The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum
“I suppose you are pleased”: James Shepard to Harvey Wiley, April 27, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
On July 24 Wilson: Memo, James Wilson to Harvey Wiley, July 24, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
“is not as good”: Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 228.
It did at least contain: Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (noted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Web site as the “Wiley Act”), Pub. L. No. 59-384, 34 Stat. 786 (1906), www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/lawsenforcedbyfda/ucm148690.htm; and Robert McD. Allen, “Pure Food Legislation,” Popular Science Monthly 29 (July 1906): pp. 1–14.
“establish standards of purity”: Robert McD. Allen, “Pure Food Legislation,” Popular Science Monthly 29 (July 1906): pp. 1–14.
“No set of authorities”: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 198.
“For seventeen years”: David Graham Phillips, The Treason of the Senate, eds. George E. Mowry and Judson A. Grenier (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), pp. 204–6.
“Naturally when the battle”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 223.
“The word FOOD does not”: Warwick Hough to James Wilson, November 26, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
“discriminate against one class”: Warwick Hough to James Wilson, December 3, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
He told the lobbyist: James Wilson to Warwick Hough, December 22, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
“Since you have objected”: Warwick Hough to James Wilson, December 23, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
In a mid-December speech: Harvey Wiley, lecture at the Atlas Club, Chicago, December 14, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
In 1907 the Bureau: Harvey W. Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health, vol. 3, Sulphurous Acid and Sulphites (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907), https://archive.org/details/preservafood00wilerich.
“microscopical examination of”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, p. iii.
“The relations of sulfurous”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, pp. 761–66.
“complete and somewhat”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, pp. 761–66.
“The use of sulfurous”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, pp. 761–66.
In January 1907: James Tawney’s maneuvers to limit food regulations and pure food advocate responses are described in Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 200–218; and Laurine Swainston Goodwin, The Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, 1879–1914 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999), pp. 275–77.
“impair the efficiency of”: Alice Lakey to Harvey Wiley, February 14, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“The plot failed”: Goodwin, Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, p. 276.
Opposition to Tawney’s amendment: Samuel Merwin, “The People’s Lobby,” Success Magazine 10 (January 1907): pp. 17–18; People’s Lobby to Harvey Wiley, December 13, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
“If anyone is naughty”: “A People’s Lobby to Watch,” New York Times, September 18, 1906, p. 6.
“Secretary Wilson absolutely”: Robert Allen to Henry Needham, March 3, 1907, Wiley Papers box 63.
And Allen himself had: Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 211–12.
“I unqualifiedly recommend him”: Robert Allen to Harvey Wiley, May 14, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
Still, Allen’s misgivings: Robert Allen to Henry Needham, April 20, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
The ever-festering conflict: Harvey Washington Wiley, “1908 Report of the Bureau of Chemistry (from June 1907 to June 1908),” Bureau of Chemistry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, September 14, 1908, Washington, DC.
And barely a month after: Harvey Young, Pure Food (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 206–18.
“Crooked is the term”: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 202.
In a letter to Wilson: Warwick Hough to James Wilson, October 4, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.
In a March 30 letter: Harvey Wiley to Robert Allen, March 30, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63; Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 257–59.
But in terms of in-house: Young, Pure Food, pp. 206–18; H. Parker Willis, “What Whiskey Is,” McClure’s, April 1910, pp. 687–99; Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2 (1927; repr. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1971), pp. 509–10.
After reviewing stacks of: William Wheeler Thomas, The Law of Pure Food and Drugs (Cincinnati: W. H. Anderson, 1912), pp. 450– 455; Clayton Coppin and Jack High, The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 100–110.
On April 10, 1907: Theodore Roosevelt to James Wilson, April 10, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“I write to congratulate you”: James Hurty to Harvey Wiley, April 18, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“Let me congratulate you”: M. A. Scovell to Harvey Wiley, April 20, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“level headed,” he said: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 204.
As if to underscore: James Wilson to George McCabe, March 23, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“It seems to me”: Wilson to McCabe, March 23, 1907.
