factories and fixes a grade for "Minnesota standard" canned goods. It provides that an inspector of the department must be present while the goods are being packed. The expense of such inspection is to be borne. by the canner.

Chapter 124 provides that all ice cream manufactured and sold within the state must contain not less than twelve per cent by weight of butter fat, and must not be colored to make the article appear better than it really is. The use of all injurious ingredients is prohibited in its manufacture.

Chapter 383 provides for the inspection of concentrated commercial feedstuffs. This is the famous "stock food bill" which caused so much discussion during its consideration.

Chapter 421 is the new paint law which requires that the true ingredients of all paints shall be plainly printed on the labels of all paint packages.

Amendments to the present laws are as follows: Chapter 237 prohibits the sale of adulterated spices. Heretofore adulterated spices have been sold when labeled "Mixture and Adulterated."

Chapter 258 includes among the prohibited ingredients in foodstuffs, coal tar dye and saccharin.

Chapter 337 amends the present milk and cream license law so that parties keeping not more than three cows are exempted from the provisions of the law. Heretofore the exemption has been one cow.

Chapter 347 reduces the required percentage of acetic acid in vinegar from 4.5 per cent to 4 per cent. The latter is the standard set by the Federal authorities.

Under Chapter 424 rulings will be issued which will secure uniformity between the label provisions of the state and Federal laws. An article labeled to comply with the Federal pure food and drugs act should be allowed on sale within the state without further label requirements provided that it does not contain ingredients specifically prohibited by our state laws. Additional state requirements only tend to confuse the manufacturer and adds to the cost of production which must be borne by the consumer without giving him added protection.

EDWARD K. SLATER, Commissioner.

WHISKY DECISION REVIEWED.

At the request of the President, Attorney General Bonaparte granted another hearing to the blenders and considered some additional information submitted by both parties in the controversy and sustained his previous opinion as published in full in THE AMERICAN FOOD JOURNAL of last month.

The new decision, or rather, the presentation of additional arguments sustaining the old decision, is as follows:

"The President: In accordance with your instructions. I gave a hearing on Wednesday, May 15, to persons desiring to submit to the department criticism, or other comment, on my opinion of April 10 last past, as to the construction of Section 8 of the act approved June 30, 1906, and generally known as the pure food law. About thirty persons appeared on this occasion, and a number of oral arguments were presented, some critical and some approbatory of the opinion in question.

"At the conclusion of this argument I announced my willingness to receive and consider any matters in

writing which might be submitted to me touching its subject-matter, and, in response to several requests for a further hearing, stated that I would give these requests due consideration and announce later whether I saw any sufficient reason to comply with them. As heretofore stated to you verbally, I do not think any useful purpose would be served by another oral argument, and, with your approval, I have, therefore, announced that, in this respect, the matter must be considered closed.

"I received a large number of written communications from various persons commenting on the opinion in question, and I have carefully considered all of them. I find no reason to withdraw the said opinion, or to modify it in any respect, and I respectfully report that, in my judgment, this opinion correctly states the law on the subject to which it relates.

MATTER OF COURTESY.

"As a matter of courtesy, however, to the gentlemen who have favored me with their views, and to remove some misapprehensions which seem to exist respecting the opinion in question, I think it appropriate to further consider in this final report some of the questions discussed at the oral hearing, and in the written communications hereinbefore stated. It seems to be thought by some of the critics of the opinion heretofore rendered that I considered myself bound by the definition of 'whisky' adopted by the Department of Agriculture contained in the papers heretofore submitted to me, and, therefore, that the correctness of the opinion, in so far as this depended upon an accurate definition of the word in question, would be successfully impeached by showing an error on the part of the said department in its said definition.

"This view misapprehends the purport of the opinion. In point of fact, while stating in substance that I held the definition in question to be accurate for all purposes directly material to the subject under discussion, I vet ventured to respectfully question its entire accuracy, because in the words of my opinion it was not quite broad enough to meet the general intent of the law of 1906.

"Of course, if the proper definition of 'whisky' were a question of fact, this department would be bound by the statements on the subject contained in the papers submitted to it when instructed to furnish an opinion; but I do not consider this a question of fact.

