby had refused to testify because of a reduction in federal pay for scientific consultants. The rate for such work had been $20 a day under Roosevelt. Taft’s thrift-minded attorney general, George W. Wickersham, however, had cut it to a mere $9 a day. With reluctance, Rusby had accepted the lower pay for his drug-analysis work for the government. He thought it too important to give up, he explained. But he said he couldn’t afford to accept so little for testifying in the Coca-Cola case. At that rate, by the time he had paid for unreimbursed travel from New York to Tennessee, not to mention hiring a substitute to teach his classes, it would be a money-losing endeavor.
Wiley pointed out to McCabe that Wickersham’s ruling allowed for some independence; several federal departments, also confronting witness reluctance, were still paying $20 a day for trial testimony. But McCabe refused to consider any additional money for chemistry experts. So, quietly, Wiley’s lieutenant Willard Bigelow devised a work-around arrangement. The bureau would hire Rusby for an annual fee of $1,600 a year. This would cover any expert testimony and all analytic work that might be required over the next year.
The Agriculture Department’s respected pharmaceutical expert, Lyman Kebler, wrote to Rusby, urging him to take the offer and pointing out that the flat fee would guarantee a regular monthly stipend no matter what the workload. “Personally, I am of the opinion that your new option is much better than the old.” Rusby accepted the deal and Wiley approved it, making a point of sending it to the department secretary. Wilson signed off as well, although, once the scandal blew up, he would hastily deny responsibility, saying that he had not been fully informed about the details.
The correspondence and records regarding the Rusby arrangement were filed in Wiley’s office before he left for Tennessee. There, Frederick Dunlap “discovered” them while searching through the chief chemist’s documents when he was gone. Dunlap was serving as acting bureau chief while Wiley attended the Coca-Cola trial, and he had requested and received access to Wiley’s office. After pulling the Rusby file and studying the arrangement, Dunlap—knowing of Wilson’s discontent with the chief chemist—realized that he could use Rusby’s hiring arrangement as the basis for charges that the chief chemist and his allies had defrauded the government.
In May 1911, he prepared a memo accusing Wiley, Kebler, and Bigelow of illegal misuse of government money, carefully keeping his action secret. Dunlap had his memo typed outside the department so that none of the secretaries or clerks—whom he had found to be distressingly loyal to Wiley—knew anything about it. He then took the memo to Wilson. The agriculture secretary did indeed see Dunlap’s memo as a political gift, an opportunity to remove a perpetual thorn in his side.
Not surprisingly, Wilson also decided to keep the memo secret from Wiley and his staff, referring it directly to the department personnel committee chaired by McCabe. The solicitor, also weary of Wiley’s endless arguments, instructed the committee to find that Wiley, Kebler, and Bigelow had acted “in defiance” of Wickersham’s ruling on pay. McCabe recommended that Rusby’s contract be declared invalid, that Kebler be demoted, and that Wiley and Bigelow be offered the opportunity to resign. Wilson then reported the affair to Wickersham and asked him, as the country’s attorney general, to move the recommendations forward.
It was a politically fraught recommendation, as all would recognize belatedly. Wickersham carried the scars of the embarrassing Pinchot affair, in which he had favored the controversial firing, but his critics would complain that he appeared not to have learned from the experience. Major Archie Butt, an aide to Taft, described the attorney general as having the “political judgment of an ox.” Despite that earlier fiasco, in mid-May Wickersham wrote to Taft supporting McCabe’s decision.
It was the president himself who hesitated. He had warned Wilson earlier about having “too great of a disposition to charge people with bad faith and too great encouragement to newspaper controversy.” Taft remembered well the catastrophic fallout of the Pinchot decision and, recognizing that Wiley too was immensely popular in the country, saw a real risk of repeating it. He didn’t need another political struggle, especially within his own party, with an election year approaching. Also, Taft was himself a legal scholar. The president worried that Wilson’s procedure in this case had violated due process. None of the accused employees had been shown any of the charges against them or allowed to respond to them. Further, some of Taft’s most trusted confidants, such as U.S. senator W. Murray Crane of Massachusetts, had recently warned him that legislators were beginning to consider the Agriculture Department something of a snake pit.
Taft took some weeks to consider the recommendation. Finally he decided to proceed—but with caution, and with an eye to due process. On Monday, July 11, 1911, the president ordered Wilson to inform his subordinates of the accusations and proposed actions. No decisions would be made until the accused scientists had a chance to respond. Even so, Taft expected some blowback, maybe some bad press. But, as with the earlier Pinchot decision, he underestimated the popularity of the civil servant involved and the extent of public anger that would greet the news. Although not, perhaps, as much as James Wilson had done.
