CONTEMPT OF COURT

In my testimony in the Indiana case, Mr. Baldwin, the attorney for the complainants in cross-examination endeavored to fix the responsibility of the almost unanimous sentiment expressed in the newspapers and magazines on me. He asked me if I kept in touch with the progress of the case. I told him I did as I was greatly interested in it, that I knew it was under way and had been pending for a long while. He asked me this question:

Q. Now then, you have stated your opinion here to the reporters of the different papers as to the outcome of that case?

A. I think I have said that I hoped it would be decided in favor of the State of Indiana.

Q. You said that to the reporters of the papers.

A. I think so. I do not see any reason why I should not say so.

Q. You said that to them with the expectation that they would use those statements in the press.

A. I think reporters usually do.

Q. It is your experience that they do use those things.

A. I have no objection to my opinion being expressed in the public press on a question of that kind; none whatever;

I have a right to my opinion in this country and will exercise it.

Q. Didn't you know that it is improper for any person to express an opinion as to what the Court was going to do in a pending case.

A. In what sense? In what way?

Q. I say in a way so that that opinion would get in the newspapers.

A. As to the outcome of the case?

Q. Yes.

A. I did not know that it was improper to express the hope in a civil suit without a jury that the decision would be this way or that. If it were an illegal or an improper thing I am sorry I said it. I have done it dozens of times as to cases I have seen on trial.

Q. You made it in such shape that that opinion got.into the newspapers?

A. I suppose it did get into the newspapers. I had no objection to its getting in.

Q. In fact you wished it to get in?

A. I did not think of that.

Q. You must have volunteered it, because it was not forced from you.

A. I did not run around and hunt them up. They came to me.

Q. You voluntarily made those statements?

A. Oh, yes. Nobody tried to force me to make any.

Q. Do you keep a set of clippings from different papers at all?

A. I am not a subscriber to any agency. I usually cut out articles in which I am interested that come to my notice.

Q. And don't you know that those statements of your opinion were published generally throughout the country?

A. I don't know if they were or not.

Q. Don't you know they were published in other papers than those in Washington?

A. Oh, I suppose so; I don't know.

Q. Do you know whether they were published in any Indianapolis papers or not?

A. I do not.

Q. Don't you know they were published in the Detroit Free Press?

A. I do not.

At this point Mr. Baldwin offered an article published in the Washington Post, July 13, 1910. This article related the facts that at the 66th Convention of the American Institute of Homeopathy, held at Pasadena, California, a resolution was adopted denouncing food-laws that prohibit the use of preservatives in food and the use of sulphur in curing fruit. He stated that 12,000 homeopathic physicians had sent telegrams to President Taft and Secretary Wilson in favor of the farmer, the fruit-grower and the preserving factories and against the pernicious rulings of Dr. H. W. Wiley, Chief of the United States Bureau of Chemistry. The latter part of this clipping reads as follows:

"Although the American Institute of Homeopathy at its convention at Pasadena, Cal., Monday, adopted a resolution rescinding its action taken last year condemning the use of benzoate of soda as a food preservative, Dr. Wiley, chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture, has stronger opinions than ever on that subject. Dr. Wiley's views did not prevail in the department, as the board appointed by Secretary Wilson under the pure food law disagreed with the chief chemist and sanctioned the use of benzoate of soda as a food preservative.

" 'The developments during the last year,' said Dr. Wiley, 'have accentuated my opinion as to the harmful character of benzoate of soda as a food preservative. I expect to see that view sustained by the Federal courts, as the evidence that has been submitted recently in Indiana cases points that way.' "

(Page 3460, Indiana Case.)

I never lost faith, in the whole two or three years during which the Indiana case was considered, in the character of the outcome. I think Mr. Baldwin, the attorney for the complainants, was justified also in his optimism that the Referee Board would win. He realized that all the heavy artillery of the most powerful government in the world had been brought into play and directed against the crackling reports of the short shot-guns fired by the Bureau of Chemistry. Later he must have realized the truth of the poem;

Truth crushed to earth will rise again;

The eternal years of God are hers;

While error languishes in pain

And dies amid his worshippers.