C. HOUSTON GOUDISS Mr. Goudiss appears to be the missing link in the menagerie of medicine men, vitamin men, and ad men who crowd the big tent of the Washington lobby and do Chautauqua work in the field. On November 16 last he appeared before the convention of the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs, donned the mantle of the late Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, and begged his hearers to oppose the Tugwell bill. He said in part: 66 So far as I am known to the American public, I am known as a crusader for the better health of our people. * * * Early in my career I came under the benign influence of the late Dr. Harvey W. Wiley. I was privileged to support him in his work. Were Dr. Wiley alive today, I am sure that he would be standing here instead of me. And if I presume to wear his mantle, it is because I feel that the great urgency of the situation calls upon me to do * When I was first informed that our Congress was ready to conI was exultant. sider a new pure food and drug law Later, when I read the proposed law * my heart fell with foreboding. I recognized it as only another overzealous measure like our unhappy eighteenth amendment and the Volstead Act. * The Tugwell bill is frought with danger. * So. * * * * * * * * * * * * ** About that Harvey W. Wiley mantle-the widow of Dr. Wiley, in the course of an eloquent plea for the Tugwell bill at the December hearing, said: "I have never heard Dr. Wiley mention Mr. C. Houston Goudiss, and inquiry at the Department of Agriculture discloses the fact that no correspondence between Dr. Wiley and Mr. Goudiss between 1905 and 1911, when Dr. Wiley resigned, is on file." And now about Mr. Goudiss himself: He publishes the Forecast, a monthly magazine full of vitamin chatter not unrelated to Mr. Goudiss' activities as broadcaster over station WOR for various and sundry food products. He is author of Eating Vitamins and other books, also of a signed advertisement for Phillips' Milk of Magnesia. His Elmira speech was promptly sent out as a press release by the Proprietory Association and recently he has been fighting the Tugwell bill over the radio. The organizational set-up of the drug men, the food men, the medicine men, and the ad men is almost as complicated as that of the Insull holding companies. At the top sits the High Council of the Drug Institute, an association of associations, formed originally to fight the cut-rate drug stores. The Proprietory Association, the Institute of Medicine Manufacturers, and the United Medicine Manufacturers, all have booths in this big tent. The last-named organization is right out in the open, whooping, yelling, and rattling the wampum belt. The Food and Drugs Administration knows them well, and the public would know them better if this department of government were authorized by law to publicize its files. Here are a few of the most eminent and vocal patriots and purity gospelers: PRESIDENT J. M. (TOMA TABLETS) EWING Toma tablets are innocuously labeled, but advertised for stomach ulcers. The advertising clause of the Copeland bill is what is worrying Mr. Ewing. VICE PRESIDENT I. R. (HEALTH QUESTIONS ANSWERED) BLACKBURN Mr. Clinton Robb, the legal magician for the U.M.M.A., fixed up the labels of the Blackburn products, which rejoice in a string of notices of judgment. These products are sold through an advertising column headed " Health Questions Answered." You write to Dr. Theodore Beck, who answers the questions in this column, and the good doctor informs you that one or more of the Blackburn products is good for what ails you. It's as simple as that. Vice President George Reese is at present slightly handicapped in selling venereal-disease remedies by the seizure by the Food and Drug Administration a month ago of one of his nostrums-not the first action of this kind, judging by the notices of judgment against this firm. Vice President Earl L. (Syl-vette) Runner can boast a dozen or more notices of judgment against his many products, the most prominent of which, Syl-vette, was seized only a short time ago. This " reducing agent" is a cocoa-sugar beverage that keeps your stomach from feeling too empty while a diet does the slenderizing. D. A. (Gallstones) Lundy, of the board of managers of the U.M.M.A., advertises: "Gallstones. Don't operate. You make a bad condition worse. Treat the cause in a sensible, painless, inexpensive way at home." But, alas, the proposed new law forbids the advertising of any drug for gallstones, declaring the disease to be one for which self-medication is especially dangerous. Perhaps this explains Mr. Lundy's fervid letters to Senators demanding the dismissal and prosecution of Chief Campbell of the Food and Drug Administration on the ground that the latter has been improperly spending the Federal Government's money for propaganda. William M. (Nue-Ovo) Krause, of the membership committee of the U.M.M.A. Mr. Krause's Research Laboratories, Inc., of Portland, Oreg., labeled Nue-Ovo as a cure for rheumatism until 1929 when the Food and Drug Administration seized the product and forced a change of the label. Nue-Ovo is still widely advertised in the West as a cure for rheumatism and arthritis. Kenneth (Vogue Powder) Muir, of the board of managers of the U.M.M.A. When Mr. Muir's Vogue Antiseptic Powder was seized in 1930, it was being recommended not only for genito-urinary affections of men and women, but also in the treatment of diphtheria. T. S. (Renton's Hydrocine Tablets) Strong, of the board of managers of the U.M.M.A., is a partner