But Wilson instead told: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 237–39; memo, James Wilson to Harvey Wiley, April 24, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“walked into my office”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 238.
“a matter of fairness”: James Wilson to Harvey Wiley, memo, April 24, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“to take away from the”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 239.
On June 19, on Wilson’s: Department of State to James Wilson, June 8, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“In a short time”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 319.
During the visit, though: A week after Wiley left, Dunlap moved to take over his duties. Willard Bigelow, who was acting chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, tried strenuously to prevent this, eventually insisting on meeting with Secretary Wilson. Bigelow also found himself battling George McCabe on the solicitor’s efforts to undermine food safety enforcement. “I am sorry to trouble you,” he wrote to Wiley on July 26, 1907, while the chief chemist was still in France, and warned him that the department was moving to a probusiness stance. These actions are contained in a memo from Dunlap to Bigelow on June 27, 1907, demanding that he be given authority over all bureau correspondence; a reply from Bigelow, on the same day, flatly refusing to do so; a letter of warning from Bigelow to Wiley on June 29, 1907; a memo of reassurance from Wilson to Bigelow on July 1, 1907; and the letter of dismay from Bigelow to Wiley, cited above, on July 26, 1907, all contained in the Wiley Papers, box 63.
Known as Food Inspection Decision (FID) 76: Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 206–7.
“Telegrams began to come”: “Question of Sulfur in Dried Fruit at Rest for the Present,” letter from James Wilson, California Fruit Grower, March 21, 1908, p. 1.
“After listening to these”: Pacific Rural Press, August 17, 1907, p. 1; Suzanne Rebecca White, “Chemistry and Controversy: Regulating the Use of Chemicals in Foods” (PhD diss., Emory University, 1994), p. 57.
The department, Wilson reminded: Memo, James Wilson to Harvey Wiley, August 24, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
Not surprisingly, then: Harvey Wiley, “What Pure Food Laws Are Doing for Our People,” speech at Vernon Avenue Christian Church, Washington, DC, September 5, 1907, transcript in Wiley Papers, box 63.
Chapter Ten: Of Ketchup and Corn Syrup
Ketchup (or catsup) was: Jasmine Wiggins, “How Was Ketchup Invented?” The Plate (blog), National Geographic, April 21, 2014, http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/21/how-was-ketchup-invented/; Dan Jurafsky, “The Cosmopolitan Condiment,” Slate, May 30, 2012, www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2012/05/ketchup_s_chinese_origins_how_it_evolv
“take the intestine”: John Brownlee, “How 500 Years of Weird Condiment History Designed the Heinz Ketchup Bottle,” Co.Design, December 21, 2013, www.fastcodesign.com/1673352/how-500-years-of-weird-condiment-history-designed-the-heinz-ketchup-bottle.
Sodium benzoate is: James Harvey Young, “The Science and Morals of Metabolism: Catsup and Benzoate of Soda,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 23, no. 1 (January 1968): pp. 86–104; Floyd Robinson, “Antiseptics in Tomato Catsup,” American Food Journal, August 1907, pp. 39–41.
Indiana’s Columbia Conserve: Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), pp. 234–36.
Heinz was the same age: Anna Slivka, “H.J. Heinz: Concerned Citizen or Clever Capitalist?” no date, The Ellis School, www.theellisschool.org/page/default?pk=29093.
When the food and drug law: Heinz Co. Food Products to Harvey Wiley, May 7, 1907, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 63.
Due to its low cost: “Saccharin from Coal Tar,” New York Times, February 16, 1897, p. 3; Jesse Hicks, “The Pursuit of Sweet,” Distillations, Spring 2010, www.chemheritage.org/distillations/magazine/the-pursuit-of-sweet.
