Underweight, undermeasure, double- bottomed berry-boxes,
bottles so shaped as to appear to contain more than their actual
contents, are obviously cheating. Misbranding of goods is now
regulated, so far as interstate trade goes, by the Federal Pure Food
and Drugs Act; and most States have similar legislation.
Misrepresentation in advertisement should be severely punished; the
selling of cold storage for fresh products, of part-cotton for all-wool
clothing, of less for more expensive woods, and the thousand other
ways of panning inferior goods upon an inexpert public for high-grade
articles. At present there is little recourse but to carry distrust
into all purchasing, learn to be canny, and to recognize differences
in quality in all articles needed. But the average man cannot become
an expert purchaser; he buys furniture which breaks down prematurely;
he pays a high price for clothing which proves to have no wearing
quality; he buys patent medicines which promise to cure his physical
ills, and is lucky if they do not leave him worse in health than before.
Jerry- building, and the doing of fake jobs by contractors, especially
for municipalities, is one of the scandals of our times. [Footnote:
See Encyclopedia Britannica, article, "Adulteration." E. Kelly Twentieth
Century Socialism, book ii, chap. i. For a notorious case of tampering
with weights, see Outlook, vol. 92, p. 25; vol. 93, p. 811. For cases
of adulteration, Good Housekeeping Magazine, vol.
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