ROOSEVELT FAVORED LEGISLATION

During the progress of the campaign for pure food legislation, and especially during the last one or two years when apparently public sentiment was sufficiently aroused and unanimous to warrant the expectation of a speedy successful issue, I felt that President Roosevelt was heartily in favor of this legislation. The appearance in 1906 of Upton Sinclair Is novel entitled "The Jungle," brought public opinion to the pitch of indignant excitement. President Roosevelt was eagerly in quest of a law supervising the packing of our animal food products. The time of the session was so nearly at an end, that it seemed hopeless to bring in a meat inspection bill as an expansion of the food and drugs bill. It was deemed best, therefore, to try to engraft the meat inspection bill as a rider on the agricultural appropriation measure. I am not aware whether at that period it was a violation of the rules to introduce legislation on an appropriation bill; at the present time it is. At any rate, a rider satisfactory to the President was offered to the appropriation bill in the House of Representatives. It was not adopted, however, except after serious mutilation of the measure. The chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Mr. Wadsworth, thought the offered measure was too drastic and uncalled for by those engaged in our meat industry. President Roosevelt was greatly disturbed at the changes made in the measure, but was powerless to prevent such modification as the House Committee on Agriculture thought desirable. It is not quite certain whether the Agricultural Appropriation Bill carrying these meat inspection provisions became a law prior to, or subsequent to the food and drugs act. Only a search of official documents could determine this fact. Nevertheless, it is a matter of some importance, for if the appropriation of the Department of Agriculture was approved subsequent to the approval of the food and drugs act, any disagreements between the two acts would be construed by the courts in favor of the later bill. In point of fact, no effort whatever was made by the Bureau of Chemistry to enforce any provisions of the meat inspection law. The reason for mentioning these matters here is because President Roosevelt's intense interest in the meat inspection bill seemed to obscure, at least for the time being, any interest he had in the food and drugs act.

I had the good fortune to know somewhat intimately two or three of the newspaper men who had the ear of the President and I learned from them that the President's interest in the food and drugs act was genuine and unreserved. Particularly I knew well Harry Needham, intimate associate of the President. Mr. Needham subsequently met an untimely death in an accident in an aeroplane in Paris. As was recited in the chapter on "What is Whisky," I learned from Mr. William Loeb, the President's private secretary, his great interest in that matter. This was subsequent to the passage of the food and drugs act.

I had close relations also to two other men who had more or less free access to President Roosevelt. These were Mr. Mark Sullivan and Mr. Robert M. Allen. I have secured interesting data from each of these gentlemen in regard to President Roosevelt's interest in the passage of the pure food bill. Mr. Allen has furnished me with the following data, which I have permission to quote. he says:

"I do not believe that President Roosevelt had shown any interest in the pure food law prior to 1905. 1 feel without any doubt that Roosevelt sincerely and earnestly supported the passage of the act after his message to Congress in December, 1905. When he took this stand it was characteristic of him to back it. Hapgood, Sullivan, Needham, and Gilson Gardner were close to the President, as was also Dr. Abbott, editor of The Outlook.

"The White House had a strong influence on their activities for the bill. Needham told the Dalzell story at the time it happened. If it is true, and I believe it was true, Roosevelt's statement to Cannon that he would call Congress into extra session if they did not pass the food bill, was one of the decisive factors in bringing the bill to a vote in the House. There are so many people, like the writers that I have mentioned, so earnest in their feeling that Roosevelt strongly supported the passage of the Act from the fall of 1905, that I do not want you to make any mistake in this matter in your memoirs. You have a big and important message to get over. The country needs it."

I have the following statement from Mr. Mark Sullivan, also:

"I cannot say that I have any positive recollection of ever having discussed the pure food bill specifically with President Roosevelt. I did discuss it very often with Harry Needham and with R. M. Allen. I also did discuss it occasionally with yourself, as you will remember. Based on my recollections of conversations I had with Needham and Allen, my strong belief is that Roosevelt not only believed in the Pure Food Bill but was energetic in getting it passed. It is true that the pure food bill.and the railroad rate bill were before Congress during the same session. I think it possible, or even likely, that Roosevelt's major interest was in the railroad rate bill, because at the time that was the great controversy; but I have recently been over the records sufficiently to show that Roosevelt gave powerful aid to the pure food bill."

Mr, Sullivan then discusses another overlapping and supplemental measure, the meat inspection bill.

To continue the quotation:

"That Roosevelt threw immense energy into the meat inspection rider there can be no doubt whatever. In effect the one went with the other. Roosevelt's pressure for the meat inspection bill is proved by scores of documents and publications in old newspaper files. The two bills, the pure food bill and the meat inspection rider, went through the lower house substantially on identical dates. Everybody thought of the two as one."

To this I wish to add my own recollection and impression at the time. I was fully convinced that although Mr. Roosevelt came into action late in the fray he was enthusiastic and earnest in his support of the pure food and drugs act. It was not until nearly five years later that I had any intimation whatever that I was wrong in this opinion. I did feel that I was under a serious handicap at the White House by reason of my opposition to Cuban reciprocity.

HON. JAMES R. MANN
Leader in the House of Representatives for the enforcement of the Food Law

Two important statements were made to me in 1912, after my resignation from the Bureau of Chemistry. Mr. James R. Mann, leader of the final fight in the House for the food bill, thought the President not only was indifferent about the matter, but considered the measure the work of impractical cranks. Mr. Roosevelt made a similar statement in a letter published in a Kansas paper at that time. Senator Heyburn, who led the final fight in the Senat% showed me a letter written to him by Mr. Roosevelt while the bill was under discussion, begging him to cease his efforts for such an impractical measure, and aid him in passing a bill to restore to the Naval Academy three students who had been dismissed for drunkenness. Even if it be granted that the President favored the food bill, it is perfectly clear that he took the most active part in pre venting the Bureau of Chemistry from enforcing it.