Fourteen
THE ADULTERATION SNAKE
1911–1912
How I wonder . . .
After he received the president’s instructions, Wilson had no choice but to inform the bureau chemists of the impending charges. He decided to have McCabe handle the problem. The attorney waited until week’s end, hoping to deliver the news and then escape for the weekend. Wiley was not at the department on the afternoon of Friday, July 15. He had left with Anna for a few days at Grasslands, their Virginia farm. As a shocked Kebler and Bigelow absorbed McCabe’s news, the solicitor indicated that he had no wish to confront Wiley in any case. Perhaps one of his subordinates might want to relay the details to their boss.
The next day Bigelow drove unhappily to Grasslands. As he would recall it, he was shocked once again by Wiley’s reaction. The chief chemist sat silently, carefully reading through the written charges. Then, to Bigelow’s surprise, he leaped up, waving the papers above his head, shouting, “Victory, victory!”
Walking the farm’s sunny fields with Bigelow, Wiley explained: For years there’d been rumors of political plots against Wiley and his work. Now he had clear documentation of an actual plot, one
That Wednesday, July 20, the New York Times broke the carefully leaked story. “After having failed in many vigorous attempts to separate Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the pure food expert, from his place at the head of the Bureau of Chemistry, his opponents seem in a fair place to at last achieve their desire,” it said, describing the plot in detail. If his opponents succeeded, Wiley’s resignation “will be hailed with delight by the food and drug adulterers and misbranders from all over the country.” The story quoted Rusby, who defended the pay arrangement, and Wiley, who emphasized that Wilson had approved the compensation. The secretary, the paper reported, refused to answer any questions at all.
Newspapers nationwide picked up the story and expanded on it, painting a portrait of corruption not by the dedicated food chemists but by Wilson, McCabe, and Dunlap. The Evening Star of Washington, DC, reported that other cabinet secretaries in the Taft administration had begun ducking for cover. “They . . . showed a tendency to sharply criticize Secretary Wilson for not having settled the whole thing without letting it get outside of his department.” The Evening Star article also trumpeted the fact that the federal Agriculture Department had spent more than $175,000 (more than $4 million in today’s dollars) on the Wilson-backed Remsen Board. Ira Remsen alone had received an $11,631 annual salary (more than twice Wiley’s) and been given $4,000 in expenses. Board members Russell Chittenden and John Long had both received more than $13,000 in salary and a combined $15,000 in expenses. The remaining board members had received almost $10,000 each in salary and an average $4,000 each in expenses. The Evening Star also revealed, with some glee, that the members’ expense accounts covered—in addition to monkeys, dogs, ice cream, Belgium peas, and electric griddles—chiffoniers (mirrored chests of drawers) and horoscopes.
Embarrassed and angry, Ira Remsen called reporters into his office at Johns Hopkins to decry what he saw as an unwarranted, gratuitous attack. He received a chilly hearing from the DC newspapers. In fact, the Evening Star wasn’t finished digging up dirt. It next reported on the existence of the attorney general’s memo that Wilson and Taft had tried to keep secret, the one warning that the Remsen Board payment system was illegal. An Evening Star correspondent who had attended Wilson’s early meeting with the saccharin makers now revealed just how industry-friendly the arrangement was, quoting the Secretary telling the businessmen that “the Remsen referee board was organized for the purpose of conserving the interests of manufacturers.” When some Wilson supporters expressed doubt about the accuracy of the statement, the Agriculture Department stenographer who had been in the meeting confirmed that the secretary had said exactly that.
Such revelations further stoked public outrage. Wiley received encouragement and offers of support from fellow chemists, from state food commissioners, from the director of publicity at the Shredded Wheat Company—“You have had a hard struggle against the manufacturers of impure foods and drugs and we don’t propose to desert you at this critical moment”—from women’s groups, from the head of Old Dutch Mill Coffee Roasters—“I shall do all I possibly can to aid the work”—from medical societies and insurance executives—“I am prompted to write you personally about the disgraceful and detrimental exposition now being conducted at the nation’s capital.”
