The evening times. [volume], May 02, 1906, Image 6

About The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914

Image provided by: State Historical Society of North Dakota

                
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PAGE SIX
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Why had he pitched
PURE MILK AS PURE FOOD
STORY OF ITS ORIGIN AND FIGHT TO SECURE IT
LESLIE'S WEEKLY.
"You can't be sure about anything
you eat or drink these days," I heard
a pessimistic acquaintance moaning
over his daily paper. "It almost makes
a man sorry he was not born sooner—
before the water all sot full of typhoid
germs, and the meat to be so much
frozen cholera, and the milk
•The train stoppeil at my station, and
1 l»n(! to get out before this unhappy
•'Citizen could say what was the matter
with the mtilv of our days. But that
last word of his set me thinking about
those things—water, meat, and milk.
011
these three as
if they were the principal elements
•o£ human diet? My friend was a good
American, and therefore a water
drinker as compared with the Europe
an. and a human carnivore as com
pared with men of the Asiatic races.
When one sifts it all down to the last
tacts, these three are not the main
essentials of human food, taking "hu
man" in its broadest sense. Tlie staff
of life—the solid support of manhood
at large—is bread but adult man
hood is a state to which only certain
percentage of the human beings born
into the world ever reach, and the
most ticklish part of the interval be
tween birth and manhood—the stage
of early childhood, where death meets
so many—has to be negotiated on milk.
The same reasoning may almost un
iversally be applied to all forms of
animal life, beginning with the active,
ever-present microbe, including domes
tic animals, and ending with the man
eating lion and tiger, the gigantic ele
phant and hippopotamus, and the mam
moth whale. Water as to quench
thirst, but those other two are the
indispensable raw materials for build
ing up the baby's body and then sus
taining the man's.
1 had been weighing against each
other for some time the comparative
importance of Yhese two—milk and
bread—when Jo, dawned
011
me that
the former Is, on the whole, far the
more essential to our race, seeing that
a baby cannot eat bread, but a grown
man never gets quite independent of
milk. Even the man who is so un
fortunate as to acquire the habit of
drinking his coffee black must use a
certain quantity of butter, which is one
product of mill and should eat a good
deal of cheese, if his health is to re
main fairly robust. As a matter of
fact, of my own experience, I knew
that the men whom we crawling
dyspeptics of the city sidewalks ad
mire and envy as marvels of health
drink prodigious quantities of milk in
one way or another. The train of
thought started by my pessimist had
led me to the conclusion that men,
from babyhood to old age are woefully
dependent upon cows. And this con
clusion again reminded me of the inter
mittent discussion of the pure-milk
question which has been awakening
the echoes of the press at such fre
quent intervals within the last six
months. I called to mind United
States government bulletins, public
statements of high ofticials, articles in
the papers to which had given little
or no attention at the time, and out of
it all came the question, where does
Leslie's Weekly stand in this discus
sion?
The answer to this question is what
started me on the investigation that
has issued in the present article. That
answer was found in the files of Frank
Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper two
generations ago. Frank Leslie him
self was alive and active in those
days, and here was an article in the
"issue for May Sth, 1K5S, headed:
"Startling Exposure of the milk trade
of New York and Brooklyn."
In his introductory article he pro
posed to develop the subject fully, and
stated that he would "give pen or pen
cil illustrations of every establishment
where distillery milk is manufactured
the routes of all the distillery milk
carts the number of every house to
which they supply milk the location
and the number of the depots which
dispense the milk as 'pure country
milk' the names of the owners of
the cows the cows, their diseases,
their suffering from unwholesome food,
and their constant confinement, which
Rents, Real Estate
and Surety Bonds
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•f- t-
only ends in their death statistics of
the trade statistics of the mortality
among infants attributted by the facul
ty to the use of distillery or swill
milk," and "the names and false' in
scriptions upon the carts which carry
the swill milk about the city, and such
other points as may arise in the course
of our minute investigation."
