The Poison Squad

  the paper’s editors had to: Scott C. Bone (editor of the Washington Post) to Harvey Wiley, December 24, 1902, Wiley Papers, box 48.

  Chapter Six: Lessons in Food Poisoning

  In 1903 Fannie Farmer: A basic biography can be found here: www.notablebiographies.com/Du-Fi/Farmer-Fannie.html.

  “Food,” the book began: Fannie Merritt Farmer, “Food,” in The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (1896; repr. Boston: Little, Brown, 1911), full text available at https://archive.org/stream/bostoncookingsch00farmrich#page/n21/mode/2up.

  Farmer may have been: Fanny Farmer, Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent (Boston: Little, Brown, 1904), full text available through the Historic American Cookbook Project: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_56.cfm.

  “unappetizing and unhealthful”: Farmer, Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, pp. 50–58.

  “The pathogenic germs”: Farmer, Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, pp. 50–58.

  “borax, boracic acid, salicylic acid”: Farmer, Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, pp. 50–58.

  Earlier cookbook authors: To give a couple of examples: Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cookbook (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884), discusses adulteration of cream of tartar and baking powder (pp. 49–55) and chemicals used to disguise bad chicken (p. 251); and Sarah Tyson Rorer, Mrs. Rorer’s New Cookbook (Philadelphia: Arnold, 1902), http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_54.cfm, cites adulterated arrowroot powder, flour, coffee, mustard powder, and vanilla.

  “eating poisons under”: “Borax Preservatives Found Injurious,” New York Times, June 23, 1904, p. 9.

  But the Times anticipated: “Borax Preservatives Found Injurious,” New York Times, June 23, 1904, p. 9; Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health, vol. 1, Boric Acid and Borax (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904).

  In June the Department: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives.

  Congress once again weighed: Hepburn, McCumber, and their push for food and drug legislation are reviewed in Harvey Young, Pure Food (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 164–82; Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 158–82; and Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2 (1927; repr. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), pp. 268–70.

  As Warwick Hough, the chief: Young, Pure Food, pp. 165–68; James Files, “Hiram Walker and Sons and the Pure Food and Drug Act” (master’s thesis, University of Windsor, 1986).

  “will seriously impair”: Warwick Hough to Harvey Wiley, quoted in Files, “Hiram Walker and Sons,” p. 120.

  The issue of drug fakery: In Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), pp. 203–9, Wiley discusses his concerns about the issue. The hiring of Lyman Kebler, signifying that he was prepared to put more emphasis on the issue, is discussed in Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 103; and Young, Pure Food, pp. 118–19. Kebler’s meticulous research and reputation for undaunted investigation are profiled in D. B. Worthen, “Lyman B. Kebler: Foe to Fakers,” Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association 50, no. 10 (May–June 2010): pp. 429–32.

  The Proprietary Association: James Harvey Young, The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines Before Federal Regulation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 227–35.

  “If the Federal Government”: Young, Toadstool Millionaires, p. 229.

  “It will take more”: Sullivan, Our Times, p. 270.

  He also began courting: The importance of women and women’s organizations in the battle for regulation is a main focus of Laurine Swainston Goodwin, The Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, 1879–1914 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999); “Women Join the Pure Food War,” What to Eat 18, no. 10 (October 1905): pp. 158–59; and “Women’s Clubs Name Special Food Committee,” What to Eat 18, no. 12 (December 1905): pp. 191–92.

  In his Hanover College days: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 55–65. See also speech to USDA researchers, 1904, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, box 189 (“we regard women as human beings”).

  “Man’s highest ambition”: Harvey Wiley, speech to USDA researchers, 1904, transcript in Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 189.

  “I know she is not intended”: H. M. Wiley in “Men’s Views of Women’s Clubs: A Symposium by Men Who Are Recognized Leaders in the Philanthropic and Reform Movements in America,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 28 (July–December 1906): p. 291.

  Born in 1856, Lakey: Nina Redman and Michele Morrone, Food Safety: A Reference Handbook, 3rd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017), pp. 130–65; Sullivan, Our Times, pp. 521–22.

