PURPOSE OF CREATING BOARDS

In the enactment of the Food Law the Congress plainly provided the mechanism of its enforcement. There was no provision in the law for any additional machinery. It was evident that the Bureau of Chemistry was the dominant factor in bringing offenders of the law before the Courts. Those who "felt the halter draw" had "no good opinion of the law" as the poet has pertinently and wittily said. The elimination of the Bureau was therefore the thing of prime importance. The President of the United States seems to have taken the initiative in this matter.

President Roosevelt wrote to the various universities to secure a chemist, not to replace me, but to be placed in such a position as to counteract all my activities. Accordingly on the recommendation of President Angell of Ann Arbor the President issued an order permitting Dr. Frederick L. Dunlap to be appointed, without Civil Service examination, as associate chemist in the Bureau of Chemistry without being subject to the orders of the Chief of that Bureau, but reporting directly to the Secretary. (Moss Committee, page 921.)

In order to make this point perfectly clear I quote the following from page 849, Moss Committee:

MR. MOSS: " It is also stated in the record that a board of food and drug inspection was organized to advise the Secretary of Agriculture on matters concerning which the Pure-food law says he must make a decision."

SECRETARY WILSON: "That is substantially correct."

MR. MOSS: " These two boards were created by executive order?"

SECRETARY WILSON: "Yes."

MR. MOSS: "Then the powers and the duties of either one of the boards were fixed by executive order and not by statute?"

SECRETARY WILSON: "That is right. I do not think there was any special order sent to me to do that, but President Roosevelt appealed to the presidents of the big universities to get an additional chemist put on there and that brought Dr. Dunlap from Ann Arbor. So I doubt if I had a special order, although there was a very clear understanding what was to be done."

MR. MOSS: "The question I had in mind was that the Board of Food and Drug Inspection was not created by statute but was created by executive order."

SECRETARY WILSON: "That is what I was doubting. It was not created by statute. I created it for the purpose of getting information and all that, but of the three gentlemen on the board, two were in the Department, and in bringing in Dr. Dunlap, an additional chemist, made the third one, so technically there was no general order of the President to do that, but there was a clear understanding that it would be done. "