Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1885 — Capital Punishment and Food Adulteration. [ARTICLE]

Capital Punishment and Food Adulteration.

Mr. Bright once observed that adulteration was but another form of competition. That sort of competition would seem not to have been appreciated in the middle ages, in Germany, at least, if we may judge from the fate which was held in reserve for adulterators at Nuremburg. The town counsel of that delightful old city is publishing its archives, which throw a good deal of new light upon the manners and habits of the burghers of Albert JDurer’s town, and particularly upon its penal code. For a venial act of adulteration two grocers and a woman were buried alive under the gallows. Two tavern keepers, convicted of having “baptized” their wine, were condemned to a similar fate; but by “great and special grace” they were let off with the loss of their ears. Clearly, competition, in the retail trade at all events, was not Nuremburg. This matter of adulteration is complicated in these days by the liking of some purchasers for falsified goods. Thus many Eastern peoples prefer their calico heavily sized; and sized, too, in a fashion which kills the cotton operatives of Rochdale and other places where goods for the Oriental markets are prepared.— St. James Gazette.