main factors: the Pure
Food and Drug Acts; the automobile; and higher standards of public
education. All of these were, of course, strongly in evidence by the
1920s, when William Henry Comstock II was beginning his career as the
head of the Indian Root Pill enterprise. Nevertheless, the Morristown
plant was still conducting a very respectable business at this time and
was to continue for some four decades longer. The Comstock enterprise
never seemed to have been much embarrassed by the muckraking attacks
that surrounded the passage of the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Aside from the enforcement of these measures by the energetic Harvey
Wiley, the two most effective private assaults upon the patent-medicine
trade probably were the exposures by Samuel Hopkins Adams in a series of
articles in _Collier's_ magazine in 1905-1906, under the title, "The
Great American Fraud," and the two volumes entitled, _Nostrums and
Quackery_, embodying reprints of numerous articles in the _Journal of
the American Medical Association_ over a period of years. Both sources
named names fearlessly and described consequences bluntly. But the
Comstock remedies, either because they may have been deemed harmless, or
because the company's location in a small village in a remote corner of
the country enabled it to escape unfriendly attention, seemed to have
enjoyed relative immunity from these attacks. At least, none of the
Comstock remedies was mentioned by name.[13] To be sure, these
preparations--or at least those destined for consumption within the
United States--had to comply with the new drug laws, to publish their
ingredients, and over a period of time to reduce sharply the extensive
list of conditions which they were supposed to cure. Nevertheless, it
seems probable that the general change in public attitudes rather than
any direct consequences of legislative enforcement caused the eventual
demise of the Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills.

[Illustration: FIGURE 25.--Comstock packaging building (upper floor used
as residence for manager--note laundry) at left, hotel at right. Ferry
slip directly ahead. About 1915.]

Foreign business began to assume considerable importance after 1900;
shipments from Morristown to the West Indies and Latin America were
heavy, and the company also listed branches (perhaps no more than
warehouses or agencies) in London, Hongkong, and Sydney, Australia.
Certain of the order books picked up out of the litter on th