A IMS OF THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE 297
can possibly give information whereby adulterations of foods can be successfully detected in the private kitchen. There is urgent need for a private society to investigate certain specified branches of industry and list the best establishments in them, guarantee- ing the product made under clean and wholesome conditions, using all the information afforded by existing agencies, and con- tinually spurring them on to make this information more specific and practical ; thus affording the individual purchaser that avail- able information which, as we have seen, he so sorely lacks.
On the other hand, it may be largely for want of such a vol- unteer society that the available official information already exist- ing has been, hitherto, largely ineffectual. In vain has the fact been printed that the most fashionable chocolates of the day are made by Italian children whose personal habits are so filthy that physicians, asked to examine them as to their physical fitness under the factory law to work, required the children to bathe, change their clothing, and have their hair cut, before pro- ceeding to the examination. The chocolates are as popular as ever. In vain has the fact been printed that the bouillon so extensively advertised as particularly delicate and suitable for the use of invalids, aged persons, and little children is boiled in such close proximity to the fertilizer storage of the packing establishment that the factory inspectors fall ill on the da}' of an inspection of the premises. The bouillon continues to be served at the luncheons and dinners of the socially aspiring. In vain is the fact printed year after year that the sweaters and their victims, after working fourteen, eighteen, even twenty hours a day through their "rush" season, starve through a long vacation at their own expense; that comsumption, formerly almost unknown among the Russian Jews, is now commonly known as the "tailors' disease," having become distinctly char- acteristic of the sweaters' victims in consequence of the inhumane conditions of their work. Official statements on all these mat- ters, safel}- buried in official reports, do not reach and influence the great mass of the buyers.
Incidentally, it is true that the communit}' is likely to enjoy the benefit of a more rigid enforcement of its ordinances and