The perusal of that article produces
more than a startling effect upon the
reader it is unwholesome. Follow
ing the old files, I found that this was
no mer$ isolated outburst of Mghteous
indignation the paper-had only set
out upou its crusade on May Sth, 1558,
and kept it up. It instituted a system
atic investigation of the distillery
stables—if they were worthy of the
name of stables—where unhealthy
cows were then being fed and milked
for the wholesale poisoning of man
kind, especially of human babies. The
detectives sent by the Leslie paper
were detected by the conscience-bur
dened and angry proprietors of this
nefarious business, and they and the
artists who accompanied them were
violently assaulted by the male help
ers, always referred to by Leslie as
"the Hibernian milkmaids." As a re
sult, however, he had the satisfaction
of seeing his lead followed by the New
York dailies, and reporters from the
Times, the Tribune (them the great
Horace Greeley's paper), and the Her
ald, as well as Frank Leslie's artist,
accompanied the committee of the city
government, which made its tardy in
vestigation on June 5th, 1S58.
Note Frank Leslie's prophetic ut
terance in answer to a multitude of
questions from anxious subscribers,
late in the summer of 1S5S, when it
was apparent to all that the objec
tional milk traffic was broken up. The
chief concern of parents was expressed
in the questions so frequently asked,
"What are we to do when this milk is
abolished'.'" "Where shall we get our
milk from?" and the additional fear
that, "the supply from the country
will not more than half meet the de
mand from the city!" His well-timed
reply shows remarkable foresight in
the mind of this writer of fifty years
ago. Extracts from his vigorous
editorial give us the following per
tinent reasoning
"Abolish that baleful manufacture,
and the pleasant hillsides, the teeming
valleys, and the luxuriant bottoms
will be covered with beautiful crea
tures—God's milk fountains for our
children's health and succor "Take
a circuit of twelve miles around the
limits of the city "it would furnish
grazing-grounds" "enough to supply
all the pure, healthful, life-saving milk
that we can consume."
"Then there are the rich countries
opened up by the lines of railroads—
the Hudson River, the Erie, the
Harlem, the New Haven, and the Long
Now all this must be, and is, even
to tiiis day, very flattering to the feel
ings of Leslie's Weekly but it is one
tiling to prevent .rogues from selling
milk in a lethal form another thing to
find such milk for the babies and
Springfield
Springfield
New York Underwriters
Pennsylvania
German Alliance
United States Fidelity & Guarantee Co.
German Alliance
United States Fidelity & Guarantee Co.
I Mr- A
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grown-ups as shall not be poison but
food. At this early point In my investi
gation I recurred to that impressive,
if not novel or original, conclusion
that milk is, on the whole, the most
important constituent of human na
ture's daily food, and it was not ap
parent that in the fall of 1858. at the
close of the successful crusade of
Frank Leslie, he had provided any
pure milk to take the place of the
distillery-fed article—nntil my atten
tion was attracted to an advertisement
in the issue of May 22. 1858 where in
appeared for the first time what may
have been the first advertisement ever
written by the late Gail Borden, re
lative to his condensed milk. As a
matter of timely interest and. in con
nection with the discussion of pure
milk as pure food, the following fac
simile of the notice referred to is
introduced:
Uordnn'H Condensed Milk, Prepared In
I^itehtteld County, Conn., Is the only
milk over concentrated without the ad
mixture of sugar or some other sub
stance, and remaining easily soluble in
water. It is simply Fresh Country
milk, from which the water is nearly
all evaporated, and nothing added. The
Committee of the Academy of Medicl%s
recommend it as "an article that, for
purity, durability and economy, is
hitherto unequalled in the annals of the
Milk trade."
One quart, by the addtion of water,
makes 2 1-2 quarts, equal to cream—
3 quarts rich milk, and 7 quarts good
milk.