The National Food Manufacturers: The anger of industry is outlined in the food manufacturers’ publication, “Benzoate of Soda in Food Products,” American Food Journal, January 15, 1908, pp. 7–9, in which Wiley is described as a man with “total lack of consideration for the financial interests involved.” The meeting with Roosevelt has been widely covered, including in Young, “Science and Morals of Metabolism,” pp. 89–92, and in Harvey Washington Wiley, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law (Washington, DC: self-published, 1929), pp. 160–68.
“There was no way”: Wiley describes his meeting with the president in rueful detail in An Autobiography, pp. 239–41.
“in the interests of”: Harvey W. Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health: Benzoic Acids and Benzoates (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908).
“On hearing this opinion”: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 239–41.
“My firm saved $4,000”: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 239–41.
“Everyone who ate”: This quote and the discussion that followed are found in Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 240–43.
The following day, Roosevelt: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 242–43; James C. Whorton, Before Silent Spring: Pesticides and Public Health in Pre-DDT America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 105–10.
“According to the ordinary”: Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Law, pp. 160–65.
Wiley’s chemists continued: Harvey Wiley to Charles Bonaparte, October 3, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63; Harvey Wiley to James Wilson, October 7, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63; Charles Bonaparte to Warwick Hough, October 21, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63; summary of Wilson’s memo to Bonaparte, October 25, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
Yet the president: “Effect of the Food Law on the Glucose Interests,” American Food Journal, December 1906, p. 10; Anthony Gaughan and Peter Barton Hutt, “Harvey Wiley, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Federal Regulation of Food and Drugs” (third-year paper, Harvard Law School, Winter 2004), https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8852144/Gaughan.html?sequence=2.
E. T. Bedford, as he was: E. T. Bedford to James Wilson, December 16, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63; memo, James Wilson to Harvey Wiley, December 20, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63; Harvey Wiley to William Frear, December 27, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
the unappetizing word: E. T. Bedford to Frederick Dunlap, January 9, 1908, Wiley Papers, box 65.
“You must make the manufacturers”: Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 205–6.
This came to bear as: Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 207–8.
In response, Roosevelt suggested: Whorton, Before Silent Spring, pp. 107–9.
“The president promptly fired”: Theodore Roosevelt to Harvey Wilson, July 30, 1908, Wiley Papers, box 64.
Meanwhile, Roosevelt worked: Charity Dye, Some Torch Bearers in Indiana (Indianapolis: Hellenbeck Press, 1917), pp. 210–15, quotes Wiley as saying, “This board was created by President Roosevelt in direct violation of the food and drug act”; Samuel F. Hopkins, “What Has Become of Our Pure Food Law?” Hampton’s Magazine 24, no. 1 (January 1910): pp. 232–42; “The Referee Board,” Expenditures in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Report No. 249 (Moss Hearings), 62nd Cong., Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, January 22, 1912, pp. 2–17; “The United States Referee Board: How It Came to Be Appointed,” American Food Journal 6, no. 9 (September 15, 1911): pp. 48–50.
“a strong solution of”: E. T. Bedford to James Wilson, December 19, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
But overall Wiley’s relationships: Proceedings of the American Chemical Society, Easton, Pennsylvania, 1907, p. 83.
“The men who led”: Harvey Wiley to C. A. Brown, New York Sugar Trade Laboratory, November 20, 1907, Wiley Papers, box 63.
“the creation of the”: Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Law, p. 160.
“The Remsen Board”: “Getting Results in the Fight for Pure Food,” New York Times, May 10, 1908, p. 33.
The Times, along with Wiley’s: An example is this letter to Roosevelt from Thomas McElhenie, a pharmacist in Brooklyn, on January 25, 1908: “The makers of food products are besieging you to appoint for their benefit a commission of chemists to be the superiors in Dr. Wiley’s office. . . . I hope they will not prevail. In shotgun practice other birds are bound to be hit. Let them flutter. . . . The Food Law is a right law and should therefore stand.”
Chapter Eleven: Excuses for Everything
“The use of chemical”: Harvey Wiley, “Influence of Preservatives and Other Substances Added to Foods upon Health and Metabolism” (lecture, Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, April 25, 1908), Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 190.
