Part 6

The variety is perhaps as astonishing as the number of advertisements in the _Times_. Like the trunk of an elephant, no matter seems too minute or too gigantic, too ludicrous or too sad, to be lifted into notoriety by the giant of Printing-house Square. The partition of a thin rule suffices to separate a call for the loan of millions from the sad weak cry of the destitute gentlewoman to be allowed to slave in a nursery "for the sake of a home." Vehement love sends its voice imploring through the world after a graceless boy, side by side with the announcement of the landing of a cargo of lively turtle, or the card of a bug-killer. The poor lady who advertises for boarders "merely for the sake of society" finds her "want" cheek-by-jowl with some Muggletonian announcement gratuitously calculated to break up society altogether, to the effect that the world will come to an end by the middle of the next month. Or the reader is informed that for twelve postage stamps he may learn "How to obtain a certain fortune," exactly opposite an offer of a bonus of 500_l._ to any one who will obtain for the advertiser "a Government situation." The _Times_ reflects every want, and appeals to every motive which affects our composite society. And why does it do this? Because of its ubiquity: go where we will, there, like the house-fly or the sparrow, we find it. The porter reads it in his beehive-chair, the master in his library; Green, we have no doubt, takes it with him to the clouds in his balloon, and the collier reads it in the depths of the mine; the workman at his bench, the lodger in his two-pair back, the gold-digger in his hole, and the soldier in the trench, pore over its broad pages. Hot from the press, or months old, still it is read. That it is, _par excellence_, the national paper, and reflects more than any other the life of the people, may be gathered from its circulation. They show in the editor's room a singular diagram, which indicates by an irregular line the circulation day by day and year by year. On this sheet the gusts of political feeling and the pressure of popular excitement are as minutely indicated as the force and direction of the wind are shown by the self-registering apparatus in Lloyd's Rooms. Thus we find that in the year 1845 it ran along at a pretty nearly dead level of 23,000 copies daily. In 1846--for one day, the 28th of January, that on which the report of Sir Robert Peel's statement respecting the Corn Laws appeared--it rose in a towering peak to a height of 51,000, and then fell again to its old number. It began the year 1848 with 29,000, and rose to 43,000 on the 29th of February--the morrow of the French revolution. In 1852 its level at starting was 36,000, and it attained to the highest point it has yet touched on the 19th of November, the day of the Memoir of the Great Duke, when 69,000 copies were sold. In January, 1853, the level had arisen to 40,000; and at the commencement of the present year it stood at 58,000, a circulation which has since increased to 60,000 copies daily! Notwithstanding all the disturbing causes which make the line of its circulation present the appearance of hill and dale, sometimes rising into Alp-like elevations, its ordinary level at the beginning of each year for some time past has constantly gone on advancing; insomuch that within ten years its circulation has more than doubled by 7,000 daily.

This vigorous growth is the true cause of that wonderful determination of advertisements to its pages, which have overflowed into a second paper, or supplement, as it was formerly called. That this success has been fairly won, we have never ourselves doubted; but a fact has come to our knowledge which will pretty clearly prove that this great paper is conducted on principles which are superior to mere money considerations; or rather its operations are so large that it can afford to inflict upon itself pecuniary losses, such as would annihilate any other journal, in order to take a perfectly free course. In the year 1845, when the railway mania was at its height, the _Times_ advertising sheet was overrun with projected lines, and many a guess was made, we remember, at the time as to their probable value; but high as the estimates generally were, they came far short of the truth. We give the cash and credit returns of advertisements of all kinds for nine weeks:--

Sept. 6 £2839 14 0 " 13 3783 12 0 " 20 3935 7 6 " 27 4692 7 0 Oct. 4 6318 14 0 " 11 6543 17 0 " 18 6687 4 0 " 25 6025 14 6 Nov. 1 3230 3 6

During the greater part of the time that the proprietors were reaping this splendid harvest from the infatuation of the people, the heaviest guns were daily brought to bear from the leading columns upon the bubbles which rose up so thickly in the advertising sheet. The effect of their fire may be measured by the falling off of nearly 3,000_l._ in the returns for a single week. A journal which could afford to sacrifice such a revenue to its independence, certainly deserved some consideration from the Government; but, on the contrary, it appears to have been singled out for annoyance by the act which relates to newspapers. We see certain trees on our lawns whose upshooting branches are by ingenious gardeners trained downwards, and taught to hold themselves in a dependent condition by the imposition of weights upon their extremities. The state gardeners have applied the same treatment to the journal in question, by hanging an extra halfpenny stamp upon every copy of its issue--a proceeding which, in our opinion, is as unfair as it is injudicious: and this they will find in the future, when the crowd of mosquito-like cheap journals called forth by the measure, and supported by the very life-blood of the leading journal, begin to gather strength and to attack Whiggery with their democratic buzz.

