panies were forbidden to engage in other lines of business.
7. Companies engaged in interstate commerce must have a uniform system of
accounting.
8. They are required to make reports to the Interstate Commerce
Commission regularly.

This commission was also empowered to receive complaints, hear
testimony, make orders correcting abuses, or investigate conditions
without previous complaint. It was given the power to suspend the
proposed increase of rates until their justice had been determined. Any
person objecting to an order of the commission was empowered to appeal
to the "Commerce Court," which was created, being made up of five
circuit court Justices.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Copyright by Clinedinst, Washington.
Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, many years
Chief of the U. S. Bureau of Chemistry.

Nearly all of the States have passed laws relating to the purity of
goods sold to the public. Investigation showed, however, that twenty per
cent of the articles of food in common use were adulterated. This led to
the passing of a far-reaching measure by Congress, 1906, known as the
Pure Food and Drugs law. It provides against the manufacture and sale of
adulterated or misbranded foods, drugs, medicines, or liquors in the
District of Columbia, the Territories, and the insular possessions of
the United States, and prohibits the shipment of such goods from one
State to another or to a foreign country. To the Department of
Agriculture was given the power to enforce the law. Thus the public is
protected against adulterated foods and medicines and dishonest and
misleading labels, and honest manufacturers are protected against
fraudulent competition.

For a number of years some of the European countries condemned American
packing-house products. Abuses in the processes of preparing preserved
meats were brought vividly before Americans by Upton Sinclair in his
novel "The Jungle." The Department of Agriculture took up the problem
and a special investigation was ordered by President Roosevelt. The
report showed the need for more rigid inspection, and the agitation
throughout the country forced the House of Representatives, 1906,
somewhat reluctantly, to adopt the President's recommendation for a
thorough inspection, by government agents, of all processes and methods
used in the meat packing-houses.

[Illustration]
U. S. Government inspection of a packing-house.
Inspector's assistant attaching a "Retained" tag to carcass marked by