For sale at 173 Canal street, or de
livered at dwellings In New York and
Brooklyn at 25 cents per quart. 129
Here was the man, surely, who ought
to have shared with Frank Leslie the
gratitude of the mothers and children
of New York.
As a matter of fact, neither New
York nor any other section of his
country had at that time realized that
any gratitude was due to this man.
The short but effective advertisement
states that he did business "chiefly"
on Canal Street, for his milk—much
the same quality of that still made by
his successors, for which the wary
householder nowadays has to contend
strenuously lest his grocer substitute
something alleged to be "just as good
and one cent cheaper"—was then
actual peddled by Gail Borden and an
asistant through the streets of New
York and Brooklyn. Doubtless many
a housewife, ignorantly content with
the distillery product, objected to the
noise of the bell which Borden himself
used to ring to attract attention to
his wholesome and necessary com
modity. The advertisement was an ef
fective substitute for the itinerant bell.
But before reaching even the stage
of the peddling-cart and bell, he had
already labored much and .thought
much in the interest of pure food for
1
Island all these would pour in a tide
of wholesome lacteal fluid. New York
would be the depot for the richest
milk in the world our children would
gain the privilege of retaining the life
breathed into their nostrils, and New
York would cease to be the city of
wholesale infanticide." We are now
in a position to judge the extent to
which these prophecies are fulfilled
by pointing to the information contain
ed in the parapraphs to follow.
It was in the days of Buchanan's
presidency that these things happened.
The crusade resulted in victory for
Frank Leslie and humanity the hor
ror of the distillery-fed, plague-strick
en, and plague-spreading milch cows
was swept out of existence, and—to
cut this part of the story short—the
originator of the campaign had the ad
ditional gratification of receiving, on
Christmas day, 1858, a beautiful gold
watch, with this inscription on the in
side of its back cover:
"Presented to FrankLeslie in be
lifilf of the mothers and children of
New York as a grateful testimonial of
his manly and fearless exposure of
the swill-milk traffic."
civilized man.
He was only a little younger than
the century—being well on in his fifty
seventh year—when Frank Leslie be
gan the Pure Milk crusade in May.
1.85S, and he had lived his life strenu
ously and well. Since the beginning
of that life, in that picturesque and
productive Chenango valley surround
ing Norwich, N. Y.'this birthplace), our
public benefactor had seen American
history in the making and at close
range. Down in Texas, when those in
ternational troubles were brewing
which ended in the addition of Texas,
California, and other vast territories
to this Republic, Gail Borden, farmer
and stock owner, was one of the
delegates to the convention of San
Felipe, which in 1S33 presented what
may now be regarded as the Texan
declaration of independence to the
Mexican government, and, curiously
enough, the district which he repres
ented in that convention bore the name
of La Vaca—"The Cow." Life on that
border, amid the perils and difficulties
of travel and warfare in the great
wildernesses, impressed him very deep
ly with the importance of providing
pure food for man in a portable form,
and the mind of the practical genius—
for such he unquestionably was—show
ed itself in his earliest nutritious in
vention, the Borden meat biscuit. This
admirable contrivance for supply ra
tions to caravans of travelers and to
armies on the plains, destined, as it
was. to be eventually appreciated at
its true value, was not a commercial
success in the early 'forties of the last
century. Not only the meat biscuit
appeared in the world—like other great
improvements in the means and ways
of human living—a generation too
soon. This might appear disastrous
in truth, it was a blessing, if not to
the Texan settlements and the pioneers
of the West, certainly to the mothers
an dbabies of New York, for it trans
ferred his effective activities of mind to
the great, question of milk supply in
thickly populated countries.
writer
of
Liverpool & London & Globe Norwich Union
Liverpool & London & Globe of N. Y.
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THE EVENING TIMES, GRAND FORKS, N. D.
