ORIGIN OF THE REMSEN BOARD

Encouraged by the success of the first effort to evade the provisions of the law through the appointment of the Board of Food and Drug Inspection, the time was propitious to push the matter further. The services of President Roosevelt in securing the appointment of a chemist who would sympathize with the efforts to defeat the purpose of the law had made that result possible. There was still needed some further encouragement to attack the activities of the Bureau in the matter of what was injurious to health. Up to this time the decisions of the Bureau on these points had been respected. To eliminate the Bureau completely, some plan had to be devised to counteract the decisions reached. A remarkable incident made it possible to use the President of the United States in the accomplishment of this purpose. As an eye and ear witness of the event about to be described I am able now to set down exactly what occurred.

Adulterators of our foods who were using benzoate of soda particularly in ketchup, and saccharin particularly in canned corn, had visited President Roosevelt and urged him to curb the activities of the Bureau of Chemistry in its opposition to these practices. They had spent the greater part of the day in the President's office. He promised to take these matters into consideration the very next day and asked these protestants to stay over. He invited the Secretary of Agriculture and the Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry to come to his office at ten o'clock on the day following and listen to the protests of the gentlemen mentioned above.

At the appointed hour we all met in the President's office, or as I recall, in that part of his office where Cabinet meetings were usually held. When all were assembled he asked the protestants to repeat in the presence of the Secretary of Agriculture and the Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry the demands which they had made upon him the day before. The three chief protestants were Curtice Brothers of Rochester, N. Y., Williams Brothers of Detroit, Michigan, and Sherman Brothers of New York, represented by James S. Sherman, M.C., who was near his election as Vice-President of the United States in 1908. There were a number of lawyers and others closely related to the protestants, making a very goodly number in all. They were loath to repeat the charges but Mr. Roosevelt insisted that they should do so. Whereupon the representative of the ketchup industries spoke. He told the well-known "sob" story of how the business of putting up ketchup would be utterly destroyed if the decisions of the Bureau banning benzoate were carried into effect. It was a touching and pathetic recital of the ultimate confiscation of hundreds of thousands of invested capital. There was no way in which this disaster could be diverted except to overrule the conclusions of the Bureau. The Chief of the Bureau was dramatically set forth as a radical, impervious to reason and determined to destroy legitimate business. After this recital was completed, Mr. Roosevelt turned to Mr. Wilson and said: "What is your opinion about the propriety and desirability of enforcing the rulings of your Chief of Bureau?" Mr. Wilson replied:

" The law demands that substances which are added to foods for any purpose which are deleterious to health shall be forbidden. Dr. Wiley made extensive investigations in feeding benzoated goods to healthy young men and in every instance he found that their health was undermined."

The President then asked me what I thought of this ruling. I replied as follows:

"Mr. President, I don't think; I know by patient experiment, that benzoate of soda or benzoic acid added to human food is injurious to health."

On hearing this opinion the President turned to the protestants, struck the table in front of him a stunning blow with his fist, and showing his teeth in the true Rooseveltian fashion, said to the protestants:

"This substance that you are using is injurious to health and you shall not use it any longer."

If matters had rested there the crowning blow to the food law would have been prevented. Mr. Sherman, however, took the floor and said:

"Mr. President, there was another matter that we spoke to you about yesterday that is not included in what you have just said about the use of benzoate. I refer to the use of saccharin in foods. My firm last year saved $4,000 by sweetening canned corn with saccharin instead of sugar. We want a decision from you on this question."

Unfortunately I did not wait for the President to ask the customary questions. I was entirely too precipitate in the matter. I addressed the President without his asking me, which is considered an offense to royalty or to a President. In the presence of rulers, we should always wait until we are spoken to before joining in the conversation. Had I followed this precept of respect the catastrophe which happened might have been avoided. I immediately said to the President:

"Every one who ate that sweet corn was deceived. He thought he was eating sugar, when in point of fact he was eating a coal tar product totally devoid of food value and extremely injurious to health."

This answer was the basis for the complete paralysis of the Food Law. Turning to me in sudden anger the President changed from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, and said:

"You tell me that saccharin is injurious to health?" I said, "Yes, Mr. President, I do tell you that." He replied, "Dr. Rixey gives it to me every day." I answered, "Mr. President, he probably thinks you may be threatened with diabetes." To this he retorted, "Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot."

This remark of the President broke up the meeting. Had he only extended his royal Excalibur I should have arisen as Sir Idiot. That distinction has not departed from me to this day. The thing which hurts most is that in the light of my long career I fear I deserved it. The next day the President issued an order establishing the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts. In order that his favorite sweetener might have fair hearing he asked Dr. Ira Remsen, who held a medal given him by the Chicago Chemical Society as the discoverer of saccharin, to be chairman and to select the other members. According to the ordinary conception of a juror Dr. Remsen would not have been entitled to sit on the subject of saccharin. Such little matters as those, however, were not dominating with the President of the United States. As Milton describes the episode in the Garden of Eden--

"Of man's first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world and all our woe"

the creation of the Remsen Board of Consulting Scientific Experts was the cause of nearly all the woes that subsequently befell the Pure Food Law. Joined to the creation of the Board of Food and Drug Inspection there was little left of the method prescribed by Congress for its enforcement.