"When the words are used in a technical or conventional sense, their proper definition must be established by evidence and found by a tribunal appropriate to pass upon the questions of fact; but when the words are used in their ordinary meaning, then, in the words of Mr. Justice Gray, in Nix vs. Hedden (149 U. S. 306), ‘of that meaning the court is bound to take judicial notice as it does in regard to all words in our own tongue and upon such a question dictionaries are admitted. not as evidence, but only as aids to the memory and understanding of the court'; that is to sav, in the language of the Chief Justice in Sonn vs. Magone (159 U. S. 421), the interpretation of words of common speech is within the judicial knowledge and matter of law.'

QUESTION OF LAW.

"In the first of these two cases the Supreme Court held it to be a question of law whether tomatoes were fruit or vegetables; in the second, whether dried lentils and white beans were vegetables or seeds; as it has

previously determined in Marvel vs. Merritt (116 U. S. 11) that iron ore was a mineral substance. I think, therefore, the proper definition of 'whisky' for the purpose of the pure food law is a question of law, it being, to my mind, quite clear that for these purposes the term is to be given its ordinary significance as a word of every-day speech, and is not to be understood in any commercial or scientific sense, as it might be by a distiller, or rectifier, a chemist or a physician.

"For the purposes of my opinion, I had to determine its proper definition just as in Eureka Vinegar Company vs. Gazette Printing Company (35 Fed. 570) the court had to determine the definition of 'cider,' and as in U. S. vs. Ash (75 Fed. 652) the court took judicial cognizance of what was 'whisky,' and even of what was a 'whisky cocktail.'

"In establishing the meaning of 'like substances,' as used in the pure food law, to determine whether a mixture shall be properly called a 'blend' or a 'compound,' I was able to find no judicial authority which appeared to me sufficiently in point to make its citation appropriate. The essential meaning of 'like,' as here used, is evidently 'of the same class,' and on what this class includes must depend the purpose of the classification, or, in other words, 'the ends of law.'

SERVICEABLE NOMENCLATURE.

"The primary aim of the pure food law, as explained in my previous opinion, is, in my judgment, to secure an accurate and serviceable nomenclature for articles of food and its construction is, therefore, governed by rules in some respects different from those applicable to statutes passed for wholly different purposes, as for example, laws imposing duties on imports; therefore, although my attention had been called, even before the hearing on May 15, to certain decisions of the Supreme Court constructing the phrase of similar description,' which may be assumed. argumenti graita to be synonymous with 'like,' I did. not consider it necessary, in that opinion, to cite or discuss these decisions.

"It may be, however, well for me to here point out that if they are to be regarded as authorities relevant to the question considered in this connection in the previous opinion, namely, whether ethyl alcohol and whisky are like substances,' they appear to fully sustain the conclusion therein announced. In Greenleaf vs. Goodrich (101 U. S. 278) and Schmieder vs. Barney (113 U. S. 646) the Supreme Court held that the similarity required by this designation is 'a similarity in respect to the product and its adaptation to uses and to its uses, and not merely to the process by which it was produced,' and that the material question to be determined in each case would be whether 'the goods were or not substantially the same or substantially different.'

SUBSTANTIALLY DIFFERENT.

"Now, I think it quite clear that, while there may be a similarity in the processes whereby whisky and ethyl alcohol, respectively, are produced from grain mash, alcohol and whisky are not according to the common understanding of the general public similar in their respective adaptation to uses and their respective uses in fact. I believe that according to the first thought of an ordinarily intelligent and well-informed man, whisky is adapted for use, and is used. as a beverage, and alcohol is adapted for use and used, in medicine or in the arts, and I am satisfied that such a man, if asked the question, would, in a great majority

of instances, reply without hesitation that alcohol and whisky were substantially different and not substantially the same things.

"It was developed at the hearing before me that some, at least, of the dealers in whisky, who questioned the correctness of my opinion, claimed that ethyl alcohol and whisky are not, merely 'like,' but identical; that whisky is ethyl alcohol and ethyl alcohol is whisky. Their argument was, in substance, that ethyl alcohol was whisky from which certain congeneric substances, termed by them 'impurities,' had been removed, and whisky was ethyl alcohol in which these 'impurities' had been allowed to remain, or to which some substitute for them had been added.

