Food adulteration and inspection

President Roosevelt looks at milk under a microscope, surrounded by containers of milk and scientific tools.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Of the many reforms advanced during the Roosevelt presidency, the work to assure poor foods and drugs was as noble and far-reaching as any. “Adulterated” foods and drugs, “patent medicines,” miracle cures, and foods and beverages stretched by chalk, sawdust, and worse, were a plague that affected all. Rancid meat and fraudulently labeled perishables were clear hazards to health.

On the left, a man labeled “Egg Plunger” is standing atop a large egg labeled “Egg Speculation” that rests on top of buildings labeled “Cold Storage.” On the right, Uncle Sam has smashed the egg with an axe labeled “Pure Food Law” causing the man to plunge into the egg. Caption: Come one, come all! This rock shall fly / From its firm base as soon as I!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-12-10

A man stands at a dining room table, using various chemical apparatus, such as a “Milk Tester” with “High Water Mark,” a “Sand Extractor” over a “Sugar” bowl, and a “Butter Tester,” as well as a microscope and a retort, to analyze food products before sitting down to eat. He has a book titled “Chemistry” in his coat pocket. Caption reads: “Look before you eat – and see if you can discover any unadulterated food.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-03-12

Men dressed as Native Americans stand on board a ship labeled “The Good Ship Dope,” throwing cartons and boxes of adulterated and unhealthy food products over the sides, into the harbor. Caption: A lesson in practical patriotism taught by the Boston tea party.

Comments and Context

Albert Levering might have been the most industrious cartoonist in the history of Puck magazine. When his drawings do not crawl with figures, props, labels, and detailed backgrounds, his other work — like interior humor cartoons and book illustrations — are replete with crowded visual elements and intricate shading. Levering also drew for Life and Harper’s Weekly.

In this cartoon, characteristically correct in its numerous details, the figures toss the horrible products that filled the grocery shelves of muckrakers’ America. Readers of a later day might assume that the labels and products flowed from the mind of a sarcastic cartoonist — but many of the descriptions are accurate, sadly true, or slight exaggerations, according to sensational articles of the day, for instance those in various magazines by Samuel Hopkins Adams about foods, “patent medicines,” and advertising.

A butcher labeled “The Beef Trust” stands behind a counter in a butcher shop. Around him are meat products labeled “Potted Poison, Chemical Corn Beef, Bob Veal Chicken, Tuberculosis Lard, Decayed Roast Beef, Deodorized Ham, Embalmed Sausages, [and] Putrefied Pork.” A verse from the Bible appears below the counter: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink.” Matthew VI:25.

Comments and Context

Carl Hassmann’s cover cartoon in Puck is of a recent thematic preoccupation in the weekly — not intending to amuse, and advocating for a cause rather than a party. At the muckraking height of scandals and exposes of the Beef Trust, the meat-packing industry, adulterated foods, and dangerous patent medicines, a stereotypical grimy butcher might have converted readers to vegetarianism, but at least stoked the campaigns for Pure Food and Drug laws.

Bob veal, by the way, sometimes passing as chicken, is today banned in places. It is the meat of baby cattle between two hours and two days old. The meat is, predictably, tender. In traditional Roman cuisine, and making a comeback in some Roman restaurants, pajata is a dish made from baby veals’ intestines containing only chyme (partially digested mother’s milk), tied as little sausages and served with rigatoni.

An oversized man labeled “Beef Trust,” with skeleton face, performs a magic trick on a stage by taking “Diseased Livestock” and pushing them through a tube labeled “Packingtown” to produce packaged “Pure Meat Products.” A diminutive man, “The Prof’s Assistant,” wearing a cap labeled “Inspector,” is standing on the stage on the left. Packingtown is a real section Chicago that was the setting for the horrible actions committed in Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, published as a book when this cartoon appeared. Caption: A monstrous and amazing feat of magic.

Comments and Context

This cartoon by Udo J. Keppler is significant in many ways. It is a marker along the road of Puck‘s growing radicalism as it became more forceful in imagery and grim in details than cartoons of its past. In this regard it was willingly swept up in the tide of muckraking and reform in contemporary periodicals. In fact it nearly coincided with the book publication of the magazine-serialized Jungle by Upton Sinclair. In a sense it could have served as an illustration in the book, or its cover, because the Chicago setting of the revolting horrors of the Beef Trust and meat-packing industry (some of them actually fictional) were set in the real-life section of the city called Packingtown.

The other significant subtext of the cartoon is that in Puck‘s advertising pages, traditionally though the years, and even at this time, there were numerous ads for meat products, placed by members of the Beef Trust. Leibig’s Extract of Beef, Armour beef derivatives and buillions, and other products including medicines, were promoted only pages from this powerful pictorial indictment of the Beef Trust. Puck and other magazines dared to bite the hands that fed them.

President Roosevelt believes the telegrams that Senator Burkett sent him could all have been prepared by the same person, as they all contain very similar messages asking Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and the Bureau of Animal Industry to announce that “government inspection is thorough and covers domestic and foreign meats.” To do this immediately, Roosevelt says, would be lying, and the only way to comply with these requests is to enact a rigorous law allowing such an announcement to be made.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-08

C. Houston Goudiss sends Theodore Roosevelt a copy of the August issue of The Forecast containing an article by Harry P. Cassidy about his fight for pure food. He also sends letters from Harvey Washington Wiley and Lyman F. Kebler.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-08-10

James Bronson Reynolds, Samuel B. Donnelly, and Henry Beach Needham submit a supplemental report on conditions in the Panama Canal construction zone to President Roosevelt, because the matters are either too trivial to mention in the main report they submitted, or potentially too controversial. They make recommendations regarding the sale of alcohol, the provision of fresh vegetables for the hospitals, considerations for foreign workers in the employ of the United States Government, wage increases and worker supervision, administrative courts, and worker safety.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-08-06

Jacob A. Riis explains that at a speech in St. Louis, he spoke of President Roosevelt’s work with the health commission in New York and said that he would love to have Roosevelt as mayor of his city. This sparked the enclosed cartoon. Riis has also read that Roosevelt has been asking college presidents for practical chemists to serve on a board to investigate the use of chemicals in pressing fruit and other activities. He asks William Loeb if Roosevelt would consider Max Heinius of the Wahl-Henius Institute of Fermentology.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-01-26

James Bronson Reynolds reports his findings to President Roosevelt after a tour of the Chicago Stock Yards led by Samuel E. Bennett, Chief Inspector of the Bureau of Animal Industry for Chicago. He found many improvements since his previous inspection, including building improvements and better sanitation, lunches, and workwear for workers. However, he notes that there is still much work to be done.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-10-29

Captain Staunton, Naval Surgeon Wilson, and Paymaster Izard report to Admiral Coghlan on the actions of the board Coghlan appointed to inquire into complaints regarding the quality of meat served onboard ships and in the Brooklyn Naval Yard. The results of their interviews with a variety of crewmen from a number of ships leads them to believe that the negative opinions regarding the meat have overstated the situation. Actually tainted meat has only rarely made it through inspections, although they also state that in some instances the meat may have been tainted had it not been for “the improper use of preservatives,” which still had the effect of making the meat unpalatable and of inferior quality. They conclude that many of the animals slaughtered for meat do not meet the contract specifications, and suggest that, when possible, contractors should be required to deliver whole carcasses to ensure that the better cuts of meat are not being removed and sold elsewhere.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-08-06

R. H. Chittenden, a chemist at Yale University, has reviewed William M. Babbott’s plans for ensuring a pure and fresh milk supply delivered to consumers. Chittenden approves the methods Babbott proposes.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1894-04-16