Food Adulteration

Nature’s purpose is to give freely of her surplus to provide nourishment and food for the toilers of the earth. It is not the purpose of nature to fill the pockets of the minority through buying and selling. Nature bountifully supplies the needs of mankind, but her purpose is often frustrated by capitalism and through adulteration of the essential characteristics of natural food. Nature resents this and penalizes man by bringing about sickness, famine, and disorder, for she supplies only the just demands of the people.

Many of our native foods today are so adulterated that they are highly destructive to man, and nature’s vitality, purveyed through food, no longer finds entrance to the human body. Food laws, which good men have placed before our legislative bodies, have been rejected, owing to the influence of advertisers and adulterators, who claim that they would be ruined if these bills became law. Very little is openly spoken about this condition in the underworld of crime, so nature often assumes the place of the lawgiver and destroys the areas of supply.

Professions depending for their livelihood on sickness caused by food adulteration, resent any legislation which would tend to reduce their incomes. Today most professional men are in the “racket,” and it will be difficult to combat human nature until the State gives the doctor and the surgeon an assured income, so that he can look after the people’s health and have time for research, without worry over money matters. In the medical and surgical professions at present we find men sacrificing themselves for the good of the community, but usually they are very poorly compensated.

Always there are many who carry on their operations contrary to the laws, seeking to enrich themselves by extortion from those in trouble, or by blackmail of the unfortunate. In this class we find many patent medicines well advertised, being sold for exorbitant prices, when the cost of such is little, and the curative value less. Alas, people do not interest themselves deeply in things which do not touch them, and are callous to the welfare of their unfortunate fellow man.