"Now, it is obvious that 'impurities' is a questionbegging term, and, if it be admitted that substances so designated are really congeneric with the whisky, it is an illogical, and, therefore, an inappropriate designation. Pearls in an oyster may be the result of disease or injury to the animal, but when we are speaking of 'pearl-bearing oysters,' they constitute a very important portion of the idea thus expressed. If the so-called 'impurities' are an essential part of whisky, or, in other words, if, in the language of the definition of the Department of Agriculture, they 'give character to the distillate,' then it is as inaccurate to describe a substance destitute of them as 'purified' or 'rectified' whisky as it would be to speak of sugar and water as 'lemonade without lemons.'

AS TO THE DEBATE.

In

"To show how the Congress intended the Pure Food Law, and especially the provisions as to 'like substances,' 'blends' and 'compounds,' to be construed, my attention has been called to remarks of speakers in debate on the bill, and to proceedings before committees of one or the other house of Congress. the language of Mr. Justice Peckham, in U. S. vs. Trans-Missouri Freight Association (166 U. S. 318) 'there is a general acquiescence in the doctrine that debates in Congress are not appropriate sources of information from which to discover the meaning of the language of a statute passed by that body. . The reason is that it is impossible to determine with certainty what construction was put upon an act by the members of a legislative body that pass it, by resorting to the speeches of individual members thereof. Those who did not speak may not have agreed with those who did; and those who spoke might differ from each other; the result being that the only proper way to construe a legislative act is from the language used in the act, and, upon occasion by a resort to the history of the times when it was passed.

"Thus construed, there would seem to be little difficulty in determining the purpose of the Congress in restricting the use of the word 'blend' to a mixture of like substances,' supposing, of course, that this provision was inserted with a view, inter alia, to the labeling or branding of whisky.

WELL-ESTABLISHED PROCESSES.

"The Congress must be presumed to have legislated with reference to well-established processes in the manufacture and sale of distilled spirits. There can be no doubt that, according to such practice, 'straight' whisky was mixed only with two substances, besides mere coloring and flavoring materials, namely, with 'straight' whisky of another kind, and with ethyl alcohol.

"There is an evident intent on the face of the stat

ute to confine the use of the word 'blend' to one kind of mixture, and, since the Congress must be supposed to have legislated with regard to existing facts, and, consequently, since the mixture to which it intended to deny the designation 'blend' must be either a mixture of two different kinds of whisky, or a mixture of whisky with the other substance generally mixed with it-namely, ethyl alcohol-it follows that, unless we are prepared to say that ethyl alcohol is more 'like' whisky than one whisky is to another, it is reasonable to conclude that the Congress intended to deny the designation 'blend' to a mixture of whisky and ethyl alcohol.

"If this provision was, in fact, inserted with some reference to whiskies (which seems to be generally assumed as a fact by both sides to this controversy), then it is impossible to see why the provision as to blends and compounds was inserted at all, if the Congress considered whisky and ethyl alcohol to be like substances.'

NOT "LIKE SUBSTANCES."

"So far as I am informed, no combination of whisky with another substance was manufactured and sold, either as a 'blend' or otherwise, when the Pure Food Law was enacted, to which the designation 'blend' could be denied, or which could be properly labeled a 'compound,' if the Congress held ethyl alcoho! to be a 'like substance' to whisky. I have found, therefore, no difficulty in concluding that, according to all the well-established canons of statutory construction, these two kinds of spirits are not to be considered like substances' for the purposes of the Pure Food Law.

"Of course, if the Congress thinks they should be, effect can be readily given to the legislative will by an amendment of the law. However, having given a very patient and careful consideration to the entire subject, I respectfully advise you that, as above stated, the opinion already rendered must stand as that of the department. and I suggest that parties whose interests may suffer from the administration of the law as thus determined take, as soon as may be practicable, appropriate measures to obtain a judicial determination of the questions involved. I remain, sir, yours respectfully,

"CHARLES J. BONAPARTE,
"Attorney General."

"WISCONSIN LAWS AND THEIR IMPERFECTIONS AND LIMITATIONS."

By G. A. Bading, Commissioner of Health for Milwaukee.

The pure food law now in force in Wisconsin has had a salutary effect, but the law never will be as effective as it ought to be until it makes provision for the publication of the names of brands found adulterated.

Many of the more flagrant offenders have been driven from this state by the law, but others have been able to cover impurities and adulterations by changing labels and by the failure of the law to give the state food and dairy commissioner the authority to make public in the newspapers the results of his investigations.

SHOULD PUBLISH IMPURE FOODS.

