by Bee Wilson
The New York Times observed that most housekeepers, if asked where they bought their milk, would say they got it from “the regular milkman, who imports it direct from Orange County, Westchester or Connecticut,” as the case may be. These “poor deluded” housekeepers might have “vague visions of delicious pastoral dairies, where the fresh perfume of the country fills the nostril with a pleasant sense— of milking hour in the meadows, when rosy-cheeked girls go out with their pails, and are welcomed by the waiting cows, who know every face among them.”19 “Dreams all!” The reality was that a large proportion of what was sold as “Orange County” milk was heavily watered down, and much was not country milk at all. Mullaly had discovered that 90,000 or so quarts of milk entered the city each day, yet by some “magical process” this had increased to 120,000 quarts at the time of delivery, which confirmed that many milkmen diluted their milk by at least a quarter with other liquids. Yet bad as this was, the New York Times argued that it would have been better for mothers and children if the worst they had to fear was country milk “adulterated with chalk, water and a little molasses.” Such milk was harmless compared with swill milk—of which up to 160,000 quarts were produced daily20—filled as it was with “contagion” and “reeking with animal poisons.” Oh for a little honest swindling compared to the horror of what Mullaly saw when he went to visit the swill dairies.
Mullaly had been to West Sixteenth Street, between Tenth Avenue and the North River, to visit the premises of a rich distiller called Johnson, “who ‘boards’ two thousand cows at six cents a day each and clears forty thousand dollars a year by his nefarious business.” The “stench” from this place could sometimes be smelt a mile off, ruining the quality of the life of those living in the vicinity. The air in the stables was so foul that when health wardens went to inspect them in 1854, as a result of Mullaly’s pamphlet, they were forced “to suspend the inspection for a time to recover from its sickening effect upon them.”21 The cows were crammed in, six or seven hundred to a single filthy stable, and forced to stand more or less constantly over the swill trough, except when lying down on the dung-encrusted floor. Mullaly reported:
When the swill is first served it is often scalding hot, and a new cow requires some days before it can drink it in that condition. It instinctively shrinks from the trough when the disgusting liquid is poured in, but in the course of a week or two, it becomes accustomed to it and finally drinks it with evident relish. The appearance of the animal after a few weeks feeding upon this stuff is most disgusting; the mouth and nostrils are all besmeared, the eyes assume a leaden expression, indicative of that stupidity which is generally the consequence of intemperance.22
Mullaly observed how little care these poor drunken beasts were given by the humans who looked after them; and by implication how little care was given to making the milk they produced wholesome. The milkers did not bother washing their hands but would use their unclean fingers to pick out bits of conspicuous dirt from the milk. The cows’ udders were frequently ulcerated, but they would be milked regardless, “and the milk mixed in with the rest.” They would continue to be milked up to the hour of their death, even when they could barely stand. After it left Johnson’s premises, the milk would often be tampered with still further by small dealers, as the New York Times described:
To every quart of milk a pint of water is added; then a quantity of chalk, or Plaster of Paris to take away the bluish appearance produced by dilution. Magnesia, flour and starch to give it consistency, after which a small quantity of molasses is poured in to produce the rich yellow colour which good milk generally possesses. It is now fit for nurseries, tea-tables, and ice cream saloons, and is distributed over the City, insidious, fatal, and revolting poison.23
The city police did remarkably little. As the New York Times noted, if “any of us citizens” decided to keep a mad lion on their premises, the authorities would intervene, whereas Johnson was allowed to add to his income by “poisoning the population in two ways”—first, by distributing the “diseased milk” itself, and second, by generating a “horrible and fetid vapour.”24
Yet for decades, swill milk was the scandal that would not go away. In 1858, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper undertook yet another exposé of the distillery dairies, which showed once again “the filthy condition of the cow-stables, the misery of their occupants and the brutality of their owners.”25 Readers were shocked to learn of the effects of distillery swill on the cows—rotting teeth, tails that fell off, ulcers. Once again, our friend Mr. Johnson of West Sixteenth Street was identified as one of the chief culprits. For the sake of appearing to do something, Tammany Hall sent Alderman Michael Tuomy to “investigate.” Tuomy was a pugilistic butcher turned politician.26 In lieu of embarking on a proper investigation, he chose to drink a few glasses of whisky with the dairy owners and then did everything he could to shield them, and to accuse those who disliked slop milk of simply being “prejudiced,” announcing on the basis of his extensive investigations that swill milk was as good for children as ordinary milk.27 Swayed by Tuomy, a committee of the common council of New York concluded that distillery dairies were “as clean as it was possible for such places to be” and that it was impossible to cite a single instance of a child dying from drinking swill milk.28