in Strong, Cobb & Co., of Cleveland, pharmaceutical chemists who manufacture products for other concerns. There are notices of judgment against venereal-disease remedies and a contraceptive manufactured by them. This firm also makes Renton's Hydrocine Tablets, a cinchophen product sold for rheumatism to which, according to the American Medical Association, many deaths have been directly traced. C. C. (KOW-KARE) PARLIN In For months now C. C. Parlin, research director of the Curtis Publishing Co., has been mobilizing and directing the heterogeneous but impassioned hosts of purity gospelers that have been fighting the Tugwell bill. Mr. Parlin is a statistician, a highbrow, and no end respectable. Moreover, he represents, indirectly at least, the Ladies Home Journal and the Country Gentleman. their February issues both of these Curtis properties published editorials, written in language strikingly similar to Mr. Parlin's recent speeches and signed writings, to the effect that in their advertising pages they had struggled to be pure-well, pure enough—and that the new bill was just painting the lily. How pure is pure? The February issue of the Country Gentleman contains advertisements of several products which would be subject to prophylactic treatment if an effective law against misleading advertising were passed. The February issue of the Ladies' Home Journal, which says that for more than a generation it has "exercised what we consider to be proper supervision over all copy offered for our pages", contains advertisements of at least eight products whose claims would require modification if the proposed bill becomes law. The Ladies' Home Journal's " pure-enough" list includes Pepsodent, Fleischman's Yeast, Ovaltine, Listerine, Vapex, Musterole, Vicks Vapo Rub, and Pond's creams. In addition to some of the foregoing the Country Gentleman stands back of advertisements of Ipana, Toxite, Sergeant's Dog Medicines, Bag Balm, and Kow-Kare. Concerning the last-named product, the fact-minded veterinary of the Food and Drugs Administration comments as follows: "This used to be sold as Kow-Kure, which purported to be a remedy for contagious abortion, until trouble threatened with the Pure Food and Drugs Administration. No drug or combination of drugs has any remedial value in treating contagious abortion. The danger of these nostrums is that the farmer relies upon them." There is one obvious lack in the foregoing list of purity gospelers. It includes no women. We, therefore, hasten to present Gertrude B. Lane, editor of the Woman's Home Companion. In opposing the Tugwell bill Miss Lane spoke, in part, as follows: "I admit quite frankly that my selfish interests are involved. I have spent 30 years of my life in building up a magazine which I have tried to make of real service to the women of America, and I have invested all my savings in the company which publishes this magazine. The magazine business and the newspapers, rightly or wrongly, have been made possible through national advertising. Great industries have been developed and millions of people employed." 43076-34- -12 Right, Miss Lane. And this is how Carolyn F. Ulrich, chief of the periodicals division of the New York Public Library, in a letter to the New Republic, describes this great woman's-magazine industry: "Are not these magazines really mediums for salesmanship, almost trade journals? Of the first importance in these magazines is the advertising. The subject matter comes second. The advertisements pay for the producing of the magazine. The subject matter, aside from a few sentimental stories, covers those interests that belong to woman's sphere. There also the purpose is to foster buying for the home and the child. The entire plan of these magazines is based on the man's interest in its commercial success.' This judgment cannot lightly be dismissed, for it is expert opinion. But as it happens, another woman, Miss Winifred Raushenbush, has recently completed an analysis of 14 mass and class periodicals. She permits me to quote the following analysis of the January 1934 issue of the Woman's Home Companion: "When the potential reader spends 10 cents for the Woman's Home Companion, she gets 90 pages of reading matter and illustrations, 55 percent of which is devoted to selling. Thirty-eight percent of the space in the Companion is advertisements; in addition the editors devote 11 percent of the space to pushing advertised products and 4 percent to pushing subscriptions to the magazine. Forty-one percent of the advertisements appeal to motivations based on fear, sex, or emulation. The appeal to fear occupies more space than the appeal to sex or emulation." In the Woman's Home Companion's "index of products advertised" the statement is made that "the appearance in Woman's Home Companion is a specific warranty of the product advertised and of the integrity of the house sponsoring the advertisement." What, then, is Miss Lane worrying about. Is she, perhaps, alarmed by the fact that the Woman's Home Companion publishes as pure some of the same misleading advertising that appears in the Ladies' Home Journal, already referred to, and that would be embarrassed by the advertising provision of the Copeland bill? It is a great industry; women editors, publication statisticians, ad men, vitamin men, medicine men, cosmeticians, all in the same boat and rowing for dear life against a rising tide of public opinion which demands that this grotesque, collusive parody of manufacturing, distributing, and publishing services be compelled to make