Forms of Fraud.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 51, 19 December 1901, Page 2

Forms of Fraud.

Some years ago a noted English judge declared that the commercial life of our day is rotten through and through. Both in his private and his official capacity he was, perhaps, frequently brought face to face with sanded sugar, matchwood cloves, wooden nutmegs, sawdust flour, alum baking powder, bread that, instead of being the c staff of life,' turns out to be rather a broken reed and makes women's nerves « go all to pieces,' canned goods treated with deadly admixtures, • choice teas ' ' doctored ' with poisonous chemicals, coffee ' dusted ' liberally with chicory and sawdust and tinted to the desired shade with yellow ochre and Venetian red, and — among other samples of our commercial honesty— the familiar ' long-sleever ' of beer that owes its foaming top or delusive appearance of natural fermentation to doses of such dangerous compounds as salycilic and boracic acids.

We— English-speaking nations— are a pious people— and we know it. We are likewise a great people— and we know that, too. And our commerce and our prosperity are the frequent theme of exuberant press and pulpit verbosity. Our commerce kings handicap the New Zealand and the British and the American farmer by turning the fat of cows and oxen into imitation butter and putting the tallow-pot into unfair competition with her royal highness the cow. We have improved upon all the old methods of adulteration and are daily inventing others that are new. And the climax of the business is reached in the adulteration of the adulterants ! The milkman still retains the good old rule, the simple plan of adding the pump to his staff of horned milkers, and this ancient fraud— which wakes up the town and city populations at an early hour hour every morning and hits them a blow in the region of the epigastrium— is thus discussed by the clever writer who conducts the query column of our valued contemporary the Austral Light.

"•Milkman,"' says he, 'sends six specious reasons for setting aside an injunction of his confessor, whereby he has been restrained from adulterating milk. But they are all as watery as the article he has been palming off on the public. There is only one of them that deserves treatment at my hands, and that merely because it is often alleged in similar case-,, and used as a successful embrocation fora sprained conscience by divers other thieves. "M " pleads that " the practice is well nigh universal," and that he cannot make a profit unless he introduces into his herd the cow with the iron tail. Now, in these days of public analysts and government supervision, this plea is simply rotten. There is no difficulty about putting the police on to any vendor who habitually adulterates milk, and every honest man in the trade (si gui sint) owes a duty to himself and to the public in the exposure of any such m tiefactors. If the adulteration is considerable, the ordinary tests will infallibly detect it ; if it be so trifling as to evade detection, then "M's" argument concerning the profit to be derived therefrom can no longer be sustained. In spite of the hoary antiquity of the abuse, neither the law nor public opinion has ever acquiesced therein, and in the eyes of both tribunals the word " milk " is still understood as the exclusive product of the common or garden cow. It is a hopeful sign of the times when a milkman thought it worth while to mention the matter even as a scruple, and it may yet come to pass — though, I fear, not in our day — when the milk vendors will grant SydneySmith's pathetic request : "If you must bring water with the milk," said that philosophic man, " would you be so kind as to leave the water at my door in one jug and the milk in the other ? I can then, if necessary, mix them myself " Considering the invincible atavism by which the tribe is governed, more than this can scarcely be expected. I have consulted on the point a brokendown astrologer, who acts as messenger in the office, and whose retirement from an honorable profession has been due to a conscientious objection on his part to adulterating his " Crlenlivet." "The explanation of the phenomenon is very simple," said the sage, as he transferred a tabloid of " the weed nicotian " to the left side of this mouth, and leisurely produced a temporary eclipse of his right eve : " These men were born when Aquarius and the Milky Way happened to be in conjunction." '

The adulterator of milk, bread, or any other article met with scant mercy in the honester old days of the great Catholic

guilds of the middle ages. Bax, for instance, in his German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages, says : ' The guild laws against adulteration, scamped work, and the like, were sometimes ferocious in their severity. For example, in some towns the baker misconducted himself in the matter of the composition of his bread was condemned to be shut up in a basket which was fixed at the end of a long pole and let down so many times to the bottom of a pool of dirty water. In the years 1456 two grocers, together with a female assistant, were burnt alive at Nurnberg foi adulterating saffron and spices, and a similar instance happened at Augsburg in 1492.' The proportioning of penalty to the degree of guilt was not well understood in those stern old days. But the principles of fair dealing and commercial honesty were realised and acted upon.