When we remember the immense improvement in the quality of American beer within the past few years and learn how often expensive machinery and appliances have been abandoned after a short use in favor of something better, we can hardly believe that brewers who conduct their business after such a fashion, will at the same time try to make a petty profit by using poor material and so deteriorating the product on whose excellence the success of their business depends. The genuineness of beer from any established brewery may usually be taken for granted. In 1872 after an extensive examination of beers in Great Britain only six samples were found to be adulterated.[18] [18] Encyclopedia Britannica, Art. Brewing. An effort has been made by many so-called temperance papers to disseminate an opposite view in this matter and the statements made can only be excused on the ground of ignorance—which in the circumstances is inexcusable. No doubt beer has been often adulterated, but to represent the practice as common or as prevailing in breweries that expect to live and that have a character to maintain is to speak in contradiction to the facts and to common sense. Lately at Newark, New Jersey, charges of this general nature were made by a total abstinence speaker and the matter was for once taken up by the brewers of the city, in whose behalf a well known member of the trade addressed the following letter to the orator of the day: The REV. W. F. BOOLE, Brooklyn: SIR—In a lecture delivered by you at Park Hall, Newark, N. J., on Sunday afternoon, July 13, 1879, you are reported in the _Newark Morning Register_ to have said: “The traffic is a traffic of compound poisons, and not even the finest imported liquors are free from them. Strychnine and stramonium, two deadly poisons, are used in the manufacture of beer, and a little potash is added to prevent the taste. Belladonna, one of the most virulent of poisons, is also used, and not less than 10,000 tons of the deadly cocculus are consumed. Cocculus is never given as a medicine, but it is drank daily by the masses in their beer and ale.” You, as a teacher of religion, should be a lover of truth. On behalf of the brewers of the United States, I denounce this statement as a deliberate falsehood, and I challenge you to prove any part of it; and in the event of your not doing so, or withdrawing your assertion, I shall not only take steps to publish the fact that you are a willful perverter of the truth, but also to prosecute you for slander. Yours truly, (Signed) C. FEIGENSPAN.