  Addams to begin to speak: Goodwin, Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, pp. 258–75.

  “I think women’s”: Wiley in “Men’s Views of Women’s Clubs.”

  Lakey urged Wiley: Alice Lakey, “Adulterations We Have to Eat,” What to Eat 18, no. 6 (June 1905): pp. 9–10.

  “For the purpose of”: Thomas H. Hoskins, M.D., What We Eat: An Account of the Most Common Adulterations of Food and Drink (Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnham, 1861), p. iv, text available at https://archive.org/details/whatweeatanacco00hoskgoog.

  “flour is present”: John Peterson, “How to Detect Food Adulterations,” What to Eat 16, no. 2 (February 1903): pp. 11–12.

  Some Forms of Food Adulteration: Willard D. Bigelow and Burton James Howard, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Some Forms of Food Adulteration and Simple Methods for Their Detection (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906), text available at https://archive.org/details/someformsoffooda10bige.

  “Sir,” wrote Wiley: Bigelow and Howard, Some Forms of Food Adulteration, p. 1.

  “It is not in their”: Bigelow and Howard, Some Forms of Food Adulteration, p. 34.

  On April 30, 1904: The pure food exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair is described in “Novel Exhibit of Food Adulteration,” What to Eat 17, no. 4 (April 1904): pp. 131–32; and Mark Bennett, “Lessons in Food Poisoning,” What to Eat 17, no. 7 (July 1904): pp. 161–62; Sullivan, Our Times, pp. 522–25; Goodwin, Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, pp. 229–32; and Marsha E. Ackermann, “Promoting Pure Food at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair,” Repast, Quarterly Newsletter of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor 20, no. 3 (Summer 2004): pp. 1–3. The food served at the fair is described in Kate Godfrey-Demay, “The Fair’s Fare,” Sauce, April 9, 2004, pp. 1–4.

  “Now let the food adulterer”: Paul Pierce, “Our Allies in the Pure Food,” What to Eat 16, no. 5 (May 1903): p. 1.

  “increase public interest”: Robert Allen to Harvey Wiley, January 24, 1902, Wiley Papers, box 48.

  “While potted chicken”: E. F. Ladd, “Some Food Products and Food Adulteration,” bulletin 57, North Dakota Agricultural College, Fargo, ND, 1903.

  “If you want to”: Bennett, “Lessons in Food Poisoning.”

  “one of the most”: Sullivan, Our Times, p. 522.

  “It is true that”: Harvey Wiley, speech given at City College of New York, November 7, 1904, Wiley Papers, box 197.

  “There are times in life”: Journal of Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Convention of the National Association of State Dairy and Food Departments, September 26–October 1, 1904, St. Louis, Missouri, p. 64.

  Hough was also in attendance: Warwick M. Hough, “The Pure Food Bill and Bottled in Bond Whiskey,” What to Eat 18, no. 2 (February 1905): pp. 74–75; Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 159–62.

  “I agree with you”: Warwick Hough to Harvey Wiley, quoted in Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 159–62.

  Chapter Seven: The Yellow Chemist

  In early November 1904: The background here f
or Upton Sinclair’s research on the Chicago stockyards and the creation of The Jungle, first as a series for Appeal to Research and then for book publication, is based on numerous sources. The story is woven through this chapter, and sources for those sections include Anthony Arthur, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair (New York: Random House, 2006), pp. 43–85; Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), pp. 459–55; Michael Lesy and Lisa Stoffer, Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century 1900–1904 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), pp. 37–61; Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2 (1927; repr. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1971), pp. 471–80; Harvey Young, Pure Food (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 221–40; and “Upton Sinclair, Whose Muckraking Changed the Meat Industry,” New York Times, June 30, 2016, www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/obituaries/archives.

  The novel’s main character: Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906), full text available at www.online-literature.com/upton_sinclair/jungle/.