President Taft was also inundated with messages of support for Wiley. The telegrams received at the White House that week didn’t deviate from that point. From the board of trustees of the American Medical Association: “to express the hope that Dr. Wiley, Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, will be continued in office as the chief exponent in the execution of the pure food law. The manufacturers of impure foods and drugs would rejoice in his dismissal.” From the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s committee on national health: “The services of Dr. Wiley and Dr. Rusby are of such value we earnestly hope that no action be taken against them. We respectfully urge that a technicality ought not to be employed to afford a reason for dismissing two such honorable and loyal servants.” From the president of the Florida Board of Pharmacy: “I wish to assure you of my full confidence in Dr. Wiley. I feel that after due personal investigation by yourself you will find the charges groundless.” From the pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in south Baltimore: “Dr. Wiley is worth more to the people of this country than the whole aggregation of his traducers combined.” From a chemical engineer in New York City: “I most respectfully and earnestly request that your Excellency see that Dr. Wiley not be hampered in the prosecution of the splendid work he has been doing for more than a quarter century to protect the food and drug supply of this country.” From Ballard and Ballard Company, a flour mill in Louisville, Kentucky: “We think it would be a public calamity for Dr. Wiley to be allowed to leave the service.” Not unexpectedly, Alice Lakey also telegraphed the president that Wiley’s removal would cause “manufacturers who wish to deprive the law of its efficiency” to rejoice.
The same scenario played out in Congress. A consulting engineer in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, wrote to his congressman, Robert Difenderfer, that the charges against Wiley were so childish and overwrought that he thought the accusers should instead be dismissed. Difenderfer replied, “The case against Dr. Wiley, to which you refer, is only another evidence of the infamies that are so evident and have grown to such mammoth proportions in the last few years that it seems appalling that such a system could be propagated in a country such as ours. . . . It seems to me the minute a man has the courage to attack dishonesty, he becomes a mark.”
Congressman William Hughes of New Jersey wrote to Wiley: “Just a line to let you know that I am in hearty sympathy with you and the work you have been doing. If there is anything I can do to help you defeat the ‘Poison Brigade’ let me know.” Congressman Burton Harrison of New York wrote, “I observe your enemies are trying to put a crimp in you. You have a lot of friends in the House and perhaps we can turn the crimping process on the other fellows.” And Congressman Ralph W. Moss of Indiana, chairman of the House Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Agriculture, scheduled a hearing in which he promised a thorough investigation of internal politics at what appeared to be a very troubled agency. The Wall Street Journal suggested that for the good of the service, James Wilson should resign. And “if Mr. McCabe is a sample of the growths fostered by the Department of Agriculture, some weeding out might be in order.”
Appalled, George Wickersham wrote to President Taft, apologizing for pitching the administration into “all the worriment of another Pinchot affair.” But although Taft was annoyed with his attorney general, he was angrier with Wilson. Taft wrote bitterly to his wife, Nellie, who was at their “summer White House” in Massachusetts, that Wilson was “as weak as water and shows how poor a secretary he is. He has very little grasp of his department. I ought to get rid of him but I don’t know how I can do so now.”
The Moss committee hearings on “expenditures in the Department of Agriculture” now became front-page news, filled with daily dramatic detail. In a story rather unfortunately headlined HAD GIRL ON GRILL, the Evening Star reported testimony by USDA stenographers who said McCabe had taken them into his office, locked the door, and grilled them about any possible secret doings of Wiley, Kebler, and Bigelow. Other employees testified about McCabe’s “third degree methods,” including bringing in a fake Secret Service agent to threaten them and hiring private detectives to spy on th
The Washington Star wrote, “Lawyer McCabe has been bossing the whole department,” and the New York Times said, “By the clever framing and manipulation of departmental rules, he [McCabe] became the sole judge of whether cases against manufacturers of food and drugs should be prosecuted.”
McCabe admitted that he had refused to prosecute more than five hundred cases recommended by the chief chemist, but he pointed out that hundreds of other recommendations had been either prosecuted or worked out in arbitration or more informal discussions. He also admitted that he had blocked Wiley from appearing in court hearings regarding preservatives, notably sodium benzoate, because he didn’t want him contradicting Remsen Board findings. But he absolutely denied that he had “the real power” in the department. That belonged to Wilson. Secretary Wilson, who was called next, admitted to the committee that he’d suppressed the publication of almost twenty reports from the Bureau of Chemistry. He’d also suppressed information internally, blocking Wiley and his men from knowing much about the Remsen Board or its findings. But like McCabe, he blamed those decisions on Wiley. The chief chemist had become too stringent, too rigid, and too prone to become angry over such matters, he said. Wilson explained that he was a man who preferred to operate in a more peaceful atmosphere than Wiley allowed.