When you satisfy the cravings of hunger by putting into the human stomach watered milk, or cheese which is part wax, or sugar mixed with plaster of Paris, or chocolate which contains only a suggestion of the rich cacao beans, or any of the adulterated articles of food for sale especially in the poorer sections of the city, you not only tax the system to digest and dispose of a quantity of useless and maybe poisonous material, but every tissue in the body is thereby robbed of its proper nourishment. It is as much, or more, poverty and underfeeding to fill the stomach with material which does not contain the five _proximate principles_, _i.e._, nourishment, as not to fill it at all. The laws against substitution and adulteration of human food and drink ought to be more stringent than the laws against horse stealing. Yet, as I am informed, all efforts at such legislation are invariably met with the cry that it will interfere with the _business interests_ of the country. Here, as in so many other instances, when an attempt is made to secure common justice and protection for the lives and property and rights of the plain people, we run up against the _business interests_. The curse of this country today is that everything, even human life, must be sacrificed when necessary to the BUSINESS INTERESTS. The industry captains are killing and maiming the people now just as the military captains used to do, and for the same objects—to satisfy greed and selfishness. The negro slave in the South in slavery days was further removed from poverty and the fear of poverty than any man I have ever known. When his day’s work was finished he came home from the field or the shop and he found a substantial, well-cooked dinner awaiting him. After dinner he went to his comfortable cabin and sat before a blazing log fire, or, in warm weather, he sat out under the stars, fanned by the night winds. His wife and children were nearly always around him, as were his companions, the other slaves belonging to his master and the plantation.