We have dwelt chiefly upon the advertising sheet of the _Times_, because it is the epitome of that in all the other journals. It must be mentioned, however, that some of the morning and weekly papers lay themselves out for class advertisements. Thus the _Morning Post_ monopolizes all those which relate to fashion and high life; and the _Morning Advertiser_, the paper of the licensed victuallers, aggregates to itself every announcement relating to their craft. _Bell's Life_ is one mass of advertisements of various sports; the _Era_ is great upon all theatricals; the _Athenæum_ gathers to itself a large proportion of book advertisements. The _Illustrated News_ among the weeklies, like the _Times_ among the dailies, towers by the head above them all. A hebdomadal circulation of 170,000 draws a far more cosmopolitan collection of announcements to its pages than any of its contemporaries can boast. We have said nothing of the advertisements in the provincial journals; but it is gratifying to find that they have more than kept pace with those which have appeared in the metropolitan papers. Their enormous increase is best shown by the returns of the advertisement duty; from which it appears that in 1851 no less than 2,334,593 advertisements were published in the journals of Great Britain and Ireland--a number which has vastly augmented since the tax upon them has been repealed.

It is curious to see the estimate which the different journals place upon themselves as mediums of publicity, by comparing their charges for the same advertisement. Thus the contents of the _Quarterly Review_ for January, 1855, precisely similar as far as length is concerned, was charged for insertion as an advertisement by the different papers as follows:--_Times_, 4s.; _Illustrated News_, 1_l._ 8s.; _Morning Chronicle_, 5s. 6d.; _Morning Post_, 6s.; _Daily News_, 5s. 6d.; _Spectator_, 7s. 6d.; _Morning Herald_, 6s.; _Punch_, 15s.; _Observer_, 9s. 6d.; _English Churchman_, 5s. 6d.; _Examiner_, 3s. 6d.; _John Bull_, 5s. 6d.; _Athenæum_, 10s. 6d. Now the _Times_ did not "display" the advertisement as all the others did, it is true, and therefore squeezed it into half the space; but with this difference, its charge was absolutely the lowest in the list, with the single exception of that of the _Examiner_. How this moderation on the part of the Leading Journal is to be accounted for we know not; but the apparent dearness of the _Illustrated News_ meets a ready solution, and affords us an opportunity of showing how vastly the prime cost of an advertisement, during the present high price of paper especially, is augmented by a great increase of the circulation of the paper in which it appears, and what the advertiser really gets for his money. If we take the advertisement of our contents (_Quarterly Review_), it will be found to measure about one inch in depth; it is obvious, then, that we must multiply this measure by 170,000, the number of separate copies in which it appeared. Now 170,000 inches yield a strip of printed paper the width of a newspaper column--_upwards of two miles and three-quarters long!_ Thus we have at a glance the real amount of publicity which is procurable in a great journal; and with so remarkable a statement it will be well to close our paper.

FOOD AND ITS ADULTERATIONS.

A story is told of a European who, wishing to convince a Brahmin of the folly of his faith in interdicting, as an article of food, anything that once possessed life, showed him, by the aid of the microscope, that the very water which he drank was full of living things. The Indian, thus suddenly introduced to an unseen world, dashed the instrument to the ground, and reproached his teacher for having so wantonly destroyed the guiding principle of his life. We, too, have at home a Hindoo, in the shape of the believing British public, to whose eye Dr. Hassall nicely adjusts the focus of his microscope, and bids him behold what unseen villanies are daily perpetrated upon his purse and person.

The world at large has almost forgotten Accum's celebrated work, "Death in the Pot;" a new generation has indeed sprung up since it was written, and fraudulent tradesmen and manufacturers have gone on in silence, and, up to this time, in security, falsifying the food and picking the pockets of the people. Startling indeed as were the revelations in that remarkable book, yet it had little effect in reforming the abuses it exposed. General denunciations of grocers did not touch individuals of the craft, and they were consequently not driven to improve the quality of their wares. The _Lancet_ Commission went to work in a different manner. In Turkey, when of old they caught a baker giving false weight, or adulterating the staff of life, they nailed his ear to the door-post, "pour encourager les autres." Dr. Hassall, like a modern Al Raschid, perambulated the town himself, or sent his trustworthy agents to purchase articles, upon all of which the inexorable microscope was set to work, and every fraudulent sample, after due notice given, subjected its vendor to be pinned for ever to the terrible pages of the Commissioners' report. In this manner direct responsibility was obtained. If the falsification denounced was not the work of the retailer, he was glad enough to shift the blame upon the manufacturer; and thus the truth came out.