  And a new senator: Sullivan, Our Times, pp. 525–27. A biographical sketch of Heyburn plus a guide to his papers at the University of Idaho can be found at www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Manuscripts/mg006.htm.

  “I am in favor”: Lorine Swainston Goodwin, The Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders 1879–1914 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999), p. 227.

  The confrontational Heyburn: Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 173–78.

  Meanwhile, the blended-whiskey: Clayton Coppin and Jack High, “Wiley and the Whiskey Industry: Strategic Behavior in the Passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act,” Business History Review 62, no. 2 (Summer 1988): pp. 297–300.

  “suffer to an extent”: “Labeling Ruinous to Liquor Trade,” New York Journal of Commerce 131, no. 30 (December 1, 1904): p. 3.

  “There is a bill”: Goodwin, Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, p. 242.

  “Who is that”: Gerald Carson, The Social History of Bourbon (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, repr. ed. 2010), p. 164.

  “What now?” wrote: Goodwin, Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, p. 243.

  “Let somebody muzzle”: “Chemistry on the Rampage,” California Fruit Grower 15, no. 2 (February 1905): p. 3.

  “The greater part of”: “Grocers Stand Against Food Bill Excesses,” Grocery World 39, no. 12 (March 5, 1905): p. 41.

  “I believe in chemistry”: Harvey Wiley, “Food Adulteration and Its Effects” (lecture, Sanitary Science class, Cornell University, 1905).

  “On the platform”: Sullivan, Our Times, p. 520.

  It was a “great battle”: Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), p. 231.

  “it is useless to tell”: Carl Jensen, Stories That Changed America: Muckrackers of the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), p. 55.

  “I had to tell”: Jensen, Stories That Changed America, p. 57.

  Meanwhile, other writers: Charles Edward Russell, The Greatest Trust in the World (New York: Ridgeway-Thayer, 1905), full text available at https://archive.org/details/greatesttrustin01russgoog; Henry Irving Dodge, “The Truth About Food Adulterations,” Woman’s Home Companion 48 (March 1905): pp. 6–7; Henry Irving Dodge, “How the Baby Pays the Tax,” Woman’s Home Companion 49 (April 1905): pp. 5–8.

  “The Senate does not indulge”: Henry Irving Dodge, “How the Baby Pays the Tax,” Woman’s Home Companion 49 (April 1905): p. 8.

  Also in 1905, Pierce’s magazine: The series, “The Slaughter of Americans,” appeared in five issues of What to Eat: What to Eat 18, no. 2 (February 1905): pp. 1–4; What to Eat 18, no. 3 (March 1905): pp. 1–3; What to Eat 18, no. 4 (April 1905): pp. 1–5; What to Eat 18, no. 5 (May 1905): pp. 1–3; and What to Eat 18, no. 6 (June 1905): pp. 1–5.

  “I recommend that a law”: Theodore Roosevelt, “Fifth Annual Message,” December 5, 1905, transcript available at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29546.

  “Are we to take up”: Horace Samuel Merrill and Marion Galbraith Merrill, The Republican Command 1897–1913 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), p. 27.

  “On the contrary”: Young, Pure Food, pp. 182–83.

  “Heyburn said he could”: Sullivan, Our Times, pp. 533–34.

  Back at the Bureau: Carol Lewis, “The ‘Poison Squad’ and the Advent of Food Regulation,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration Consumer Magazine, November–December 2002, pp. 1–15, http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/06/54d3fdf754244_-_21_PoisonSquadFDA.pdf.

  “It is hardly necessary”: Harvey W. Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health, vol. 2, Salicylic Acid and Salicylates (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906), p. 5, text available at https://archive.org/details/influenceoffoodp84wile_0.

  “exerts a depressing”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, p. 8. A critical rebuttal of Wiley’s conclusions was published in the industry magazine American Food Journal under the title “Salicylic Acid and Health,” November 1906, pp. 6–15.

  Chapter Eight: The Jungle

  To the Washington Star: Harvey Wiley to the Washington Star, January 30, 1906, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, box 60.

