FAIR PLAY IN THE MARKETPLACE: ADULTERATION AND THE ORIGINS OF CONSUMERISM.
Item
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Title
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FAIR PLAY IN THE MARKETPLACE: ADULTERATION AND THE ORIGINS OF CONSUMERISM.
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Identifier
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AAI8319788
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identifier
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8319788
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Creator
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OKUN, MITCHELL.
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Contributor
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Ari Hoogenboom
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States
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Abstract
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Controversy concerning adulteration long antedates the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Civil War-era adulteration laws first attacked the urban milk supply. Coinciding with this legislation, pioneer sanitarians succeeded in creating professionalized boards of health, to which the enforcement of the new milk laws was entrusted. In the area of drugs, pharmacists obtained, in 1848, federal legislation prohibiting the importation of adulterated drugs, and for a time argued that this law eliminated most pharmaceutical adulteration.;By the 1870's the food and drug supply-chains were becoming more centralized because of improvements in transportation, refrigeration, the mechanization of canning, the growth of packaging, and the development of large-scale manufacturing and wholesaling. Publicity concerning adulteration now focused upon the technological innovations of the marketplace. Particular emphasis was placed on such new food products as glucose and oleomargarine. Businessmen, sanitarians, and especially the chemists--who now played a central role on the boards of health--tried unsuccessfully to defuse these accusations.;To defeat prohibitory legislation, commercial interests drafted their own adulteration bill, publicized through a national contest. They sought to restrain truly unscrupulous adulterators, "without imposing unnecessary burdens upon commerce." They failed to get their own bill through Congress, but helped defeat more radical legislation; the bill was passed, however, in three states. In New York, Charles F. Chandler, a chemist with strong commercial ties, was given responsibility for enforcing the law. Chandler prosecuted only food retailers, then succeeded in persuading the sanitarians to decriminalize the wholesale products which the retailers had been arrested for selling. After this acquiescence, the New York law was a dead letter.;Meanwhile dairy interests succeeded in having jurisdiction over dairy products transferred from the sanitarians to a New York State Dairy Commission, and in 1886 persuaded Congress to tax the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine--the first federal regulation of a domestic food. By that year sanitarians and chemists had disavowed interest in "mere" fraud, and declined to supervise the marketplace further. An attempt by retailers and reformers to generate federal legislation was neutralized by the wholesalers and manufacturers, and by 1887 the anti-adulteration movement passed into other hands.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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History
