The Poison Squad

by Deborah Blum

  McCabe had long believed: Board of Food and Drug Inspection, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Inspection Decision (FID) 35, April 29, 1911.

  Queeny, energized by: “Saccharin Makers at Washington,” Oil, Paint, and Drug Reporter 79, no. 22 (May 1911): p. 28.

  “I want to say frankly”: Testimony before the U.S. Senate, hearings held in August 1911 by Senator Ralph Moss of Indiana, recorded in “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. The statement is also cited in “The Remsen Board’s Opinion,” New York Times, August 6, 1911, p. 8.

  This new mess: Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 244–45; Harvey W. Wiley, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law (Washington, DC, self-published, 1929), pp. 174–82.

  “Personally, I am of”: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 244.

  “political judgment of an ox”: L. F. Abbott, ed., Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1930), p. 696.

  “too great of a disposition”: 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, p. 29.

  Chapter Fourteen: The Adulteration Snake

  Then, to Bigelow’s surprise: 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. 246.

  “We need no defense”: Anderson, Health of a Nation.

  “After having failed”: Harvey W. Wiley, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law (Washington, DC: self-published, 1929), p. 258.

  “They . . . showed a tendency”: “Row over Wilson,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), August 1, 1911, p. 1.

  “The Remsen referee board”: “Row over Wilson.”

  Such revelations further stoked: Telegrams and letters regarding the Rusby affair, July 13–August 18, 1911, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 88. I do not cite them all here, but the file contains dozens. One of my favorite uncited ones was dated August 18, 1911, to Wiley from J. H. Hunt of the canning company Hunt Brothers. It concludes, “Give ’em H—l Doctor!”

  Appalled, George Wickersham wrote: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 247.

  “as weak as water”: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 247.

  The Moss committee hearings: My description is based on numerous sources, including “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; and Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Law, pp. 88–210 (citing directly from the report). See also the Herald’s highly critical coverage, Wiley Papers, box 221, 1911 clippings folder. The Evening Star clippings can also be found in this folder.

  “Lawyer McCabe has been”: “McCabe Ruled Hard, Scientists Assert,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), August 11, 1911, p. 3.

  “By the clever framing”: “Big Fees Were Paid by Remsen Board, Dispersing Officer Admits,” New York Times, August 2, 1911, p. 2.

  “The broader issues raised”: Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 247–48.

  “My heartiest congratulations”: Samuel Hopkins Adams to Harvey Wiley, September 17, 1911, Wiley Papers, box 88. Among dozens of notes of congratulations, “I believe there is rejoicing all over the country,” wrote Arthur Bailey of Bailey’s Extract of Clams, Boston, on September 16.

  The R.B. Davis Company: R.B. Davis Company to Harvey Wiley, July 14, 1911, Wiley Papers, box 88; Harvey Wiley to R.B. Davis Company, July 21, 1911, Wiley Papers, box 88.

  In January 1912 the Moss: “The Referee Board”; Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Law, pp. 88–210 (citing directly from the report).

  “while the verdict was”: Harvey Wiley to Frank McCullough (Green River Distillery, Kentucky), January 29, 1912, Wiley Papers, box 88.

  Within a few weeks following: Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), pp. 288–89.

  “As I read the papers”: Nathaniel Fowler to Harvey Wiley, January 15, 1912, Wiley Papers, box 88.

  By March 1912: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 288–89; Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Law (coverage of the conversation with Wilson at pp. 55–56; copy of the resignation letter at p. 92).

  “That story isn’t”: “Dr. Wiley Resigns,” Druggists Circular, April 1912, p. 211.

  “I hereby tender my”: Harvey Wiley to James Wilson, March 15, 1912, Wiley Papers, box 88.

  “It is also a matter”: Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Law, pp. 92–94.

  “that I should not”: Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Law, pp. 92–94.

  “Here’s your hat”: “Dr. Wiley Resigns,” Druggists Circular, April 1812, p. 211.

  Like Wilson, President Taft was: Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 252–53.

  But elsewhere in the Department: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 290–91.