some sort of sense and decency, no matter how much deflation of vested interests is required. Mrs. WILEY. I would like, Mr. Chairman, your permission to place in the record a motion from the Village Improvement Association of the town of Cranford, N.J. Miss Alice Lakey is one of the old veterans in the drug history and in the food fight, and she was the founder of this association. The resolution was published yesterday, and, with your permission, I would like to put it in the record. The CHAIRMAN. You may do so. Mrs. WILEY. Thank you. (The resolution follows:) At a meeting of the executive committee of the Village Improvement Association of the Town of Cranford held on February 26, 1934, Mrs. George L. Griswold, chairman, and Mrs. J. Angus Knowles, secretary pro tem, the following resolutions in the matter of Senate bill 1944, pending before Congress of the United States, were adopted: Whereas Cranford, N.J., through the interest and investigation of Miss Alice Lakey and the Village Improvement Association, was the first American town to call attention to the need for national pure food and drug legislation; and Whereas under the direction of the President, the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, and the Chief of the Food and Drug Inspection Service, in cooperation with the State food and drug control and public-health officials, Senate bill 1944 was written out of the best experience had in the work during the past 30 years and introduced into the Senate and is supported by the American Association of Home Economics Workers, the American Public Health Association, the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, and by former Federal and State food and drug control officials, who helped to establish the present system of food and drug control and worked for the passage of the act of 1906: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Cranford Village Improvement Association endorse Senate bill 1944 and petition the President of the United States to recommend this bill for passage and petition the Senate and House of the National Congress to enact this bill into Federal law: And be it further Resolved, That the following features of that bill be particularly endorsed and recommended: (a) The provision authorizing the Secretary of Agriculture to adopt standards for foods in the same way as exists in practically all of the States and without the weakening insertion of the word minimum" before the word "standards" as has been placed in Senate bill 2000 and the Jenckes-Dunn bill: (b) The provision for a voluntary permit whereby all foods can be, if the manufacturer wishes, inspected and certified to the consuming public just as are meat products "inspected and passed", and in line with the permit system which has long existed as the effective means for inspection done by cities and States. Such a permit system will give a wider consumers' confidence to food products and larger confidence to American foods in world markets. It should and will place constructive food-law enforcement at the place where foods are being prepared for human consumption and assure more protection to the consuming public, as well as more confidence to the food industries. (c) The provisions applying to cosmetics. (d) The provision requiring full truth in food, drug, and cosmetic advertising. (e) The provision prohibiting the advertising of products to cure diseases for which no known cure has been found and the provision requiring the manufacturers of all medicines and including home remedies to tell the full truth at all times, whether in the label, the literature, or the advertising of products recommended for the relief of human disease. 66 * * Subsection A of section 9 now writes into the law the definition of the term "false" as laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States as follows: * if in any particular it is untrue, or by ambiguity or inference creates a misleading impression." The law should prevent stealing from public health, whatever the design or device. In this connection we call the attention of the advertising departments and advertising agencies who insist that the Government shall be restricted in attempt to prohibit all forms of untruth in advertising to the code of ethics adopted by the National Association of Broadcasters, which prohibits "advertising statements or claims" which are "false, deceptive, or grossly exaggerated." Language which the representatives of the industry themselves use when it becomes a matter of fair trade among themselves or intended to put advertising in the best light before consumers is equally applicable when it becomes a matter of the legal protection of consumers' rights. We urge the Members of the House and Senate not to compromise on this. Any compromise which keeps the full truth about foods and drugs away from the consumer or which makes it difficult or impossible for enforcing officers to acquire the full truth is a compromise which translates itself into poorer health, whatever the plausible design or device used for doing the stealing : Be it further Resolved, That so much of the provision in Senate substitute bill 2000 as may authorize the President or Secretary of Agriculture to appoint committees of experts and others with sound medical, pharmaceutical, food and drug knowledge to aid the Secretary in arriving at proper and fair standards and regulations be recommended to Congress; but that we oppose the setting of such committees up above the Secretary of Agriculture, unless the Secretary of