Deborah Blum - The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

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Angel Killer

I WONDER WHATS IN IT

We sit at a table delightfully spread

And teeming with good things to eat.

And daintily finger the cream-tinted bread,

Just needing to make it complete

A film of the butter so yellow and sweet,

Well suited to make every minute

A dream of delight. And yet while we eat

We cannot help asking, Whats in it?

Oh, maybe this bread contains alum or chalk

Or sawdust chopped up very fine

Or gypsum in powder about which they talk,

Terra alba just out of the mine.

And our faith in the butter is apt to be weak,

For we havent a good place to pin it

Annatos so yellow and beef fat so sleek

Oh, I wish I could know what is in it.

The pepper perhaps contains cocoanut shells,

And the mustard is cottonseed meal;

And the coffee, in sooth, of baked chicory smells,

And the terrapin tastes like roast veal.

The wine which you drink never heard of a grape,

But of tannin and coal tar is made;

And you could not be certain, except for their shape,

That the eggs by a chicken were laid.

And the salad which bears such an innocent look

And whispers of fields that are green

Is covered with germs, each armed with a hook

To grapple with liver and spleen.

The banquet how fine, dont begin it

Till you think of the past and the future and sigh,

How I wonder, I wonder, whats in it.

H ARVEY W ASHINGTON W ILEY , 1899

This account of Harvey Wileys life and his battle for the enactment and enforcement of the United States first national law regulating food, drink, and drugs includes many people whose lives or careers intersected with or influenced Wileys. Among them were all U.S. presidents from Chester A. Arthur to Calvin Coolidge.

Others included:

Jane Addams : The Chicago activist and reformer, cofounder of the nations first settlement house, also cofounded the National Consumers League.

Nelson Aldrich : This powerful and wealthy U.S. senator, a Rhode Island Republican so influential in government that the press nicknamed him General Manager of the Nation, was a friend to many major corporations and strongly opposed the idea of regulating food and drink for safety.

Russell A. Alger : As secretary of war, he somewhat reluctantly ordered investigations into the food that had been supplied to army troops during the Spanish-American War.

Robert M. Allen : The chief food chemist for the state of Kentucky was an outspoken advocate of pure-food legislation and a valuable Wiley ally.

Carl L. Alsberg : Succeeding Wiley as chief of the USDA Bureau of Chemistry, he continued to pursue many of his predecessors key cases, including lawsuits against the Coca-Cola Company and the producers of saccharin.

Thomas Antisell : This early USDA chief chemist investigated food adulteration during the 1860s and found it a problem but acknowledged that there was no mechanism for regulation.

J. Ogden Armour : The heir to founder Philip Armours Armour and Company meatpacking in Chicago; he, like his father, opposed food safety regulations. The company was the basis for Upton Sinclairs fictional Anderson food-processing company in his best-selling novel The Jungle.

Ray Stannard Baker : A muckraking McClures journalist, he advised his friend Upton Sinclair on proposed revisions to The Jungle.

Jesse Park Battershall : Author of a leading book, Food Adulteration and Its Detection, the nineteenth-century chemist blasted processors, bemoaned the lack of regulation, and described home purity tests that could be used by anxious family cooks.

Albert Beveridge : A progressive Republican senator from Indiana, he played a role in pushing pure-food legislation, especially the Meat Inspection Law of 1906.

Willard Bigelow : The lead chemist for the Hygienic Table Trials, also known as the Poison Squad, he was a dedicated ally of Wileys and a dedicated chemist, once described as a man of blue blazes and sulfurous smokes.

Charles J. Bonaparte : The U.S. attorney general under Theodore Roosevelt issued a key ruling agreeing with Wiley on whiskey-labeling requirements.

George Rothwell Brown : A Washington Post reporter, he made the Poison Squad experiments famous but also wrote fake news stories about them.

Joseph Gurney Cannon : The powerful and corrupt Speaker of the House opposed regulation and battled with Wiley over proposed pure-food legislation.

Russell Chittenden : As a Yale physiologist, he warned against some additives but on the Remsen Board, established after passage of the 1906 law, he was often a pro-industry defender of preservatives.

Norman J. Coleman : As commissioner of agriculture in Grover Clevelands first term, he was a Wiley ally who initiated investigations into food purity.

Peter Collier : Wileys predecessor as chief chemist clashed with the agriculture commissioner. Angry at being replaced, he orchestrated attacks on Wiley in an attempt to get his job back.

C. A. Crampton : A chemist on Wileys staff, he authored a report that found potentially dangerous doses of salicylic acid in alcoholic beverages.

Chauncey Depew : A reporters tale of corruption by this senator from New York, a wealthy former railroad lawyer and a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, caused the president to lash out at the muckraking press.

Grenville Dodge : A Civil War veteran and businessman, he headed the Dodge Commission investigation into allegations of adulterated army rations during the Spanish-American War.

Henry Irving Dodge : The writer worked with Willard Bigelow on The Truth About Food Adulteration, a high-profile series for Womans Home Companion magazine.