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FDA
Update
Magazine
2005, Issue 1
by Suzanne White Junod, Ph.D.
This is the first in a series of articles this year that will highlight some of the popular perceptions of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, whose Centennial will be commemorated in 2006.
In 1876, a cartoonist named Keppler who worked for Frank Leslieâs Illustrated, a popular Progressive era magazine, left steady employment to establish a new magazine he named for the elfin character in Shakespeareâs A Midsummer Nightâs Dream, Puck. Puck Magazine -- with its intricate color illustrations and cartoons gracing the front cover, centerfold, and back cover Ð quickly became a popular humorous journal, selling over 80,000 copies a week by the 1880s.
The serious press of the period became preoccupied with publishing exposes of the graft, corruption, price-fixing schemes, and other corporate scandals that characterized the so-called "Gilded Age." Tiring of the seemingly endless litany of published scandals in periodicals such as Collierâs, McClureâs, Harperâs Weekly, and Life, President Theodore Roosevelt quoted from Pilgrimâs Progress and dubbed those journalists "muckrakers." The apt term stuck. Puck, in contrast with its more high-minded counterparts, spoke most clearly to the well-informed skeptic. The magazine opposed most presidents, including Teddy Roosevelt and Howard Taft, although it did support Woodrow Wilson in 1912. It was taken over by William Randolph Hearst, and became a Hearst publication in 1917, but it did not survive the transition and ended its popular run in 1918.
One of Kepplerâs cartoonists, James Wales, left Puck in 1881 to establish a rival publication he called The Judge. Through the 1890s, The Judge lagged in sales behind its Puck competitor. As the political fervor over food, drug, and meat control gained momentum in Congress and the attention of the public, however, The Judge÷avowedly Republican in its loyalties Ð began to eclipse Puck. Indeed, The Judge lasted until the Great Depression put it out of business in 1932.
Historians write that the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act was one of the highlights of the Progressive era in American history. Even the U.S. Post Office in its "Celebrate the Century" stamp series recognized that Act as one of the most noteworthy achievements of the twentieth century, when it issued a commemorative stamp in 1998. In part, this was because of the unanimity with which Americans manifested their support for this legislation. Astoundingly enough, both Puck and The Judge supported its passage. Great illustrations from both magazines will provide current FDLI Update readers with an interesting and entertaining look at popular perceptions of the social, political, commercial, and medical issues that led Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, and independents to come together in support of federal food and drug legislation in 1906.
At the time the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act were enacted, railroad legislation and banking legislation were considered both more important and more far-reaching. In the twenty-first century, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is fair to say that our modern consumer society has reaped more lasting benefits from the principles behind the 1906 food and drug legislation than from the direct regulation of the railroads and banks that were originally viewed as more essential Progressive era achievements.
Dr. Junod is a Historian with the Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, MD.
The illustration: A Puckish looking headsman with ax straddling a chopping block that bears a parchment.
The caption: This frontispiece portrays food and drug legislation in the shadow of other Progressive era legislation already on the Congressional chopping block. Eventually, however, the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act did emerge from the shadows into one of the pre-eminent pieces of Progressive era legislation.
The illustration: A harried housewife, arms outraised, in front of a shelf of ketchup bottles, which are exploding.
The caption: This early cartoon depiction of a housewife "under siege" from exploding bottles of catsup explains why condiments were some of the earliest successful processed foods. Catsup often fermented and was difficult to keep at home, even with the spices the housewife customarily employed. Canners, too, had difficulty producing processed catsup and began to employ controversial coal-tar based aniline dyes to improve the appearance of the product as well as benzoate of soda and other preservatives to eliminate the fermentation that could be so "explosive."
The illustration: Dr. Wiley has roped a rotund person who is covered with canns and labelled "business" and is pulling while a pig labelled "ridiculous rules" pulls in the opposite direction.
The caption: Before passage of the 1906 Act, Wiley won the support of the canned good industry by emphasizing the need for "ethical" production standards. Wiley felt that if the industry would abandon its use of artificial colors and preservatives, and label its products honestly, that consumers would trust canned goods more and the industry would thrive. Soon after passage of the 1906 Act, however, continued debates over copper salts, used to green peas, and benzoate of soda and borax, used to preserve some canned foods, as well as the unlabelled substitution of glucose and saccharin for cane sugar, had commentators concerned that the cost of Wileyâs zeal could affect the canned food business.
The illustration: A fan is decorated with pictures of people using drugs. Below the fan are medicinal bottles and boxes.
The caption: This is one of the magnificently rich cartoons for which Puck and The Judge became famous. It illustrates quite clearly how pervasive the problem with addictive drugs (including morphine and opium) had become.
The illustration: A package of "embalmed beef," a plate of imported limberger with a fanciful face and big nose, a plate of "athletic butter" that has developed arms and a face and is lifting dumbbells, and "cold storage eggs, all with mournful faces.
The caption: This is a parody of the lovely lithographs published by other periodicals which Victorian housewives could cut out and use to adorn their homes. Instead of fragrant flowers, The Judge portrayed less attractive "scents": stinky imported cheese; the so-called embalmed beef dating back to the Spanish-American was that soldiers repeatedly described as "nauseating stuff"; rancid butter which was often "reconditioned" using a number of different techniques and sold as fresh butter; and cold storage eggs which, although kept and transported by railroad, had serious quality problems as judged by the frequency with which periodicals of the day condemned them.
The illustration: A sparrow is pulling a worm from a can. The sparrow reads the label and says, "By George! that's the best thing Roosevelt's done yet. Now a fellow has the satisfaction of knowing what kind of worms he is eating."
The caption: This amateur cartoon, submitted by a reader, won a prize of $2.50. It reflects popular views of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act as, first and foremost, a "truth in labeling law." Some manufacturers took the law seriously on this point as illustrate by a maker of "walnut hair stain" that changed the name of his product soon after passage of the act so as to omit references to the word "walnut." Because there were no walnuts in his product, he evidently feared it would be treated as a food product under the new act and he made the labeling changes on his own to forestall any action against his cosmetic product.
(With permission from FDLI)