  To Everybody’s Magazine: Harvey Wiley to Everybody’s Magazine, February 12, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.

  “My attention is called”: Arthur H. Bailey to Harvey Wiley, February 26, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.

  “The attacks which are”: H. C. Adams (27th district, Wisconsin) to Harvey Wiley, February 5, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60; Harvey Wiley to H. C. Adams, February 12, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.

  In late February Wiley gave: Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), pp. 212–15.

  “From the newspapers we notice”: F. H. Madden (director, Reid, Murdoch & Co., Chicago) to Harvey Wiley, February 12, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.

  “Your wonderful tenacity”: J. E. Blackburn (National Bond and Securities Company) to Harvey Wiley, March 5, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.

  Charles Reed of the AMA: Charles Reed to Harvey Wiley, March 6, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.

  In early March: Anthony Arthur, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair (New York: Random House, 2006), pp. 43–85.

  “did not care to”: Arthur, Radical Innocent, p. 71.

  “what is going on”: George Bernard Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island (New York: Brentano’s, 1910), p. 179.

  The hostile Chicago Tribune: Arthur, Radical Innocent, p. 57.

  “I aimed for the public’s”: Eric Schlosser, Chicago Tribune, “‘I Aimed for the Public’s Heart, and . . . Hit It in the Stomach,’” May 21, 2006, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/0605210414_1_upton-sinclair-trust-free.

  “Tiddy was toying”: Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2 (1927; repr. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1971), p. 535.

  The question threw Wilson: Sullivan, Our Times, p. 547. The conflict is covered in his book on pages 536–51. Accounts can also be found in Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), pp. 459–65; and Michael Lesy and Lisa Stoffer, Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century 1900–1904 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), pp. 37–61.

  “ignoring at the same”: Theodore Roosevelt, “The Man with the Muck-rake,” speech delivered April 14, 1906, transcript available at www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/teddyrooseveltmuckrake.htm.

  The president’s attack: David Graham Phillips, The Treason of the Senate, ed. George E. Mowry and Judson A. Grenier (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), pp. 9–46.

  “The men with the muck rakes”: Roosevelt, “Man with the Muck-rake.”

/>   “Really, Mr. Sinclair”: Maureen Ogle, In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2013), p. 78.

  “Tell Sinclair to go”: Gary Younge, “Blood, Sweat and Fears,” Guardian, August 4, 2006, www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview24.

  “Many inside rooms”: “Conditions in Stockyard Described in the Neill-Reynolds Report,” Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1906, p. 1.

  “clean and wholesome”: “Conditions in Stockyard Described.”

  “If a commission of men”: “Discuss New Meat Bill,” Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1906, p. 4.

  “I am sorry to have”: Sullivan, Our Times, p. 548.

  “In Armour’s own establishment”: Lesy and Stoffer, Repast, p. 54.

  In early June, exasperated: David Moss and Marc Campasano, “The Jungle and the Debate over Federal Meat Inspection in 1906,” Harvard Business School case no. N9-716-045, February 10, 2016, https://advancedleadership.harvard.edu/files/ali/files/the_jungle_and_the_debate_over_federal_meat_inspection_in_1906_716045.pdf.

  “Roosevelt has a strong”: Lesy and Stoffer, Repast, p. 57.

  “The momentum of the”: Sullivan, Our Times, p. 552.

  There were still those: Phillips, Treason of the Senate, pp. 204–7.

  Roosevelt’s secretary replied: William Loeb Jr. to Thomas Ship (clerk, Committee on Territories, U.S. Senate), July 12, 1906, Wiley Papers, box 60.

  Roosevelt had a different: Daniel Ruddy, ed., Theodore Roosevelt’s History of the United States (in His Own Words) (New York: Smithsonian Books, 2010), pp. 211–12; Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 190.

  Chapter Nine: The Poison Trust

  “How does a general feel”: Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), p. 231.

  “I have long contemplated”: L. D. Waterman, MD, to Harvey Wiley, March 15, 1906, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 60.