of this country have failed to effectively teach what is proper food and the value and importance of its use, and

WHEREAS, Proper food is of vital importance and determines the unit of strength in the family, the community, the state and the Nation, and WHEREAS, It is important to create an active public sentiment on the subject, with the object of securing State legislation, as well as National co-operation in providing for the teaching of the A. B. C. of proper food with the A. B. C. of our language in the primary schools of our country, to the end that childrem may not be robbed of their birthright to become natural, and therefore beautiful and womanly women; and natural, and therefore strong, courageous, manly men; and

WHEREAS It is highly important that a knowledge of food and its relation to building the human structure be taught generally in the schools of this country;

THEREFORE, and to better secure the object herein stated, be it

RESOLVED, that when this Congress adjourns, that it will adjourn to meet in Omaha, Nebraska, during the Trans-Mississippi and International Fair, to be held there during the time commencing June first, 1898, and continuing five months, and that the specific date of the adjɔurned meeting of this Congress at Omaha shall be fixed by the President and Executive Committee, after consultation with the said Fair Commissioners, and after securing the privilege of using the great Auditorium at said Fair, provided for meetings of this character; and that the delegates, or members of the Congress be notified of the date of the meeting. Be it further

RESOLVED, That the President and Executive Committee determine the number of members and the appointment thereof among the several States and Territories, and different business interests and organizations and industries of the country as to them may seem best to secure a proper and representative attendance at the Congress.

On motion, it was ordered that the Declaration of Purposes be sent to the members with the names of the organizations represented at the Congress, and the names of the officers attached thereto, Also to the Associated Press and the United Press of America.

Pres. Blackburn then assumed the chair and made some appropriate closing remarks. A vote of thanks was extended to the President for his impartial and efficient conduct of the sessions of the Congress. The following resolutions of thanks were than given:

RESOLVED, That the thanks of this Congress be extended to the President and Trustees of Columbian University, and especially to Prof. C. E. Monroe, Dean of the Graduate Department, of the University, for the hospitality they have extended to the Congress in providing a place of assembly as well as other accommodations.

That the thanks of this Congress be extended to the Call Committee, to whom so large a measure of credit for the success of the meeting is due; for its public spirited effort and generosity in providing for this meeting, and especially to its Secretary, Mr. A. J. Wedderburn, for his unceasing activity in promoting the comfort of the delegates assembled. To the Honorable Secretary of Agriculture, for his presence, encouraging address, and valuable aid.

Also to the Proprietors and Managers of the National and Metropolitan Hotels, for their contributions to the local committee, and to the Independent Ice Company, for courtesies extended.

Also to the Washington Post, Star, Times, National Intelligencer, and to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, for their full and careful reports of the proceedings of the Association.

Then on motion the Congress adjourned to meet in Omaha as provided by previous action.

APPENDIX.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PURE FOOD LEGISLATION.

By W. D. Bigelow.

Address of retiring President of the Washington Chemical Society, delivered before a joint session of the Society and the Pure Food Congress, March 2, 1898.

It has been customary for the retiring President of the Washington Chemical Society to present an address on some subject of interest to chemists. If the theme happens to be one that is attracting the attention of thoughtful people generally it is none the less welcome for that reason. We are American citizens first, then chemists.

For the honor of addressing the Pure Food Congress this evening I am indebted to a happy coincidence, in point of time of the meeting of the Chemical Society with the assembly of this Congress. The chosen topic will not, I trust, prove uninteresting to the larger audience, though it was selected and much of the material collected before the call of the present Congress was issued. I ask your attention for a short time to a review of legislation concerning food adulteration.

The foods and food stuffs of the most civilized people of early historic times were few and simple as compared with ours. They had no market filled with all manner of foods in an advanced state of preparation. The food materials they sold and bought were mainly raw and crude, and their preparation for use was a duty of members or servants of the family. They had neither potted meats nor canned vegetables. When there were "two women grinding at the mill" the meal was made of suɔh grain as the householder furnished. Spices came to them unground and with none of their virtue extracted. The list of fine family groceries was a very short one. Our far away fore-bears lived closer to nature and knew less of art than we. Food adulteration as a great evil follows manufactures and commerce, and flourishes in the train of a broadening civilization. A disposition to defraud was not wanting to the ancients, but skill to invent and large opportunity to apply are modern.

Early Greece had inspectors of wines to prevent adulteration. Pliny records that in Rome bread was sometimes adulterated with mineral matter and says that sophistication of wines was prevalent and pure wines dfficult to obtain, but it does not appear that corrective legislation was attempted or proposed.