A gun suddenly fired into a rookery could not cause a greater commotion than this publication of the names of dishonest tradesmen; nor does the daylight, when you lift a stone, startle ugly and loathsome things more quickly than the pencil of light, streaming through a quarter-inch lens, surprised in their naked ugliness the thousand and one illegal substances which enter more or less into every description of food that it will pay to adulterate. Nay, to such a pitch of refinement has the art of falsification of alimentary substances reached, that the very articles used to adulterate are adulterated; and while one tradesman is picking the pockets of his customers, a still more cunning rogue is, unknown to himself, deep in his own!

The manner in which food is adulterated is not only one of degree, but of kind. The most simple of all sophistications, and that which is most harmless, is the mixture of inferior qualities of the same substance. Indeed, if the price charged were according to quality, it would be no fraud at all; but this adjustment rarely takes place. Secondly, the mixture of cheaper articles of another kind. Thirdly, the surreptitious introduction of materials which, taken in large quantities, are prejudicial to health; and, fourthly, the admixture of the most deadly poisons in order to improve the appearance of the article "doctored."

The microscope alone is capable of detecting at one operation the nature and extent of the more harmless but general of these frauds. When once the investigator, by the aid of that instrument, has become familiar with the configurations of different kinds of the same chemically composed substances, he is armed with far greater detective power than chemical agents could provide him with. It is beyond the limit of the test-tube to show the mind the various forms of animal and vegetable life which exist in impure water; delicate as are its powers, it could not indicate the presence of the sugar-insect, or distinguish with unerring nicety an admixture of the common Circuma arrowroot with the finer Maranta. Chemistry is quite capable of telling the component parts of any article: what are the definite forms and natures of the various ingredients which enter into a mixture, it cannot so easily answer. This the microscope can at once effect; and in its present application consists Dr. Hassall's advantage over all previous investigators in the same field. The precision with which he is enabled to state the result of his labours leaves no appeal: he shows his reader the intimate structures of a coffee-grain, and of oak or mahogany sawdust; and then a specimen of the two combined, sold under the title of genuine Mocha. Many manufacturers and retailers who have been detected falsifying the food of the public, have threatened actions; but they all flinched from the test of this unerring instrument.

The system of adulteration is so wide-spread, and embraces so many of the items of the daily meal, that we scarcely know where to begin--what corner of the veil first to lift. Let us hold up the cruet-frame, for example, and analyze its contents. There is mustard, pepper (black and cayenne), vinegar, anchovy and Harvey sauce--so thinks the unsuspecting reader; let us show him what else beside. To begin with mustard. "Best Durham," or "Superfine Durham," no doubt it was purchased for; but we will summarily dismiss this substance by stating that it is impossible to procure it pure at all: out of forty-two samples bought by Dr. Hassall at the best as well as inferior shops, all were more or less adulterated with wheaten flour for bulk, and with turmeric for colour. Vinegar also suffers a double adulteration. It is first watered, and then pungency is given to it by the addition of sulphuric acid. A small quantity of this acid is allowed by law; and this is frequently trebled by the victuallers. The pepper-castor is another stronghold of fraud--fraud so long and openly practised, that we question if the great mass of the perpetrators even think they are doing wrong. Among the milder forms of sophistication to which this article is subjected, are to be found such ingredients as wheaten flour, ground rice, ground mustard-seeds, and linseed-meal. The grocer maintains a certain reserve as to the generality of the articles he employs in vitiating his wares; but pepper he seems to think is given up to him by the public to "cook" in any manner he thinks fit. This he almost invariably does by the addition of what is known in the trade as P. D., or pepper-dust, _alias_ the sweepings from the pepper warehouses. But there is a lower depth still: P. D. is too genuine a commodity for some markets, and it is accordingly mixed with D. P. D., or dirt of pepper-dust.

A little book, published not long since, entitled "The Successful Merchant," which gives the minute trade history of a gentleman very much respected in Bristol, Samuel Budgett, Esq., affords us a passage bearing upon this P. D. which is worthy of notice.

"In Mr. Budgett's early days," says his biographer, "pepper was under a heavy tax, and in the trade universal tradition said that out of the trade everybody expected pepper to be mixed. In the shop stood a cask labelled P. D., containing something _very like_ pepper-dust, wherewith it was usual to mix the pepper before sending it forth to serve the public. The trade tradition had obtained for the apocryphal P. D. a place amongst the standard articles of the shop, and on the strength of that tradition it was vended for pepper by men who thought they were honest. But as Samuel went on in life, his ideas on trade morality grew clearer; this P. D. began to give him much discomfort. He thought upon it till he was satisfied that, after all that could be said, the thing was wrong: arrived at this conclusion, he felt that no blessing could light upon the place while it was there. He instantly decreed that P. D. should perish. It was night; but back he went to the shop, took the hypocritical cask, carried it out to the quarry, then staved it, and scattered P. D. among the clods and slag and stones."

