It is a painful reflection, that the division of labour which has been so instrumental in bringing the manufactures of this country to their present flourishing state, should have also tended to conceal and facilitate the fraudulent practices in question; and that from a correspondent ramification of commerce into a multitude of distinct branches, particularly in the metropolis and the large towns of the empire, the traffic in adulterated commodities should find its way through so many circuitous channels, as to defy the most scrutinising endeavour to trace it to its source.
It is not less lamentable that the extensive application of chemistry to the useful purposes of life, should have been perverted into an auxiliary to this nefarious traffic. But, happily for the science, it may, without difficulty, be converted into a means of detecting the abuse; to effect which, very little chemical skill is required; and the course to be pursued forms the object of the following pages.
The baker asserts that he does not put alum into bread; but he is well aware that, in purchasing a certain quantity of flour, he must take a sack of _sharp whites_ (a term given to flour contaminated with a quantity of alum), without which it would be impossible for him to produce light, white, and porous bread, from a half-spoiled material.
The wholesale mealman frequently purchases this spurious commodity, (which forms a separate branch of business in the hands of certain individuals,) in order to enable himself to sell his decayed and half-spoiled flour.
Other individuals furnish the baker with alum mixed up with salt, under the obscure denomination of _stuff_. There are wholesale manufacturing chemists, whose sole business is to crystallise alum, in such a form as will adapt this salt to the purpose of being mixed in a crystalline state with the crystals of common salt, to disguise the character of the compound. The mixture called _stuff_, is composed of one part of alum, in minute crystals, and three of common salt. In many other trades a similar mode of proceeding prevails. Potatoes are soaked in water to augment their weight.
The practice of sophisticating the necessaries of life, being reduced to systematic regularity, is ranked by public opinion among other mercantile pursuits; and is not only regarded with less disgust than formerly, but is almost generally esteemed as a justifiable way to wealth.