We find sanitary regulations concerning the sale of food, however, among the teachings of Moses in the wilderness and in the Rabbinical laws which were given to the Jews at a very early date. The early Jews, be it remembered, were distinctly a people of this world. They had practically no conception of a future life. Moses scarcely referred to a future existence. His life was devoted to the elevation of his people and it is not conceivable, with all his versatility and breadth of judgment, that he did not have in mind the sanitary bearing of the laws he gave to his nation. Rather is it probable, that he sought to elevate simultaneously the physical, moral and spiritual nature of his followers. And considering the low state of their civilization, it is suggested by high Jewish authority that he deemed it best to surround his directions with the glamor of mystery and superstition. "You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in mete, yard, in weight, or in measure; just balances, just weights, a just ephah and a just hin shall ye have." This command has reference to commerce in general, but I feel warranted in mentioning it here because similar requirements have commonly been included in

pure food laws. It was commanded that the animals which were offered as sacrifices, portions of which were used as food by the priests and Levites, should be without blemish and that no meat be eaten more than two days after the slaughter of the animal. It is probable that this was intended to influence the Jewish nation as a whole, to eat only fresh meat and that from sound animals. In fact the Rabbinical law comes to our assistance and requires that all animals used as food by the Jews shall be slaughtered by a priest who shall carefully examine the lungs and other vital organs to determine if any disease be present, and that no meat shall be eaten more than two days after the slaughter of the animal. It is further provided by both the Biblical and Rabbinical laws that meat shall not be eaten from any animal which died otherwise than at the butcher's hand.

The range of possible adulterations at this time was necessarily very limited and required for its development a corresponding growth of commerce and manufacture.

Passing to the eleventh century we find the world emerging from the Dark Ages. The schoolmen were occupied with metaphysics and theology. Their discussions seem to us unimportant and often trivial, and they were never utilarian. But they mark an advance toward systematic, scientiffic thinking. Under their influence new universities were established and those of earlier origin received a fresh impetus. A beginning was made in the literature of the Romance language, the study of the ancient languages was revived, and the Arabian schools of Spain worked over and added to the conglomeration of unclassified theories and facts from which the various departments of science have been developed. Feudalism, whatever its faults, had averted the chaos which for the time threatened to follow the death of Charlemange and was fostering and augmenting personal honor, the spirit of independance and the love of liberty. Of course no general laws were possible or necessary at that time, but we find regulations enforced in some cities forbidding the adulteration of wine and beer. Of all foods these were the most important from a commercial standpoint and were most commonly adulterated. Since then there has never been a time when their adulteration was not restricted by legislation and each succeeding period increased the list of foods thus protected until the entire field was covered.

With the dawn of the thirteenth century we find eastern Europe greatly advanced in education and civilization. The crusades have broadened the minds of their participants, manufactures have become more diversified, commerce has made a corresponding growth, and a spirit of exploration has sprung up, opening new lands to the advancing civilization In England and in France the common people have been given a voice in the legislative bodies, and it is worthy of note that contemporaneously with this popular quickening and awakening, or as a direct and immediate sequence, the protection of foods was made a subject of frequent legal enactments.

In 1202, thirteen years before the signing of the Magna Charta, the "Assize of Bread" was enacted. In 1226, the year following the formation of the House of Commons, a statute was enacted forbidding the sale of unwholesome wine and meat. This law was in force more than four hundred years, when it gave place to a more general law. In 1286, the "Assize of Bread" was repealed by a more comprehensive act known as the "Statute of Assize." This statute was intended to control the size and weight of the loaf, not to prevent adulteration. Its effect was naturally to increase adulteration at first, but additions were made from time to time, as their necessity became apparent, to include all frauds in bread.

During the latter part of this century, the adulteration of beer was forbidden in France, and in London it was unlawful to adulterate spices by substitution of foreign matter or inferior goods, or by increasing their weight with water.

In the fourteenth century, numerous instances are recorded of punishment by pillory for short weight and for selling bad bread and putrid meat. Early in the fifteenth century, Henry V issued a proclamation against the adulteration and mixing of wine, prescribing the pillory for

offenders. In France it was decreed, in 1336, that adulterated and exhausted drugs should not be offered for sale nor used in the preparation of any compounded article. The police department of French cities adopted food and sanitary regulations, and, in 1382, the Provost of Paris declared it illegal for millers to employ cheaper cereals for admixture with their flour, a form of adulteration most difficult to deal with and most dangerous to commerce at the present day. Fourteen years later the artificial coloring of butter was forbidden as well as the mixture of old butter with new. A few years later it was ordered in Paris that butter should not be sold in the same shop with any article having an offensive odor.

In Germany at this time the food supply was controlled in the various cities by trade organizations, which seem to have had full power to adopt standards, pass judgment and punish offenders. These guilds, as they were called, existed in a large number of trades and regulated the workmanship of their members as well as the quality of the goods sold. The penalties they inflicted were often severe and always humiliating. Among them may be mentioned expulsion from the guild, exposition in the pillory, immersion in muddy water and public whipping. indeed, instances are recorded in which the offenders were burned at the stake. Finally, a Biebrich dealer was sentenced to drink six quarts of the adulterated wine with which he supplied his customers, an early instance of making the punishment fit the crime.