  “With tears streaming down”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 292.

  “Some of the employees”: “Dr. Wiley Is Out, Attacking Enemies,” New York Times, March 16, 1912, p. 1.

  “Dr. Wiley is known”: “Dr. Wiley Resigns,” National Food Magazine 30, no. 4 (April 1912): p. 2.

  “his hands have been”: “Dr. Wiley Resigns,” Druggists Circular.

  “So clear in his great”: “Dr. Wiley Resigns,” Druggists Circular.

  “I regard the passing”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 292.

  Chapter Fifteen: The History of a Crime

  In a report to Wilson: Roscoe Doolittle, Acting Chief, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1911 Report of the Bureau of Chemistry (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, July 30, 1912).

  “There wasn’t a single”: Alfred W. McCann, “Food Frauds as Revealed at the National Magazines Exposition,” National Food Magazine 31, no. 9 (September 1912): pp. 505–6.

  “We cannot conceive”: “A New Head for the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” Chemical Trade Journal, November 17, 1912, archived in Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, clippings file, box 199.

  “I have no cabinet aspirations”: Harvey Wiley to R. W. Ward (Oregon physician), December 4, 1912, Wiley Papers, box 88.

  “The doctor doesn’t expect”: Harvey Wiley to J. G. Emery, December 11, 1912, Wiley Papers, box 88.

  The retail druggists’ group: “United States Supreme Court; The Sherley Amendment to the Pure Food and Drugs Act Is Constitutional; A Misbranded ‘Patent Medicine’ Condemned; Seven Cases Eckman’s Alterative v. United States, U.S. (Jan. 10, 1916),” Public Health Reports (1896–1970) 31, no. 3 (January 21, 1916): pp. 137–40; Nicola Davis, “FDA Focus: The Sherley Amendment,” Pharmaletter, October 11, 2014, www.thepharmaletter.com/article/fda-focus-the-sherley-amendment.

  “I do not think”: Wiley to Emery, December 11, 1912.

  Alsberg, a biochemist: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “Carl L. Alsberg, M.D.,” March 15, 2017, www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/Leaders/Commissioners/ucm093764.htm.

  This change was highlighted: “Clearing the Atmosphere in the Saccharin Controversy,” American Food Journal 7, no. 1 (January 15, 1912): 16–17; “An Opinion on the Saccharin Decisions,” American Food Journal 7, no. 9 (September 15, 1912): p. 7.

  Following yet another: Suzanne Rebecca White, “Chemistry and Controversy: Regulating the Use of Chemicals in Foods, 1883–1959” (PhD diss., Emory University, 1994), pp. 154–60; James Harvey Young, “Saccharin: A Bitter Regulatory Decision,” in Research in the Administration of Public Policy, ed. Frank B. Evans and Harold T. Pinkett (Washington, DC:
Howard University Press, 1974), pp. 40–50; Deborah Jean Warner, Sweet Stuff: An American History of Sweeteners from Sugar to Sucralose (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), pp. 185–94.

  Meanwhile, as promised: White, “Chemistry and Controversy,” pp. 131–33; United States v. Lexington Mill & Elevator Co., 232 U.S. 399 (1914), www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/232/399.

  Appalled, Wiley sent: Harvey W. Wiley, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law (Washington, DC: self-published, 1929), pp. 381–82.

  “I am not an enemy”: Harvey Washington Wiley and Mildred Maddocks, The Pure Food Cookbook (New York: Hearst’s International Library, 1914), p. 71.

  Good Housekeeping was now: Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), pp. 302–6; “The Original Man of the House,” Good Housekeeping, April 10, 2010: www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/about-the-institute/a18828/about-harvey-wiley/.

  “There is perhaps”: Wiley and Maddocks, Pure Food Cookbook, p. 171.

  “I had no longer”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 304.

  In 1916 Alsberg authorized: Carl Alsberg, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1916 Report of the Bureau of Chemistry (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, July 30, 1917).