Would we could say that the reduction of the tax upon pepper had stimulated the honesty of other grocers to act a similar part to that of Mr. Budgett; but P. D. flourishes as flagrantly as ever; and if every possessor of the article in London were to stave his casks in the roadway, as conscientiously as did the "Successful Merchant," there would be hard work for the scavengers. In the days of Accum it was usual to manufacture peppercorns out of oiled linseed-cake, clay, and cayenne-pepper, formed into a mass, and then granulated: these fraudulent corns were mixed with the real to the extent of seventeen per cent. This form of imposition, like that of wooden nutmegs among our American friends, has, we are happy to say, long been abandoned. The adulterations we have mentioned are simply dirty and fraudulent; but in the cayenne-cruet we find, in addition, a deadly poison. Out of twenty-eight samples submitted to examination, no less than twenty-four were adulterated with white mustard-seed, brickdust, salt, ground rice, and _deal sawdust_, by way of giving bulk; but as all of these tend to lighten the colour, it is necessary to heighten it to the required pitch. And what is employed to do this? Hear and tremble, old Indians and lovers of high-seasoned food--with RED LEAD. Out of twenty-eight samples, red lead, and _often in poisonous quantities_, was present in thirteen! Who knows how many "yellow admirals" at Bath have fallen victims to their cayenne-cruets? Nor can it be said that the small quantity taken at a time could do no permanent mischief; for lead belongs to the class of poisons which are cumulative in their effects.

He who loves cayenne, as a rule is fond of curry-powder; and here also the poisonous oxide is to be found in large quantities. Some years ago, a certain amiable duke recommended the labouring population, during a season of famine, to take a pinch of this condiment every morning before going to work, as "warm and comforting to the stomach." If they had followed his advice, thirteen out of every twenty-eight persons would have imbibed a slow poison. Those who are in the habit of using curry, generally take it in considerable quantities, and thus the villanous falsification plays a more deadly part than even in cayenne-pepper. Imagine a man for years pertinaciously painting his stomach with red lead! We do not know whether medical statistics prove that paralysis prevails much among "Nabobs;" but of this we may be sure, that there could be no more fruitful source of it than the two favourite stimulants we have named.

The great staple articles of food are not subject to adulteration in the same proportion as many other articles of minor demand. We need scarcely say that meat is exempt so long as it remains in the condition of joints; but immediately it is prepared in any shape in which its original fibre and form can be hidden, the spirit of craft begins to work. The public have always had certain prejudices against sausages and polonies, for example; and, if we are to believe a witness examined on oath before the Smithfield Market Commissioners in 1850, not without reason. It is a very old joke that there are no live donkeys to be found within twenty miles of Epping; but if all the asinine tribe in England were to fall victims to the chopping-machine, we question if they could supply the _à-la-mode_, polony, and sausage establishments. Mr. J. Harper, for instance, being under examination, upon being asked what became of the diseased meat brought into London, replied:--

"It is purchased by the soup-shops, sausage-makers, the _à-la-mode_ beef and meat-pie shops, &c. There is one soup-shop, I believe, doing five hundred pounds per week in diseased meat. This firm has a large _foreign_ trade [thank goodness!]. The trade in diseased meat is very alarming, as anything in the shape of flesh can be sold at about one penny per pound, or eightpence per stone.... I am certain that if one hundred carcases of cows were lying dead in the neighbourhood of London, I could get them all sold within twenty-four hours: _it don't matter what they died of_."

It must not be imagined that the _à-la-mode_ beef interest is supplied with this carrion by needy men, whose necessities may in some degree palliate their evil dealings. In proof of this we quote further from Mr. Harper's evidence. In answer to the question, "Is there any slaughtering of bad meat in the country for the supply of the London market?" he says,--

"The London market is very extensively supplied with diseased meat from the country. There are three insurance offices in London in which graziers can insure their beasts from disease. It was the practice of one of these offices to send the unsound animals dying from disease to their own slaughter-houses, situate a hundred and sixty miles from London, to be dressed and sent to the London market.... Cattle, sheep, &c., are insured against all kinds of diseases; and one of the conditions is, that the diseased animal, when dead, becomes the property of the insurance company, the party insuring receiving two-thirds of the value of the animal and one-third of the salvage; or, in other words, one-third of the amount the beast is sold for when dead."

Upon being asked, "Do you believe it is still the habit of this company to send up the diseased animals to London?" he replied,--

"Yes, I do; until lately they were regularly consigned to a meat-salesman in Newgate market of the name of Mathews.... The larger quantities are sold to people who manufacture it into soup, meat-pies, sausages, &c."