The fifteenth century brings with it the mariner's compass, the practical appliation of the art of printing, the organization of banks, important maritime discoveries and a rapid growth of manufactures and commerce. In this century, however, and in the three succeeding, comparatively little progress was made in pure food legislation, though the practice of adulteration increased with the growth of commerce. From time to time, the wine and beer laws were made more stringent. In the sixteenth century, censors appointed by the College of Physicians in England were empowered to regulate and punish irregularities in the sale of drugs and in the practice of medicine. Clauses prohibiting the sale of adulterated goods were included in the Danish code, and pharmacopoias were compiled in England and Germany in the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century laws were passed in England which had for their purpose the increase of revenue by means of regulating the adulterations of coffee and tea.

In four centuries, however, no great progress in food legislation was made, nor was it possible till iatro-chemistry had ceased to exist, till the phlogiston theory had become a thing of the past, and the balance and the microscope had enabled us to judge of the purity and equality of the food we examine. Before the present century it would have been impossible to enforce a general food law because of the lack of methods to detect adulterants. A single illustration of the crudeness of the early methods will suffice. In the sixteenth century ale-tasters were appointed in England whose duty it was to examine all ale before it could be sold. They were instructed among other things to pour a little of the ale they were examing on a bench and sit on it, and if their leather breeches stuck to the bench, the presence of added sugar was definitely proven.

In 1802, the Conseil de Salubrite was established in Paris, and similar organizations in other cities and some of the provinces soon followed, These committees gave close attention to the question of food adulteration and the progress made by science in the first half of this century was largely due to them. During the same period, laws were passed in England relating to the adulteration of several articles of food. The penal codes in the Netherlands and in the Scandinavian peninsula contained clauses regulating the sale of adulterated and damaged goods, which have only been rigidly enforced within the last forty years.

The middle of the present century marked a new and most important era. The methods of quantitative analysis had for the first time been effectively applied to the examination of foods. The microscopist had made great progress in his field, and more than a beginning had been made in the study of vegetable histology. Adulterants which might and

did pass without suspicion twenty or ten years earlier were then detected with certainty, and the analyst could follow the manufacturer and discover each new cheat as it took the place of an old one which had been exposed. It must not be supposed, however, that all abuses were immediately corrected, or even that the progress of reform was easy and rapid.

In England, advocates of a general and efficient food adulteration law were not wanting, but the people at large were apathetic and Parliament was more concerned with party questions than with measures that, while promising little party advantage, were threatened with strong opposition. Trained analysts were few and far between, and in the absence of standards there was no end of conflict and jealousy among the few experts.

The London Lancet has earned the gratitude of the civilized world by its early, earnest, fearless, persistent and finally successful advocacy of food adulteration laws. It was in a position of commanding influence and it stood for public welfare. The Lancet's Analytical Sanitary Commission, established in 1850, with Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall as chief analyst, waged a determined warfare on food and drug adulteration for a period of nearly twenty years, in fact until comprehensive laws had been enacted and their efficiency demonstrated. The Analytical Sanitary Commission made reports from time to time of the analyses of a large number of foods, drinks, drugs, confections, tobacco, etc., it being the first to undertake this work in any systematic way. Naturally, opposition in every form was excited and became active, vigorous and determined. The Commission and the editor of the Lancet were threatened with legal prosecution and personal violence. In the House of Commons, Sir Charles Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, quoted as the opinion of the “most distinguished chemist of the day" the assertion that "neither by chemistry nor by any other means" could the admixture of chicory with coffee be detected, the falsity of which assertion Dr. Hassall demonstrated with his microscope. The protection of coffee from adulteration by chicory which itself has been adulterated with parsnips and other roots was the first practical achievement of the Commission, although the question of coffee adulteration and the sale of coffee substitutes was considered from the standpoint of revenue rather than of fraud.

In 1854, Dr. Hassall published "Food and Its Adulterations, Comprising the reports of the Analytical Sanitary Commission of the Lancet for the years 1851 to 1854, inclusive." Before the publication of these reports in the Lancet, it was notorious that many articles of food were generally adulterated, but nothing was known with the precision necessary to suppress fraud.

Conclusive evidence of the value of the Commission's revelations, which had a wide circulation in Dr. Hassall's book, is found in the fact that reforms in food laws were immediately pressed in Parliament.

Nor was the movement confined to England. In 1855, the French law relative to foods, which had been in force since 1851, was amended to include drinks, and progress was made in Spain, Denmark and other countries. In the same year the Select Committee on the Adulteration of Food was appointed by Parliament and began an investigation, summoning before it a large number of witnesses, embracing chemists, microscopists, manufacturers, wholesale dealers and consumers, but no general law was passed until 1860. In the same year, 1855, Dr. Letherby was appointed Medical Officer for the City of London, a position which had been sought with much earnestness by Dr. Hassall, both of whom had been prominent in the agitation for pure food laws.

A work "On the Composition of Food, and how it is Adulterated, with Practical Directions for its Analysis," by W. Mercet, M. D., F. C.S.,etc., appeared in 1856. Dr. Mercet devoted a considerable space to disparaging the work done by Dr. Hassall, and the Lancet reviewed Mercet's book with marked severity.

Jealousies among the advocates of reform in food laws are noticeable in all the discussions of this period and doubtless they had no small effect in delaying the passage of an efficient food law. At least they fur