Tuomy soon became caricatured in the Illustrated News as “Swill Milk” Tuomy; he responded in characteristic fashion by arresting the editor. Meanwhile, swill milk not only continued to be sold in New York, but spread to other cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia.29 The Annual Report of the New York City Inspector of 1860 showed that the production of swill milk continued “without the slightest abatement or any sign of diminution” and would continue to do so “unless the adoption of measures of the most stringent character is resorted to.”30 Finally, in 1862, New York did pass a law prohibiting the sale of adulterated milk and the keeping of distillery dairies, and requiring milk dealers to label cans and vehicles with their names; but neither the measures nor the will to enforce them were sufficient, and swill milk scandals were still common in the 1870s, as was the practice of watering milk.
What made milk such an especially tricky substance to regulate and such an easy substance to falsify was its unpredictable, natural qualities; it was both a breeding ground for disease and a highly variable product.31 Bacteriology was a science that was only just emerging. Analysis of distillery milk showed it to be 89 percent water on average compared with 86 percent for Orange County milk; but levels of water and cream in milk fluctuated hugely. If consumers found their milk less creamy than usual, they could be left in doubt as to whether this thinness was natural, or a swindle. As a report of 1873 wryly commented:
Recent investigation has shown that the cow is in conspiracy with the milkman to water our milk. . . . Milk contains in its natural state, a very large percentage of water. When the proportion of cream varies from twenty-three to five per cent; when the same animal will yield in the morning milk having 11.5 per cent of cream, and in the afternoon milk containing only five per cent of that ingredient which people perhaps foolishly prize—who is to decide whether the cow or the milkman has contributed the extra quota of water?32
In order to obtain milk that was reliably safe to drink, the consumer had eventually to abandon the dream of milk in its natural, pastoral state, and trust instead to the sterile hand of science. It was only the invention of the portable milk bottle and systematic pasteurization, finally coupled with much better regulation, that would secure safe milk for Americans, even in the swill-city of New York. From 1893, a philanthropist named Nathan Straus (1848–1931) financed low-cost milk depots selling pasteurized milk to poor New York families.33 As a result, infant mortality rates finally dropped.
But the swill milk scandals of the 1850s onwards planted a seed of doubt in the public mind about what they were eating and drinking, and soon concerns about swindling and bad food had spread far beyond the dairy. In the 1870s, newspaper articles began appear
ing that attacked the entire food supply as unsafe and iniquitous, similar to the scaremongering tracts in Britain of the 1840s, with the same litanies of fraud: chicory in coffee, lead in sweets, copper in tea. In 1871, one report compared the “infinitesimal” degree of adulteration in former years with its present ubiquity, attributing the rise to the prevailing money obsession of the times.34 In 1872, another journalist wrote that
Adulteration of food is an evil so widespread, so tempting to its perpetrator, so difficult of detection by its victim, that most people have come to accept it nowadays as practically inevitable. We cannot all be analytical chemists, and perhaps on the whole, so far as the pleasures of eating and drinking are concerned we may be thankful that we are not . . . if people only knew what abominable messes they are constantly putting down their throats under the most innocent disguises, the healthiest appetites might well revolt.35
There was vague speculation that “nine-tenths” of the food supply was not what it “pretends to be.”36 Horror stories multiplied—of sulphuric acid in “spurious vinegars,” for example, leading to sore gums, “paralyzation of the nerves of taste, piles and other dire calamities” including “hiccoughs, ‘ahems!’ and other violent clearings of the throat.”37
The effect of such panicky claims, endlessly repeated, was the same as it had been in Britain: readers got bored with the subject of adulteration before anything had been done to combat it. In 1881, Dr. Charles Smart was asked by the National Board of Health to investigate the problem of adulteration. He reported that “sensational writing” had made people inclined to “discredit the whole thing, except perhaps that milk may sometimes be watered” (an idea that people had become used to).38 Too many writers, he complained, had applied Hassall’s work to the American situation without any thought for how the circumstances there might be different. Smart himself pointed out that, thanks to the widespread American habit of grinding coffee at home (a throwback to the times when grocer shops were few and far between), American coffee was much less adulterated than the British ground variety. American cornmeal and wheatmeal were also purer, he blithely assured the public.
