There is now pending before the United States legislature a bill which the nostrum dealers cry out is a terrible crime against personal liberty and a ruination of a great business. And what is the terrible proviso which so frightens those engaged in patent medicine business? Simply that all proprietary remedies containing opium, cocaine or other poisonous ingredient shall state upon the label the exact amount of the poisonous ingredient present; as feeble and conservative a measure for this great evil as one could well imagine.
With any other measure of similar importance before congress the newspapers, which are the great voice of the people, would cry in such a tremendous chorus for relief that no legislator would dare to hesitate to pass the bill. But the silence of the newspapers and magazines, with a few notable exceptions, has been bought through the advertising columns. In this morning's paper I find an advertisement for Hood's Sarsaparilla which occupies space value, according to the published rates of the paper, of seventy-five dollars; Doctor Pierce occupies sixty-five dollars' worth; Cuticura is satisfied with thirty dollars' worth, and other advertisements in similar quantities bring up the day's total to $240. This does not include the smaller notices of drugs among the personal columns and small classifications. In the evening paper Duffy's Malt Whiskey has a prominent place with the picture of a 'grand old patriarch' who was enabled to reach the age of one hundred and four years through the constant use of this liquor, while one tenth of the entire issue is advertisements of secret remedies. Receiving as they do $900,000 a year apiece from this business, is it any wonder that the newspapers are disposed to keep silent concerning the evil of it? The mouthpiece of the nation is stopped with gold; let the people, therefore, speak directly and bid their legislators save the ignorant and the innocent from the voracity of the conscienceless degenerates who are robbing them of health and money at the same time.
