The old recipe for home-made candy called for the addition of a little vinegar to the sugar syrup to prevent “graining.”  The purpose of the acid was of course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as to keep it from crystallizing out again.  The professional candy-maker now uses the corn glucose for that purpose, so if we accuse him of “adulteration” on that ground we must levy the same accusation against our grandmothers.  The introduction of glucose into candy manufacture has not injured but greatly increased the sale of sugar for the same purpose.  This is not an uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as we have observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has stimulated the production of odoriferous flowers and the price of butter has gone up with the introduction of margarin.  So, too, there are more weavers employed and they get higher wages than in the days when they smashed up the first weaving machines, and the same is true of printers and typesetting machines.  The popular animosity displayed toward any new achievement of applied science is never justified, for it benefits not only the world as a whole but usually even those interests with which it seems at first to conflict.

The chemist is an economizer.  It is his special business to hunt up waste products and make them useful.  He was, for instance, worried over the waste of the cores and skins and scraps that were being thrown away when apples were put up.  Apple pulp contains pectin, which is what makes jelly jell, and berries and fruits that are short of it will refuse to “jell.”  But using these for their flavor he adds apple pulp for pectin and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweetness and, if necessary, synthetic dyes for color, he is able to put on the market a variety of jellies, jams and marmalades at very low price.  The same principle applies here as in the case of all compounded food products.  If they are made in cleanly fashion, contain no harmful ingredients and are truthfully labeled there is no reason for objecting to them.  But if the manufacturer goes so far as to put strawberry seeds—­or hayseed—­into his artificial “strawberry jam” I think that might properly be called adulteration, for it is imitating the imperfections of nature, and man ought to be too proud to do that.

The old-fashioned open kettle molasses consisted mostly of glucose and other invert sugars together with such cane sugar as could not be crystallized out.  But when the vacuum pan was introduced the molasses was impoverished of its sweetness and beet sugar does not yield any molasses.  So we now have in its place the corn syrups consisting of about 85 per cent. of glucose and 15 per cent. of sugar flavored with maple or vanillin or whatever we like.  It is encouraging to see the bill boards proclaiming the virtues of “Karo” syrup and “Mazola” oil when only a few years ago the products of our national cereal were without honor in their own country.