  But he, Wiley, and just about: Mark Pendergrast, For God, Country and Coca-Cola (New York: Basic Books, 2013), pp. 114–15; White, “Chemistry and Controversy,” pp. 149–50; United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, 241 U.S. 265 (1916), http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/241/265.html.

  As Alsberg wrote: Carl Alsberg, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1917 Report of the Bureau of Chemistry (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, July 30, 1918).

  Even in the shadow: Roxie Olmstead, “Anna Kelton Wiley: Suffragist,” History’s Women, no date, www.historyswomen.com/socialreformer/annkeltonwiley.html.

  “She believes the ballot”: Katherine Graves Busbey, “Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley,” Good Housekeeping, January 1912, pp. 544–46.

  To his friends who wondered: 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. 264.

  “Our flag on all seas”: “Theodore Roosevelt Dies Suddenly at Oyster Bay Home; Nation Shocked, Pays Tribute to Former President, Our Flag on All Seas and in All Lands at Half Mast,” New York Times, January 6, 1919, p. 1.

  But Harvey Wiley spared no: Wiley wrote an entire bitter chapter about Roosevelt’s hostility toward him and his perceived undermining of food regulations: “Attitude of Roosevelt,” in The History of a Crime Against the Food Law, pp. 263–75.

  The case against saccharin: White, “Chemistry and Controversy,” pp. 155–66.

  The government’s leading expert: R.M. Cunningham and Williams Greer, “The Man Who Understands Your Stomach,” Saturday Evening Post (September 13, 1947): pp. 173–75; A. J. Carlson, “Some Physiological Actions of Saccharin and Their Bearing on the Use of Saccharin in Foods,” in Report of the National Academy of Sciences for the Year 1917 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918).

  “slack-fill” bill: Food and Drug Law (Washington, DC: Food and Drug Institute, 1991), p. 46.

  “it would be a serious”: Suzanne Rebecca White, “Chemistry and Controversy: Regulating the Use of Chemicals in Foods, 1883–1959” (PhD diss., Emory University, 1994), pp. 160–62.

  “The Government has much”: “Chronology of Food Additive Regulations in the United States,” Environment, Health and Safety Online, no date, www.ehso.com/ehshome/FoodAdd/foodadditivecron.htm.

  Upon Coolidge’s election: Harvey W. Wiley, “Enforcement of the Food Law,” Good Housekeeping, September 1925, www.seleneriverpress.com/historical/enforcement-of-the-food-law/?.

  “for the most part undesirable”: Wiley’s letter to Coolidge and Dunlap’s reply to Wiley can be found in this digital text version maintained by the Library of Congress: https://memory.loc.gov/mss/amrlm/lmk/mk01/mk01.sgm.

  “I had hoped to do”: UPC News Services, “‘Food Poisoning General,’ Says Wiley; Expert Charges Pure Food Law Is Being Ignored, Attacks Proposed Starch Sugar Law as Fraud,” July 26, 1926.

  “Why should legislation be”: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 275.

  “The country owes you”: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 275.

  “The freedom of science”: Wiley, An Autobiography, p. 325.

  In a scathing book: Arthur Kallet and F. J. Schlink, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1933), p. 196.

  Consumer advocates renewed: Barbara J. Martin MD, Elixir: The American Tragedy of a Deadly Drug (Lancaster, PA: Barkberry Press, 2014).

  Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938: The full text of the act can be found at www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/lawsenforcedbyfda/federalfooddrugandcosmeticactfdcact/default.htm.

  “I believe,” he said: Harvey Wiley, “Food Adulteration and Its Effects” (lecture before the sanitary science class at Cornell University, 1905), Wiley Papers, box 198.

  Epilogue

  A 1956 decision by: Deborah Blum, “A Colorful Little Tale of Halloween Poison,” Speakeasy Science (blog), PLoS, October 31, 2011, http://blogs.plos.org/speakeasyscience/2011/10/31/a-colorful-little-tale-of-halloween-poison/.

  A 1976 law authorizing: Gina Kolata, “The Sad Legacy of the Dalkon Shield,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, December 6, 1987, www.nytimes.com/1987/12/06/magazine/the-sad-legacy-of-the-dalkon-shield.html.

