Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/4

4 tion to the kind of food people have than they used to do.

There is much advice as to what will best nourish us, and many experiments and observations are made upon pupils in schools and reformatories and upon workingmen and women in different occupations to see how much food we need each day. This is all right if the knowledge is not used to force the workers to live upon just enough to keep them alive and to keep up the human race. But this study will never in itself FURNISH enough pure food for everybody.

Why isn't ALL food pure and wholesome? The people who sell us food have to make money in order to live,—in other words they must make a profit on their goods.

There are many people in this business of getting food ready for themselves and others to eat—so there is much competition among them as to who shall get the most trade and make the most money. The ones that offer their goods the cheapest are sure of the custom. They find they can undersell their rivals if they can do one or both of two things. They can adulterate their goods, or get cheaper help, or both. Dr. Wiley, who has been chief chemist for the U. S. Department of Agriculture for the past twenty-five years says that "practically everything that we eat and drink is adulterated." The man who says this is a capitalist official and would not wish to make things seem worse than they really are, so we may believe what he tells us. Some of these adulterations are very harmful, such as the adulterations of baking powder and the preservatives which are used in meat and milk, canned goods and the like.

We are told that the way to prevent this adulteration is to buy only the goods which are known to be pure, from firms that spend much in advertising, because they have reputations to keep up and there is no danger of their selling dishonest goods. This is possible for people who