Yet, based on the raw data of Smart’s own analyses, many American foods were found to be as adulterated as the British, if not worse. Smart uncovered “cinnamon” that was a mixture of cassia, almond shells, corn, wheat, allspice, and beans; yellow coloured candies poisoned with lead; ground allspice—which was hardly adulterated in England—mixed with breadcrumbs, “woody tissues,” and turmeric. Sugar, meanwhile, was widely adulterated with glucose, which had not been the case in England. Later analysis by other government agencies showed lard preserved with caustic lime and alum; cheese containing mercury salts; canned foods laced with copper, tin, and preservatives.39 Many of these additions were motivated by greed; but the difficulty in some cases, thought Smart, was that “the dealer himself appears to have lost knowledge of the characters of the pure article.”40
This confirmation of people’s worst fears, coupled with a deep-seated reluctance on the part of the authorities to do anything about it, meant that the battle to restore knowledge of what was good and pure in food was often left in the hands of America’s women’s groups, though their idea of the “good” and the “pure” was perhaps loftier than many people could live up to. In the 1880s, in isolated pockets throughout the United States, many different women worked to teach other women how to avoid poisoning their families. Isabel Churchill, a clubwoman from Denver, Colorado, argued that “the quality of food stuff should be a question of paramount interest to every house wife, and therefore club women should all be concerned with pure food legislation.”41 They met in church halls and lecture halls, in club houses and private homes. In New York in 1884, when manure rotted outside slaughterhouses from Forty-third to Forty-fourth street, creating an unbearable stench, it was a group of fifteen “ladies” who campaigned to clean it up.
That same year, further west, Ella Eaton Kellogg organized a meeting of the Michigan Women’s Christian Temperance Union to discuss pure food. They met at Battle Creek, Michigan, where Ella’s husband, James Harvey Kellogg, ran his famous sanatorium. Ella Eaton Kellogg proclaimed that women should be taught to eat unadulterated and uncontaminated food, rather than rushing off to buy quack cures. “The home is woman’s citadel,” she explained. “It is here disease most often threatens.” Like many temperance women, Ella believed that abstinence from liquor was closely linked to abstinence from compromised or artificial food. Her definition of adulterated food was extremely broad, including not just spurious concoctions but also refined sugar, and “stimulating” condiments such as pepper and mustard.42 This view of mustard as a narcotic might seem a little surprising; it needs to be seen in the context of American Temperance diets from Sylvester Graham (1794–1851) onwards. As early as the 1830s, Graham—father of the Graham cracker and of Graham bread—had set out a vision of food in which condiments, spices, sugar, salt, coffee, tea, and even shellfish were seen as damagingly “stimulating” (in contrast to the “Edenic foods” of fruit and vegetables eaten by Adam and Eve).43 So while Hassall was worrying about the impossibility of obtaining pure mustard, the Grahamites were worrying that people were eating mustard at all. Later pure-food campaigners such as Ella Kellogg shared Graham’s basic presuppositions but restated them at a time when the fight against impure foods seemed all the more urgent. By the 1880s, America had become a land of domesticated narcotics and nostrums, of “soothing syrups” for babies that turned out to be opium (there was a scandal in 1888 when Mrs. Winslow’s “soothing syrup,” which had been promoted in church magazines as “invaluable for children” to help them sleep, was exposed as opiate-based).44 The women’s movement for pure food was a reaction against all this.