  More recently, the Food Safety: The full text of the act and additional information on it can be found at www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/fsma/.

  The cause was a line of peanut butters: A history of the issue can be traced through multiple articles at Food Safety News: www.foodsafetynews.com/tag/peanut-corporation-of-america/#.WcfMUZOGM0Q.

  as sterile as hospitals: Donita Taylor, “R.I. Farmers Push Back on New Federal Food Safety Rules,” Providence Journal, July 25, 2017, www.providencejournal.com/news/20170625/ri-farmers-push-back-on-new-federal-food-safety-rules.

  During his successful: Scott Cohn, “Food Safety Measures Face Cuts in Trump Budget,” CNBC .com, July 1, 2017, www.cnbc.com/2017/06/30/american-greed-report-food-safety-measures-face-cuts-in-trump-budget.html.

  The Earthjustice Institute: “Food Watchdog Groups Sue FDA over Menu Labeling Day,” Quality Assurance and Safety, June 8, 2017, www.qualityassurancemag.com/article/food-watchdog-groups-sue-fda-over-menu-labeling-delay/.

  In her influential 1962 book: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).

  “The number of environmental”: Coral Davenport, “Counseled by Industry, Not Staff, EPA Administrator Is Off to a Blazing Start,” New York Times, July 1, 2017, p. 1, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/us/politics/trump-epa-chief-pruitt-regulations-climate-change.html.

  Photo credits

  1: Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, 1863, by Gorgas & Mulvey, Madison, Ind. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ61-732.

  2: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, via Wikimedia Commons.

  3: Look Before You Eat, by Frederick Burr Opper. Illustration in Puck, v. 15, no. 366, (1884 March 12), cover. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-28300.

  4: National Archives, Records of the Bureau of Chemistry, 1890.

  5: Agrl. Dept., Bureau of Chemistry, 1920. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-npcc-29499.

  6: Rusk, Hon. Jeremiah, governor of Wisconsin. secretary of agriculture. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Brady-Handy Collection, LC-DIG-cwpbh-04525.

  7: J. Sterling Morton, 1895. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-14802.

  8: U. S. Department of Agriculture via Wikimedia Commons.

  9: Portrait of Ira Remsen from The World’s Work, 1902, via Wikimedia Commons.

  10: William McKinley, 1896, by C
ourtney Art Studio. Via Wikimedia Commons.

  11: Illustration from History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, by Benjamin F. Gue, 1903, via Wikimedia Commons.

  12: Theodore Roosevelt by Pach Brothers, 1915. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC2-6209.

  13: Roosevelt Cabinet group, 1903. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-96155.

  14: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, via Wikimedia Commons.

  15: DCPL Commons, via Wikimedia Commons.

  16: Cover of the 1st edition of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, via Wikimedia Commons.

  17: Upton Sinclair, 1906 May 29. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, LC-USZ62-132336.

  18: National Archives, General Records of Department of State.

  19: Ray Stannard Baker, half-length portrait. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-36754.

  20: Walter Hines. 1915. Current History of the War, vii, via Wikimedia Commons.

  21: J. Ogden Armour. November 16, 1922. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-npcc-07376.

  22: Photograph of David Graham Phillips, appearing in the Bookman (March 1911), p. 8 (Volume 33, Issue No. 1), via Wikimedia Commons.

  23: 1906 Heinz advertisement, via https://www.magazine-advertisements.com/heinz-company.html

  24: “Watch the Professor,” illustration in Puck, v. 59, no. 1525 (1906 May 23), centerfold. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-26062.

  25: As to the Pure Food Bill, by Kemble. Illustration in Colliers, 1906 March 31. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-55408.

  26: The Meat Market, by Carl Hassmann. Illustration in Puck, v. 59, no. 1528 (1906 June 13), cover. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-26067.

  27: Ad for Cascade Pure Whiskey, 1909, Hopkinsville Kentuckian, 23 December 1909. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.