The sodium benzoate trials: Harvey W. Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health; Benzoic Acids and Benzoates (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908). The Remsen Board’s report, “The Influence of Sodium Benzoate on the Nutrition and Health of Man,” was released in preliminary form in the summer of 1908 and formally published in January 1909 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Government Printing Office in Washington, DC. To no one’s surprise, where Wiley found health problems, the Referee Board found none.
Over the course of 1907: The publications suppressed by Wilson are listed by Wiley in a section titled “Data Refused Publication” in his self-published book The History of a Crime Against the Food Law (Washington, DC, 1929), pp. 62–64.
In August 1908 the: “Report of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Convention of the Association of State and National Food and Dairy Departments,” American Food Journal 3, no. 8 (August 15, 1908): pp. 1–12; Ronak Desai, “James Wilson, Harvey Wiley, and the Bureau of Chemistry: Examining the ‘Political’ Dimensions of the Administration and Enforcement of the Pure Food and Drugs Act 1906–1912” (student paper, Harvard Law School, May 2011), https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/8592146.
“The convention will probably”: “Food and Drug Disagreements Become Public,” New York Times, August 5, 1908, p. 7.
“the heat and cold”: “Report of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Convention,” p. 8.
“Whenever a food”: “Report of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Convention,” p. 10.
“Resolved: That this association”: “Report of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Convention,” pp. 11–12.
“Those who watched events”: Desai, “James Wilson, Har
this “brazen attack”: Clayton Coppin and Jack High, The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 123–26.
“not sparing in his”: Suzanne Rebecca White, “Chemistry and Controversy: Regulating the Use of Chemicals in Foods, 1883–1959” (PhD diss., Emory University, 1994), pp. 108–10.
Snowy-white baked goods: White, “Chemistry and Controversy,” pp. 112–34.
Edwin Ladd, the North Dakota: E. F. Ladd and R. E. Stallings, Bleaching of Flour, bulletin 72 (Fargo, ND: Government Agricultural Experiment Station of North Dakota, November 1906), pp. 219–35; James Shepard, “Nitrous Acid as an Antiseptic,” Monthly Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture 10 (November 1919): pp. 4–12. Shepard describes nitrous acid as a “vicious” additive in this article.
Wiley’s Bureau of Chemistry: Aaron Bobrow-Strain, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012), pp. 51–72.
“A summary of our”: Annual Reports of the Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908), pp. 402–408.
Wilson showed himself willing: “Hearings of the Food and Drug Inspection Board,” Preliminary Hearing #155, September 1908, National Archives, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, boxes 3 and 4.
“Bleached flour is a”: Harvey Wiley to H. E. Barnard (Indiana food and drug commissioner), May 5, 1909, Wiley Papers, box 71.
The details of the decision: White, “Chemistry and Controversy,” pp. 125–27.
“Secretary Wilson and Dr. Wiley”: “Food Inspection Decision 100: Bleached Flour,” American Food Journal 4, no. 1 (January 15, 1909): p. 26.
Rumors began to circulate: Michigan Dairy and Food Department to Theodore Roosevelt, October 22, 1908, Wiley Papers, box 65. The convention lived up to the promised drama, and both the events and their fallout appear in Clayton Coppin and Jack High, The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food Policy (University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 125–27; Andrew E. Smith, Pure Ketchup: A History of America’s National Condiment (University of South Carolina Press, 2011), pp. 77–118, in a stunningly good chapter titled “The Benzoate Wars,” which covers not only the convention but also Wiley, the Remsen Board, and the battles between Heinz and other manufacturers in the most fascinating way; Ronak Desai, “James Wilson, Harvey Wiley, and the Bureau of Chemistry: Examining the ‘Political’ Dimensions of the Administration and Enforcement of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, 1906–1912” (student paper, Harvard Law School, May 2011), https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8592146/Desai%2C%20Ronak.pdf?sequence=1; and Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 230–31.