The Texan delegate from The Cow
district
was not a
theortzer, nor
scientific treatises.
opinions and his aims. Instead
It seems almost incredible, but is
absolutely certain, that this anticipa
tor of twentieth century hygienic
methods knew nothing about "germ
theories" as such it is remarkable
that in practice he applied those
theories more than sixty years ago.
To put his whole plan into a few
words, he simply proposed to give his
customers perfect milk in the same
perfect state in which it came from
the cow's udder, and to do this by ex
cluding the air from it from the very
first moment of its extraction out of
the natural source. This logically led
him to the vacuum principle of evap
oration. And the method of evapor
ation led to its conversion into a
portable form. Others had their own
ways of experimenting with so-called
granulated milk. His method was,
briefly, a real condensation by the re
moval of superfluous water. The
quest, for purity led him to the secret
ol' both purity and portability—at
least, so it seems to me, studying the
subject at this distance of time. But
the problem was not easily conquered
it revealed one obstacle after another
in its practical details, and all these
had to be overcome before the inven
tor reached the point of beginning his
struggle for a patent. As an illustra
tion, he was obliged to raise the sell
ing price of his condensed milk from
the published, but unprofitable, figure
of 25 cents per quart in 1858 to 4S
cents per quart in the early 'sixties.
The United States government pur
chased vast quantities of this pre
served milk in cans for use by the
union soldiers during the civil war.
Professor S. L. Goodale, the expert
of the Maine st&te board of agricul
ture, who was a personal friend of
Gail Borden, gives an interesting ac
count of the difficulties whrch arose
in both Great Britain and the United
States when it was sought to protect
the discovery by legal means. The
objection raised by the commissioners
was not. concerned in the least with
the claim to originality it was ac
tually based on the argument that
this process was of no particular ad
vantage in the preservation of milk.
At length, however, the last barrier
in the way of success was thrown
down both the American and the Brit
ish patents were sealed in 185G, and
thereafter, when continued commer
cial success proved that the projected
plan was the golden key of the situ
ation, the only difficulty was to keep
unscrupulous and misguided competi
tors 'from*ersuading the world that
they, and not Borden had discovered
the way to victory. This last difficulty
has now* been settled by the declara
tion of the highest authority known
to English-speaking readers,- the En
cyclopaedia Britannica, that the late
Gale Borden was the first to hit upon
the evaporating plan of preserving
milk.
So much as this I had dug up from
the old Leslie's files and other sources
EVERY COMPANY REPRESENTED IN THIS AGENCY
Will Pay Their San Francisco Losses in Full From
Their Surplus Without Impairment o£ Their Capital
WE REPRESENT THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES:
rire, lornaao
Si Plate Glass
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Ills
of
being
abstrusely expressed In essays or In
volumes of hygienic preachment, crys
tallized themselves into what may be
fairly called his personal codA—the
practical rules for the production of
sound milk and it's transportation in
sound condition, which are the law
to this day with the interests that
perpetuate his work. As to the former
problem—the safeguarding of the pro
duct itself—it is easy and very inter
esting to observe how, by some
privilege of intuitive genius, he an
ticipated the conclusions which the
best-trained reasoning and experiment
in the service of the United States
government have reached in the last
half-centmj' with the aid of all the
bacteriological discoveries of ranee
and Germany. A glance at the latest
department of agriculture bulletins
from Washington, comparing them
with the rules embodied in their con
tracts by the Borden Condensed Milk
company—rules which are now gener
ations old in substance and which real
ly only formulate the principles fol
lowed by the founder in 1858—displays
the lagging efforts of governmental
science to keep pace with the inspired
perceptions of genius But of this I
may say more later on, when the time
comes to speak of my prying into the
contemporary operations of his suc
cessors in the business: just at present
it is in order, to notice the more
definitely and demonstrably original
scientific discovery, that of the preser
vation of pure milk in all its purity
through the trials and chances of
transportation from cow to consumer.