"I would like to see things done here as they are in North Dakota. Almost every paper you pick up in North Dakota contains reports of the state dairy and

food commissioner on impure food products that have been analyzed and found adulterated with harmful drugs or preservatives. The names and makers of these products are fully set forth in these reports as well as the ingredients of the goods which the analysis showed. As it is in Wisconsin only a few are able to have access to the reports of the commissioner and as a consequence only a few know what brands to avoid. "Wisconsin has led the way for the other states in reform legislation, but some of the other states have gone so far beyond the mark we set that whereas we were once denounced and abused as radicals and anarchists we now are hailed as conservatives and held up to other states for imitation. I hold that we ought to continue to train in the radical class, especially in the way of pure food and health legislation.

FOR REAL STATE HEALTH COMMISSION.

"In the first place we ought to have a state commission of health that is a commission. As it now stands the state health commission's powers and duties are so limited by law that there is practically nothing that it can do. There ought to be a state health commissioner who will be so well paid and who will have such powers and duties as will keep him busy all the year around just attending to the job of promoting the health and physical well being of the people of the state. There are a thousand things for such commissioner to do, which now cannot be done because of the condition of our health laws.

"For instance, there is the ever-growing evil of tuberculosis. What is Wisconsin going to do in an official way to stay the destroying progress of the white plague? Nothing worth mentioning. Last week, when statistics were desired for the tuberculosis exhibition, it was found necessary to appeal to the health commissioner of Minnesota. Our commission hadn't the data we required. There is but one public sanatorium, for other than indigent patients, in the whole state, and we ought to have a dozen. The fact is, Wisconsin is far behind other states on this tuberculosis problem and we suffer quite as much loss of valuable citizenship as other states.

LEGISLATURE NEGLECTS HEALTH BILLS.

"If a band of Indians or brigands carried off 400 or 500 of our people every year, year after year, don't you think that the state legislature would find a way of stopping them? You bet it would, or the people would find out why, mighty quick. And yet 400 or 500 citizens of Milwaukee are carried off every year by tuberculosis, and year after year the proportion has increased instead of decreased. It is high time that Wisconsin caught up with the procession in the matter of remedial tuberculosis legislation.

"I am one of those 'misguided cranks' who hold that the physical health of the country is vastly more important to that country than even the equitable adjustment of railroad rates or the revision of the tariff. In this country we are suffering a loss of $400,000,000 annually through the ravages of consumption. The operations of Harriman and Standard Oil and all the brigands of high finance put together look small and pitiful compared with these figures. And they are con

servative.

NEED OF NATIONAL HEALTH BOARD.

"The problem of public health will never be properly cared for until this country has established a national department of health with ample powers and appro

priations to see that states and cities observe the ordinary laws of health. Take, for instance, the water supply of great cities. The time is coming-it is at hand in many cities-when filtration plants will be an absolute necessity. I know that it will be urged that the federal government has not the power to interfere in state or municipal government. We all know that. But the federal government has jurisdiction over navigable lakes and waterways.

"Granting that the government has the supervisory control over the great lakes and rivers, what is to prevent the adoption of a law forbidding cities and towns on such lakes or rivers to discharge sewage and refuse into the lakes or rivers, unless a filtration plant is installed to offset contamination resulting from that sewage? If such provisions were made by a national department of health, you may be sure that they would be obeyed."

Magistrate, who is something of an animal authority himself; the perplexities of the succotash situation have all served their purpose and been forgotten.

The latest sensation is the condemnation of pie because, forsooth, some varieties made from so-called "pie filler" may contain sodium benzoate as a preservative. A plain statement of fact would scarcely get into the newspapers; garnished with "scientific pleasantries" or "statements which would enliven what would otherwise be a very dull statement," they will gain display headings on the outside page-in some papers in red ink.

Following is the editorial comment of the Chicago Tribune on the pie question, which indicates that that newspaper is beginning to look at the question of the state's supremacy in local matters in much the same light as does the AMERICAN FOOD JOURNAL:

THE STATE AND THE PIE,

Forty-five sovereign states may rise in their might and wrath to inquire what Dr. Wiley and the Department of Agriculture have to do with the preparation and consumption of the pie of the commonwealth. The announcement has been made that at the instigation of some dyspeptic the chief chemist of the department has been selected to head a commission to look into benzoate of soda as a deleterious pie ingredient and to put, if necessary, various pie fillers under the ban. On the one hand this seems to be a prudent and reasonable movement; on the other it is an unwarranted invasion of state rights.

