Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/358

354 Idaho passed a law at the last session of its legislature which establishes the customary standards and materially enlarges the powers and duties of the state sealer of weights and measures who, by a former act, is the dairy, food and sanitary inspector of the state. The present act makes it mandatory for the state sealer to test and seal or condemn all apparatus used in the state. Cities and municipalities are given the power to appoint sealers and pass ordinances not in conflict with the laws of the state. A large number of dry commodities for which legal weights are specified, must be sold only by weight; berries and small fruits, when sold in boxes, must be sold only in those containing a standard dry quart or dry pint unless information that the boxes hold less than this amount is given to the purchaser and a statement of the net contents is labeled on the box; milk and cream must be sold in standard size bottles; pails of lard must be labeled with the net weight; prints of butter containing less than 16 ounces must be labeled with the weight; and bread must be sold by weight.

Illinois passed a law which is lacking in scope and does not provide any officials whose sole duty it is to enforce the law, but its execution depends upon the Secretary of State who is ex-officio sealer of weights and measures, and the county clerks of the several counties who are county sealers of weights and measures; the former being charged with the care and custody of the state standards and the trying and proving of the county and municipal standards, and the latter with the duty of trying and proving all weights and measures, scales and beams within their respective counties when requested so to do. Fees are provided for the payment of services rendered in testing and sealing; and this is a very undesirable feature of the law, as such a system is not conducive to the attainment of the best results, and is generally believed by weights and measures officials to be wrong in principle and unsatisfactory in practise. The weights per bushel of a large number of commodities are fixed. Section 17 of the law is worthy of commendable notice, since it gives authority to weights and measures officials to seize and hold for use as evidence in any suit any short measure or faulty or incorrect weighing or measuring instrument or any commodity or article of merchandise which is of less weight or measure than represented, and the sealer is not held liable to the owner of the property seized for damages caused by such seizure where reasonable grounds existed for the action of the official. While the law is incomplete in its provisions, in fact, is entirely lacking in many which are indispensable to the attainment of the best results in weights and measures work, inadequate in the machinery provided for its enforcement, and not in keeping in progressiveness with the position of Illinois among the sister states of the Union, it is to be hoped that the start thus made will expand, and that a competent law and adequate force will soon be had.

Indiana introduced a bill to amend the law passed in 1911, and, after