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accessible to newspaper men within
city limits. I read half a dozen bulle
tins .and reports of the.United States
department of agriculture, and there
found, in more scientific phraseology,
powerful confirmation of my own un
sophisticated Inference that milk is
the most important type of human
food. No wonder that babies can thrive
on nothing else, and that healthy
adults never outgrow the need for
milk, if, as one high authority informs
nlle, milk contains all the materials
for building flesh, bone and muscle in
the most easily digestible form of all
known foods for the normal stomach
I learned wonderful facts about 'pro
teins" and "albumins" from the ex
perts employed by the government and
the leading agricultural states of* the
union, and marveled at the strictness
of the rules which they recommend
for the feeding and general care of
cows, and then I went down town and
asked President William J. Rogers of
the Borden company, to show me "what
they were doing. After repeated re
quests made in person and by tele
phone, he reluctantly promised to aid
me in securing practical information
from a working standpoint, and An
ally granted permission for an inspec
tion on my part of any of the various
dairies and platrls operated by them
In the preparation of milk in its varied
forms, including bottled milk, cream,
and buttermilk for city supply, con
densed milk (sweetened and unsweet
ened,) and evaporated cream in cans,
and malted milk in glass jars. s. These
requests, seldom, if ever, granted now
adays, were complied with only when
it was understood that my motive was
to glean wholesome information rela
tive to a wholesome food and for the
benefit and enlightment of such unen
lightened members of the human fami
ly as might read or learn of it after
publication.
The first surprise in this quarter was
that at which I have already hinted
The company—that largest of its kind
in the world—was not waiting for in
structions or recommendations from
Washington on the care of cows on
the contrary, it had been leading the
way for our legislators and adminis
trators in this direction ever since its
beginnings before the civil war. I
was shown a form of contract with the
farmers w^io supply them with their
fresh milk in scores of rural districts
all over this country, one that has been
substantially the same, and strictly ad
hered to, ever since the time of their
founder. Without disrespect to Wash
ington, I should say that they have for
many, years been Instructors of the
Department of Agricuulture. Not that
the Washington or state standards
even yet quite equals theirs in sever
ity. In answer to possible quiries on
that head, I would point to this clause
In the farmer's contract previously re
ferred to:: "Not to feed the cows on
ensilage." A recent Washington bulle
tin declares ensilage (the partially
fermented product of the silo system
of storing fresh fodder) to be perfect
ly sound and wholsome food for cattle
the Borden people differ with scienti
fic authorities in this respect based
on their knowledge of the subject, and
therefore eliminate from their supply
ensilage-fed milk. Perhaps here, too,
the various authorities will follow the
New York lead, as they have in regard
to the details of lighting, venetilating,
heating and cleaning of cow stables.
It was a satisfactory result of the
inquisitive frame of qiind which a
chance remark of a companion on the
"L" train had aroused in me, that it
lead me to the great concerns, begin
ning with the model plant located at
Gail Borden's birthplace. I was cour
teously received by superintendents
and managers. I had almost said that.
the management threw everything
open to my inspection, but a regard
for strict accuracy checks me at that
point fhere are processes, or im
provements in the details of propesses
which they wisely, perhaps, refrained
from explaining to a greenhorn. I
visited dairies, stables and milk-hous
es, and noted the care with which the.
cows were cared for and fed on the
farms and was also shown the receiv
ing-room, the well rooms, the bottling
rooins, the cooling rooms, and the seal
ing-rooms at? several points, and had
every opportunity of noting the almost
inconceivable care withv which the del
icate fluid is guarded from every possi
ble tint, not only of actual dirt or
dust, but of atmospheric impurity. No
one must use tobacco or drugs in any
form within these jealously guarded
precincts. The thousands of men and
women employed in these institutions
Eh
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SEE US BEFORE PLACING YOUR INSURANCE
HOLMES & LEIDMAN
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Phoenix of London
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have, their comfort provided for In
many ways, in separate bulldlnga, but
within therooms whfere soman? mil
lion gallons at milk are being either
bottled for shipment or conveyed to
the great vacuum pans for condensa
tions or evaporation, absolute cleanli
ness prevails. Thcr Immaculate white
linen suits universally worn by the
brlgty- faced, healthy, and intelligent
employes are donned befbre entrance
to the operating room.
