Adulteration Everywhere

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

ADULTERATION EVERYWHERE.

Is there such a thing as a pure article of any kind, to be found anywhere? Really, we are beginning seriously to debate this question, in common with many other people who are compelled by the necessities of this sublunary existence to meddle with such vulgar necessities as eating and drinking. Exposes are made, from time to time, in the organs of public opinion, and a wholesale system of adulteration is proved to be practised in our food and beverages, but the exposures amount to nothing. The groceryman, the milk-man, the baker, the liquor dealer, are not at all disturbed. The public are startled for a moment, but the excitement soon blows over and the old games go merrily on. For example, the other day some thousand hogsheads of port wine were confiscated in England, and found to be most vilely and abominably adulterated—little better than rank poison, indeed—but no punishment was inflicted on the poisoners, and no investigation made.

Of late years, delirium tremens had increased with terrible rapidity among us, when thirty years ago it was almost unknown. It has become, indeed, what may be termed a specific disease, caused by the introduction of a specific poison into the system—that poison being the stuff used in adulteration. Any man who drinks habitually of the camphene brandy, strychnine whiskey and other beverages to match, which are sold at a goodly proportion of bar-rooms, need have a cast-iron stomach and no nervous system at all. In this climate, and with the peculiarly high-strung and excitable American temperament, the practice is certain death—not quite so rapid in its effects, indeed, as a shot from a pistol barrel, but quite as sure.

Great hopes were expressed at one time that the manufacture of native wines from the pure juice of our grape-growing regions was to effect a change in the habits of our people by the substitution of light and wholesome beverages in the place of the fiercely-stimulating drinks now so much in favor among us. But at present, we see no likelihood of any such peaceful revolution taking place in our midst. If it come at all, it will be very many years before any such radical change can be effected in our habits.

It was thought that the introduction of the national drink of the Germans which created such a furor at one time, would also tend to permanently diminish intoxication. For a while, we believe that it did diminish the consumption of alcohol in a great degree, but it was little better than a passing relief and at the present time there appears to be quite as much, if not more spirituous liquor consumed than heretofore.

If the Temperance reformers really have the good of the community at heart, instead of concocting visionary schemes to legislate the vice of intemperance out of existence, they will join in a righteous crusade against this nefarious business of adulteration, and take measures to bring the murderous wretches to justice who have been fattening at the expense of the health and lives of their fellow creatures. Let this whole business be exposed in all its enormity and let the guilty parties be visited with the severest punishment that can be inflicted upon them. Such a course, if rightly pursued, would do more to advance the cause of temperance throughout the land than all the buncombe speeches, all the clap-trap lectures, all the tee-total newspapers that have been put forth since the great reform commenced.