FrfTk Tk £2 THEY BUILD OR O U JLr & DESTROY AMAZING BUT RARELY SUSPECTED TRUTHS ABOUT THE THINGS YOU EAT c£n b ) y By ALFRED W. McCANN CHAPTER 91 Sulphurous Add and Its Salts, To gether with the Sulphuric Acid, IVhich is Formed by the Oxidation of Sulphurous Acid, are Now in Common Use in Many Food Prod ucts in the United States, die Most Common of Which are Dried Fruits and Molasses. Sulphurous acid is one of the sub stances found in every bakeshop and candy factory in the United States, with very few exceptions. Anhydrous sodium sulphite is used by butchers all over the country. I have traced tons of it into interstate commerce and hav« exposed and caused the arrest of butchers who secretly employed it to give a fiery red color to their stale meats, particularly to hamburger steaks, made from trimmings. In some communities, such as Mas sachusetts and New Jersey, its use i« openly countenanced by the authori ties. In other communities, such as New York City, its use in hamburger steak or other meat products consti tutes a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of SSOO or imprisonment. The enormous extent to which sul phurous acid and its salts are em ployed is not dreamed of by the com mon people. Evaporated apples, mush rooms, and maraschino cherries, figs, pears, English walnuts, almonds, are bleached with sulphur fumes. New Orleans and Porto Rico mo lasses, no longer worthy of the name they bear, are treated with sulphurous acid. Oats, in the form of oatmeal in tended for breakfast porridge, or in the form of whole oats intended fpr horse feed, are bleached with sul phurous acid. The breakfast food abuse is rare, but all the other abuses are daily occurrences. White sweet wines contain enor mous quantities of sulphurous acid, added for its preservative and bleach ing effect. Lime Juice is frequently preserved ■with sulphurous acid. Crystallized ginger root and candled fruit peels are treated with sulphurous acid. Glucose, manufactured for export, haa contained sulphites for years. In the old days the Juice of the sugar cane was clarified and evapo rated in open kettles set directly over the fire. To-day a few farmers make for their own use old-fashioned, open kettle molasses or sorghum; but such products, the art of making which is now almost forgotten, are no longer to bo purchased by the people. I frequently get samples of honest molasses or delicious old-fashioned sorghum from friends who attempt to follow my unpleasant excursions in the highways and byways of sophisti cation. In consequence my own family Is treated to table luxuries that few Americans now know anything about, although our grandmothers were fa miliar with them To-day the stuff called molasses is clarified by the use of sulphurous acid, which is subsequently neutralized by the addition of an alkali. In the proc- JAPS COMPLETELY EQUIP RUSSIANS Soldiers Get Uniforms, Guns, Ammunition and Cannon From Flowery Kingdom Paris, Aug. 5. (Correspondence of The Associated Press). The extent to which Japan is clothing, shoeing, arming and munitioning the Russian army was forcibly presented to a mili tary observer who has Just returned from a trip along the Russian rront. "I was astonished," he said, "to find greats numbers of Russian soldiers clothed from head to foot in uniforms made in Japan, not only the tunic and trousers, but the leggings. They carried on their shoulders Japanese guns. Their cartridge belts were filled with cartridges made In Japan. Their leather belts and buckles were from Japan. And the stout hob-nailed shoes they wear are from hides gathered in Korea and made into shoes in Japan. So that, there you see a Russian sol dier In Japanese clothes. Japanese shoes, with Japanese gun, Japanese am munition and Japanese accoutrement. "It is strange, he went on, "that Bussia went to war with Japan over Korea, and now Korea, the source of all the trouble, is supplying Russia with the shoes in which her soldiers are marching to victory. Korea is a great grazing country and is proving a vast reservoir of raw hides which the Jap anese are rapidly turning into boots, shoes, saddles and leather furnishings."' "How did these supplies get from Japan to the Russian front?" the ob server was asked. Shipments Unmolested "It was noted." said he, "that about the only vital point where the Germans had not been able to send their subma rines was In the waters of the East China Sea, the straits of Korea, and the Sea of Japan. These are the waters separating Japan from Russia and the Asiatic Mainland, and the routes over them, commercial and military are open and without menace. "What sort of arms and munitions ts> Russia getting from Japan?" was ask ed. "All sorts," was the reply, "from the service rifle and small field pieces up to the big twelve-inch eruns. The Jap anese twelve-Inch is a terrible weapon, and thev are content not to make anv of the fourteen-inch and slxteen-lnca guns, as thev consider from a military standpoint that the immobility of the monster gun offsets its advantages where the twelve-inch is a mobile gun and very deadly." It Is said that French and Japanese officers are now furnishing the expert direction of the Russian artillery fire, which has made it so effective. "Did you see any of these officers?' l was asked. "No. and the report is not correct." said the observer. "The Russian ar tillery officers are directing their own fire, and are getting splendid results. The only Japanese and French officers are those temporarily assigned to ex plain the workings of a new piece. Just as an expert is sent along to explain any complicated piece of machinery Japanese experts accompanied the big twelve-inch Japanese guns, not to ma neuver them in action, but to explam Special Prices on Guaranteed TIRES These are the Blackstone Perfect Traction Tread Tires, a {Treat many of which have l>ecn sold by us in this city and used for a year without a single one coming back for adjustment. 30x3 $8.89 34x4 $17.48 30x354 $10.98 36x4 $18.98 32x3VS $12.24 34x454 $24.48 31x4 $15.98 35x454 $24.98 32x4 $16.49 36x454 $25.40 33x4 $16.98 37x5 $31.98 ALFRED H. SHAFFER WHOLESALE AND RETAIL AUTOMOBILE SUPPLIES 100 SOUTH CAMERON STREET L SATURDAY EVENING, ess the fine flavor and aroma are greatly destroyed by the sulphurous taste and odor which remain In the product to affect Injuriously the health of the unsuspecting consumer. Ir. some sugar factories the sul phurous acid Is introduced into the molasses as tho fumes of burning sul phur. In others it is introduced in the form of acid sulphite of lime. Part of this sulphurous acid is even tually oxidized to sulphuric acid, a deadly poison. In all commercially "reiined molasses" sulphurous and sul phuric acid are to be found except only that small quantity of the old fashioned black product that now finds its way from Barbadoes to the United States Even Barbadoes molasses has receutly surrendered to the sulphur kings, and in 1915 I found for the first time some of it on the market in New York city containing sulphur dioxide. Commercial molasses, of the only kind that children are now familiar with, contains ilttle of the flavor of the old-l'ashioned, open-kettle syrup. Mo lasses used to contain more of tho sugar of the cane. Modern methods of efficiency continue to rob it more and more of the wholesome and natural sugars which one time made it what it was—an innocent and wholesome de light that has now become a departed Joy. One method of refinement consists In suspending in water acid sulphite of sodium which is brought into contact with zinc dust. The solution which re sults from this process is then mixed with the crude molasses, which is thus bleached or refined with a correspond ing loss of frasrance and flavor, both of which escape in the effervescence which follows the mixture. Even oxalic acid has been employed In the refinement of molasses and chloride of tin has been detected as a bleaching agent. Of 18 samples of molasses examined by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in 1912, 14 were found to contain a poisonous metal—zinc—in troduced into the molasses probably in the form of zinc chloride used as a flux for soldering the tin cans in which the molasses wa3 put. O: 20 samples analyzed, 18 con tained salts of tin. The mineral salts natural to sugar cane as it comes from the field amount In quantity from .5 to 1 per cent. The raw cane juice, as expressed from the cane prior to the manufac ture of sugar and the now byproduct molasses contains from .4 to .8 per cent.