The Adulterations Used By Certain Factories
(Please never try to make
use of the following, for I never would print it for that purpose, only
to expose the stuff.)
Grape sugar, which looks like cheap suet melted, and is so hard as to
be chopped with an ax, though it dissolves readily. Terra alba, white
clay, which is fine as sugar, and is sieved into cream work or on
candy, and worked into it. Rice flour, ground rice mixed into cocoanut
goods; cerealine, ground, prepared corn mixed into cocoanut. Glucose
has the name of being an adulteration, though I fail, from seventeen
years' experience, to find it such; it contains nothing outside of the
acid to make it so, and that is in so small a portion as to be
harmless. It is an article that is of greater value to man than the
inexperienced give it credit for. If I had time I could argue this
question satisfactorily to any unprejudiced person. Gamboge is a bad
article for candy, yellow, cheap, hurtful color. Ground cocoanut shells
are used mostly in adulterating pepper, etc. "Who is to blame for
adulterating goods?" I claim three parties--first, the proprietor;
next, candy makers; and next, the ignorant class of people that want
sixteen cents' worth of boiled sugar for eight cents, when they do not
stop to think it could not possibly be made for less than eight cents,
all told.
Germany and France have strong laws against all adulterations. Soon
America will prohibit the same, and bless God when the day and law we
so much need will come.