"I think, Mr. Siemens, that you have had a long experience in connection with electricity?"
"Well, now, I want you to tell me whether in the course of all your experience you have ever known electricity to be adulterated?"
"In only one instance," replied the witness.
"In the phrase 'greased lightning,'" was the instant witty reply of the electrical expert.
But there are few commodities which can be bought or sold that have the clean record of electricity. In every direction, competition is daily becoming keener, and rival firms "cut" the prices, each forcing the other to sell either with the minimum of profit or to stop selling altogether.
Under these conditions there is a strong temptation for a small firm in danger of being crushed out of existence by its competitors to avail itself of the additional profit afforded by adulteration, and thus be able to sell its goods at a lower price than its more scrupulous rivals.
In many cases the adulterated articles are sold unknowingly, the shopman being tempted by the offer of an alleged genuine product at a very low price, while the foreign manufacturer who supplies him with the goods cheerfully accepts the risk of prosecution, well knowing that he cannot be brought to book.
Frequently the adulteration is most skilfully effected, and every fresh advance in the chemical methods of detecting foreign ingredients is scientifically met by the adulterator. The old gross forms of adulteration are, for the most part, things of the past, save, of course, in the case of foods like milk, which contain much water, and where the temptation to increase the amount is frequently too strong to be resisted.
The old story of the grocer who called his apprentice to prayers after telling him to "water the treacle and sand the sugar," has lost its point, at all events as regards sanding the sugar. The fraud is too palpable. And the same may be said of other unskilful forms of adulteration, such as the addition of gypsum to flour, chalk to milk, starch to butter, and so on.
In short, adulteration of to-day has become a fine art, and the public analyst has strong suspicions about many a sample, which he dare not condemn, since it might possibly be genuine, though of poor quality.