Agriculture be empowered to appeal for judicial review in any and all cases where the committee may turn down a regulation which may have originated, as for example, out of the joint experience of food and drug control officials, and particularly in the interest of the consuming public. The plan of such committees as provided for in Senate bill 2000 gives no appeal from a decision which may be adverse to the consumers' interest. In considering this we particularly oppose the provision contained in the so-called "Charles Wesley Dunn bill ", introduced by Congresswoman Jenckes, of Terre Haute, Ind. The provisions in this bill not only set a committee up above the Secretary in matters of standards and regulations, but set the committee between the work of the Food and Drug Administration and the courts. As provided in the Dunn bill, the Secretary of Agriculture must 174 FOODS, DRUGS, AND COSMETICS report facts showing violation of the law to such a committee, and the committee, necessarily political, reappointed annually, can, within its discretion, refuse to prosecute, thus weakening not only the protection which the Federal law should give consumers but, because of Federal control of interstate commerce, weakening the effective work of the State officials: Be it further Resolved, That we particularly petition that the word "minimum" which has been inserted before "standards" in the Senate substitute bill 2000, in the Dunn bill, and in other bills, be eliminated. We would call the attention of the Senate and House committees having these bills in charge, the food manufacturers who are clients of the attorney, and the magazines and newspapers whose representative also secured the insertion of this word "miniin Senate bill 2000, that such a law will not only weaken protection to the consumer but will constantly tend to weaken consumers' confidence in food products, including a lack of confidence in foreign markets. mum 66 66 Minimum" (Century) means "of the smallest possible amount or degree, least, smallest." "Minimum" food standards would mean watering and skimming between the farmer and consumer, unfair trade to honest food manufacturers, and minimum truth in food advertising. Minimum" nutritional value means minimum growth for children and minimum individual and national vitality, to the extent that these depend on food: Be it further Resolved, That the publishers and editors of partticularly the national magazines and newspapers be asked to publish facts showing the need for this law, as well as the propaganda put out by the opposition, and be requested to detail staff writers to get the facts as they are and present them to their readers; that the managements of the national radio broadcast chains and local radio stations be requested to arrange for the full and fair presentation of the subject from the recognized authorities among those who favor the bill, as well as from those who oppose it. We call the attention of newspaper publishers and their advertising departments that before advertising income there must be subscribers and readers assuring circulation; that subscribers and other purchasers are held year by year on the readers' confidence in the integrity of the publication and its close adherence at all times to the public good. When the bill was introduced, the press, with some notable courageous exceptions, broadly published the propaganda from the opposition and have failed to publish the full and correct facts about the bill. For this reason most people do not know which bill to support, making it more easy for compromising weakness to be urged upon Congress and more difficult for Senators and Congressmen to deal with this opposition. Food and drug advertising make up the larger part of newspaper and magazine advertising. The readers provide the circulation, the consumers ultimately pay the bill, and the publications owe it to the customers to give the full truth about this pending legislation. Be it further Resolved, That we call upon all manufacturers of foods, drugs, and cosmetics, whose products have sufficient merit to be sold with truthful advertising, to separate themselves from the opposition which comes from those, the sale of whose products will diminish or end when false and misleading statements are eliminated from advertising and to join with Federal and State food and drug control administrations and the consumers in finally placing upon the Federal statutes a law of the kind which has been drawn in Senate bill 1944. Honest food and drug manufacturers, retail druggists, and retail grocers, with the minor objections to the bill, or objection based on misunderstanding, or through their cooperation with the opposition of those who cannot do business with honest advertising, are making it difficult for the consumer and honest business to get an effective law and one which has not been compromised. And be it further. Resolved, That a copy of this resolution be sent to the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Senators representing the State of New Jersey, the Congressman representing the district in which Cranford is located, and to the chairmen and members of the Senate and House committees having the consideration of these bills in charge; and that copies be sent to the chairmen of similar civic groups in other American cities and towns, including chairmen of women's clubs and consumers' leagues. The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Wiley, let me say if you care to have more time, we shall be very glad to grant it to you. |