Writing in New York City for aNew
York illustrated weekly, it has been
natural enough to emphasize the im
portance of the business in New York
and the east. Yet it must not 4e for
gotten that in the Chicago section and
other other sections of America ere
produced results precisely similar to
those brought about in this section of
the country. Elgin, as is well known,
Is famous the wbrld over for the but
ter she makes, and it may. surprise
yOu to learn that the excellence of this
butter is due directly to bur inventor's
efforts »f nearly a century ago.\ The
high standards referred to elsewhere
—introduced by him among the farm
ers and dairymen of the two richest
American grazing spots—New York
and Illinois—made possible the pro
duction of the rich and pure fluid milk
required all these years for the mak
ing of Elgin and New York state but
ter.
On the whole, speaking as an Amer
ican, one cannot but be thankful that
the enormous importance of pure milk
to/the health of millions was recog
nized so early in the history of our
country and by a man so well able to
grapple with the difllculties of the sit
uation. It seems well nigh certain
that not only could no other country
in--the world afford so ample and sd
excellent a supply of the raw mater
ial, but in nb other country could that
supply be so advantageously treated,
whether fqr shipment in the herme-
North British & Mercantile
New York Plate Glass Co.
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Talk with Twamley
National ...
National ...
/Aetnai:^
Maryland Casualty Co.Vr i, /.
New York Plate Glass Co.
Maryland Casualty Co.
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PFOISl ,.
WEDNESDAY, MAV 2, 1906.
fear
/ictlly-sealed, sclentlflcally-sterlllzed
glass jars, or in the, several canned
tornis. It Ip certain that nowhere
else in the world Is the business car
ried on upon so large a scale, and this
fact has an important bearing upon
that topic of health with which this
discussion began. The application of
the present vastness of the practical
operations in pure milk Is two-fold:
First, that the elaborate precautions
would be Impossible, In a business
sense, for a smaller concern. Toktake
one example, the interfests previous
ly referred to. carry out the humani
tarian policy of refusing to use any
milk from an infected ..dairy or com
munity. By Infection. I mean that a
owladge of an unhealthy cow, of
an impure water supply, or illness: of
any character in the dairyman's* fam
ily prompts them at once to constantly
safeguard the health of millions of
people. Due'to these unusual precau
tions, I believe no illness has ever
been tracable to this source of sup
ply.
Second, the great number—amount
ing to hundreds of thousands In round
numbers—of the cows which supply
the brands of milk is In itself an ad
ditional guarantee of quality ..for
Scientific experts are now pretty well,
agreed that their family cow'suplied
them vlth milk the year round 1b
based upon misinformation in the phy
siology of mily. In short., so far !s
the dweller in cities for having cause
for such alarm as my friend expressed
that the city man, with' an abundant
supply of pure milk of all kinds within
easy'reach, is really, it seems, much
better off in respect to this chief arti
cle of diet than is his farmer cousin,
who depends more upon his own (per
haps unenlightened) resources.7
There is everything In the right
person making a request you
wouldn't grve your empty tin cans to
some people.
HOTEL DACOTAH
Tie Finest 1» the Northwest—Rates $9.00 to $4.00 Per Dar. Grand FiftL
Nortt Dakota.
OWN YOUR OWN FRANCHISE
Gas One Dollar per Thousand Feet.
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NO INTEIEST oa
'Stock or Binds,
Yoi own (he BEST
Gaimade lor above
price. Hachiae is
aatoaatic. Yoajcaa
Ufbt one burner or
filly. Yoa can ase
YOUR GAS IANGE
at (he suae time.
beare mock
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