Nobody should be so fatuous as to claim that the pie eater needs no protection, and that the present generation is not fairly entitled to the pies such as mother used to make and father used to eat. One great virtue of pie is its integrity, or. as the astonished city boy exclaimed in the play of New England life, “pie all the way through." Artificial preparations, cheap dodges, unworthy pastry tricks, base and sordid substitutions-all these are to be despised and condemned. If benzoate of soda is projected into the human system in harmful quantities and contrary to the ethics of pure and stimulating pie, it should receive the attention of the proper authorities and be exposed and scorned accordingly.

But it is not clear that pie, even spurious and injurious pie, is a subject of interstate commerce and therefore to be regulated at Washington. The pies made in this as in other cities are consumed at home and are not sent across state lines. It is not believed that the most illustrious squash and pumpkin varieties are put up in Vermont or Connecticut and shipped to Illinois or Minnesota as a cure for that homesick feeling and a glad reminder of childhood. Therefore Washington is meddling in an affair in which it has. merely a paternal interest and, so far as the great underlying principles of pie are concerned, it may deal only with such "fillers" as are artfully used by the baser breed of pie distributors. And yet, if it is discovered that the fine art of piemaking has been prostituted to unworthy ends, and that the public taste is becoming vitiated through reason of ignoble imitations, it may sound a general warning and the soyereign states may profit thereby.

Illinois has a pure food commissioner who ought to be qualified to inquire into the mysteries of benzoate of soda, to uphold the integrity of pie as made by local manufacturers and to see that the genuine article is provided for the public table. To him four

million pie eaters, more or less. look for the conservation of their privileges and the incorruptibility of their dessert, known in restaurants as "anything else?" it is for him to safeguard Illinois pie for Illinoisans and to hurl the majesty of the law against all deceivers. in the pie trust who have departed from venerated and long-cherished traditions. Meanwhile it may be Washington's duty and pleasure to preserve its vigilance that no pie, scorned by Illinois, is spirited across the border to make glad or tragic an Indiana holiday.

* * *

The Kansas City Post comments on the subject after this fashion:

DOCTOR, SPARE THAT PIE!

Doctor Wiley, the pure food expert and hired iconoclast of the Agricultural Department, has volleyed and thundered against pie, the pie of commerce and the pie unlike anybody's mother used to make, or in case she did make, it was immediately consigned to the swill barrel.

But the pie expert must be careful and not lay impious hands upon all pie not 18 karats fine nor 75 per cent proof. The great distinctively American delicacy should not be ruthlessly tabooed and incontinently banished from the tables and lunch counters in the United States upon the supported word and dictum of one so prejudiced against impure food as Doctor Wiley. True, he is trying to make a record in improving the food and saving the stomachs and lives of the American people, but to banish pie, even the pie of commerce, made by machinery, and in so far as the ingredients are concerned, made from everything less deadly than prussic acid and more wholesome than Paris green, is a blow at a time-honored institution and an innovation likely to be resented from Cape Cod to Point Indigestion.

The food expert intimates that the pie of commerce would kill a hired man offhand at 500 yards. and that the benzoate of soda with which it is loaded, is as deadly in its effects as a policeman's patronage of a dago's fruit stand.

But the merely academic abstraction of trying to save human lives will not compensate for the uprooting of pie from the stomachic gardens of the American consumer. Pie has become such a necessary article upon restaurant menus and such an expected "course" at all ill-regulated dinings that to banish it now would work irreparable confusion to dinner-givers and break up an industry as old, and in point of importance, next to the high protective tariff itself.

As Dr. Wiley seems to hold carte blanche in the matter of pie, it is not improbable that he will use his authority in high-handedness to save us from ourselves and prolong our miserable lives far beyond the Osler period, and, therefore, it will be utterly useless to cry aloud,

"Physician, spare that pie!"

FIGS FOR CAKE.

Fig cake and fig fillings for cake are too often only a partial success because the figs are not properly prepared. The figs should be washed and cut in small pieces, then stewed in a little water to which a tablespoonful of sugar has been added. If to be used in cake the pieces should be rolled in flour before being stirred into the batter, and if to be used for filling should be flavored with lemon juice before the sugar or eggs and sugar are added.