Ella Kellogg’s extreme ascetic position was also a reflection of her fierce moral absolutism and that of other campaigning women. What gave their language such power was its vision of adulteration as sin. But this also led them to more sweeping assertions than Accum or Hassall ever made, as the language of taint became equated with the corruption of the entire body. In 1885, Ella Hoes Neville, a clubwoman, wrote that “the adulteration of food is a sinful dealing, worse than any short weight or dishonest fabric. Give us short measure and we lose; give us adulterated food and we die.”45 By the same token, in the 1890s the editor of Club Woman magazine insisted that every single swindler of food should be eliminated. Every seller of fake sugar or “renovated butter” poisoned the “avenues of trade.” “As a mere drop of poison will pollute a whole quart of milk, so will one dishonest merchant or manufacturer corrupt the whole industry.”46
Inexorably, the fight against adulteration became bound up with the language of sin and redemption. The vegetarian pure-food campaigner George Thorndike Angell, president of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, fought for a broad national law to protect the American people from bad food.47 Angell saw his job as being equivalent to a “preacher in a pulpit.” Now that slavery was abolished, good men had a duty to fight the slavery of cattle kept in inhuman conditions for food, and the mass poisoning of the populace by manufacturers who were little better than “the highwaymen who rob and murder.”48 Angell saw humanity sinking fast in the “unfathomable sea of adulteration,” and he saw it as his job to rouse them to save themselves. For Angell it was no good just correcting this or that aspect of modern industrial food: it was all bad, all a giant conspiracy of evil. Industry responded to Angell in kind. There was no use taking him on point by point: everything that came out of his mouth was the ranting of a crank. Thus, each side in the adulteration debate encouraged the excesses of the other, leading to a stalemate within which there was no true communication.
Even among the people, both in business and in government, who broadly supported more regulation for the food trade, the hectoring of the radical fringe was deeply off-putting—exaggerated, sensational, and just plain irritating. Pure-food crusaders such as Angell or the temperance wome
n were often accused of being “fanatics, socialists, cranks.”49 Nevertheless, as the nineteenth century neared its end, a number of individual states were eventually prompted to pass new laws in an attempt to safeguard food quality. In 1874, Illinois had passed one of the first state laws to apply to pure food in general rather than individual foodstuffs; New York produced a general pure food and drugs act in 1881; Massachusetts followed in 1882, largely thanks to the efforts of Angell. What failed to materialize, however, was any national effort to address the problem. What was needed was a good, old-fashioned conflict of interest that drew in the U.S. government. That came with the arrival in North America of an exciting (or deeply sinister, depending on your perspective) new product from the laboratories of Europe. The question of pure food only went national with the great margarine debates of 1886.
An oleomargarine advertisement.
The Battle for Margarine
“All margarines are basically the same,” wrote Professor Marion Nestle in 2006, “mixtures of soybean oil and food additives. Everything else is theatre and greasepaint.” Nestle herself, an advocate of unprocessed foods, prefers to eat a little butter or olive oil, because “why would you want to put soybean oil on your bread?”50
Still, millions of people do; or palm oil, or sunflower oil, as the case may be. In 1997, more than twice as much margarine as butter was consumed per head in the United States (4.2 pounds of butter, 8.6 of margarine).51 Some eat margarine because it is less expensive than butter; others because some particular brand seems to offer some promise of eternal health, or at least the promise of shedding a few pounds or lowering cholesterol by a few points (these elixirs may well be more expensive than butter). There are those who see margarine as a cheap substitute; others view it as a superior alternative. Some just eat it out of necessity because they cannot digest the dairy content of butter. In every case, however, the salient point about margarine for the consumers who choose to eat it is that it is not butter, and is not pretending to be. And even those who don’t eat margarine are perfectly happy to tolerate its presence on the supermarket shelves, because they feel confident that it is not being marketed under false pretences.