grape sugar by diastase and the pancreatic extracts; but for this very reason it is inimical to the process of digestion and can only prove harmful when present in foods in any appreciable amount. Its use as a preservative is absolutely prohibited in France, Austria, Italy, Spain, and in all of the South American states which have pure-food laws. Formaldehyde, another antiseptic which is now used quite largely, as the senatorial investigation has shown, not only inhibits digestion in quite the same degree as salicylic acid, but is an irritating and hardening agent which can scarcely avoid proving harmful to the mucous membrane of the stomach.

In

deed, no one knows how much our national tendency to indigestion and to troubles of the alimentary canal, kidneys, and nervous system may be due to the ingestion of foods which have been preserved with salicylic acid, formaldehyde, and other powerful antiseptics..

Certain prominent chemists and physicians assert that sinall quantities of these preservatives are harmless, but this is in turn vehemently refuted by others who are equally prominent. It is quite probable, however, that sufficiently small percentages of some of them, particularly boric acid, are harmless. If so, to prevent the use of the substances in these amounts would be unnecessary; moreover, it would be unwise in some instances, for preservatives which are harmless have usually an indisputable power for good. But until these safe amounts have been determined it is unsafe to tolerate the use of the substances in any amounts (except, possibly, boric acid), particularly since they are used so carelessly and so ignorantly and since there is so much evidence of the harmfulness of their action. The determination of these safe percentages, as well as other moot points, might very properly be undertaken by the Government. The presi dent of the board of agriculture in England has recently taken a step which might well be taken in this country. He has appointed a "committee on food preservatives." This committee of experts is charged with the duty of carrying on an exhaustive and determinative series of experiments to ascertain to what extent the wholesomeness of food is in any way affected by the use of preservatives, and whether the use of small amounts of these can be safely admitted. The experiments will, of course, include the administration of preserved products to living beings in order to determine their effect upon health and digestion.

It is to be admitted, however, as I have already said, that so far as health is concerned the great majority of adulteration is not harmful. But where it is not harmful to the consumer's

health it is to his pocket-book. Currant jelly made from apple cores and olive oil made from cotton seed are perhaps no more productive of systemic disturbance than the articles for which they are dishonestly substituted, but they are deleterious to the purse of the poor man who pays for and thinks he is getting the pure articles. It cannot, therefore, be gainsaid that a national pure-food law and the creation of a national department charged with its enforcement have become imperatively necessary. It may be urged against a national pure-food law that it would be limited in its scope; that it could only regulate interstate traffic in adulterated and misbranded products. But it is just this and no more that is required of a national pure-food law; without this, indeed, the State laws are practically worthless. For a State law, however perfect, can control the conditions within its own jurisdiction only. It cannot reach the unscrupulous manufacturer of another State who sends his products across the border. And because a manufacturer cannot be prosecuted for the infractions which he commits in another State than his own, he is enabled to send broadcast his adulterated and counterfeit foodstuffs so long as he takes care that none of them stay in the State in which they are manufactured and sold. The States in which the products are distributed to the consumer are thus compelled either to let the evil go on unchecked or else to arrest and punish their own citizens for frauds which are perpetrated in another jurisdiction.

Of course a national law alone cannot control adulteration. Unless each State has its own law, the manufacturer can continue to practice adulteration within the State where his business is conducted. The national law cannot reach him until he sends his products across the border. State laws, then, are also necessary. But there are cheerful indications that these will be se. cured before many years in the States where there are none at present. The National Pure Food and Drug Congress, which was organized in 1898 in Washington, D. C., is preparing to recommend for adoption by the several Legislatures a uniform law after the manner in which the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Legislation has recommended and secured the passage of a uniform negotiable instruments law in several important States within the last two years. But meanwhile several States, gratifying to say, are themselves taking the matter up without waiting to be asked, as was shown at the outset of this article.

This National Pure Food and Drug Congress has considered also the question of a national law. Indeed, this was its primary purpose. At

its first meeting, held during the March of 1898, it sanctioned the Brosius pure-food bill, then before Congress, after recommending and securing several amendments to that measure. The bill failed of passage in 1898, mainly because of the absorbing interest of the war-revenue bill and other measures of paramount importance. It was reintroduced in the last Congress and would probably have been made law except that, like the previous year, the closing weeks of this session afforded too little time even for consideration of national and international matters of great import. Congress evidently realized the importance of the pure-food question, however, for its upper house appointed the committee herein mentioned to investigate food products and to report its findings at the next session.

This committee is thoroughly convinced of the great necessity of a national law, and will probably recommend the passage of one by the present Congress. It is not my purpose to discuss in detail what this law should be nor how the department charged with its execution should be organized. These things can safely be left to those who have them now under consideration and who have had experience which prepares

them properly for the task. But in a general way it may be said that a national law should at least be made to cover these four points:

1. Make absolutely prohibitory the use of antiseptics, preservatives, and adulterants which are deleterious to health, or in case some of these are harmless in small quantities, specify the maximum percentages which may be allowed of them. 2. Make necessary the honest and proper branding of all counterfeited and sophisticated products which are not deleterious to health, so that the man who wants and pays for pure olive oil and pure butter shall not be given cotton-seed oil and oleomargarine instead, and the man who wants the substitutes can buy them intentionally and not be deluded into paying for pure products which he does not get.

3. Make provisions for the frequent examination of products and the effective punishment of manufacturers and dealers who violate the prohibitions and requirements.

4. Make impossible the acts of foreign manufacturers who export to the United States inferior, adulterated, and misbranded foods which they are forbidden by law to sell in their own countries.

Now

OW that the rush to the northland Eldorado is a thing of the past, one may contemplate with sober vision its promises and their fulfillment. Who has profited? Who has lost? How much gold has been taken out of the ground? How much has gone into it? And finally, what will be the ultimate outcome of this great shifting of energy, this intense concentration of capital and labor upon one of the hitherto unexploited portions of the earth's surface?

In 1897, between the middle of July and the first of September, fully 25,000 argonauts attempted to enter the Yukon country. Of these the great majority failed, being turned back at the head of the Lynn Canal by the obstacles of the Chilcoot and White Passes, and at St. Michaels by the early advent of winter and the consequent closing of navigation on the Yukon. The spring of 1898 found 100,000 more on the various trails leading to the Klondike, chief among which were Skaguay and Dyea, the Stickeen route, beginning at Fort Wrangell, the "all-Canadian" route via Edmonton, and the all-water route by way of Bering Sea. To all

of these had been iterated and reiterated the warning of the old-timers: Don't dream of venturing north with less than $600. The more the better. One thousand dollars will be none too

much.

A few bold spirits were not to be deterred by the fact that they did not possess the required amount, but in the main $600 was, if anything, under the average sum buckled about each pilgrim's waist. But taking $600 as a fair estimate of individual expense, for 125,000 men it makes an outlay of $75,000,000. Now, it is unimportant whether all or none of them reached the goal these $75,000,000 were expended in the attempt. The railroads, the ocean transportation companies, and the outfitting cities of Puget Sound received probably $35,000,000; the remainder was dropped on the trail. The majority of those who succeeded in getting through had barely the $10 necessary for a miner's license; a few were able to pay the $15 required for the recording of the first claim they staked; many were penniless.

Since the transportation and outfitting com

panies certainly profited, the question arises : Did the Yukon district return to the gold-seekers the equivalent of what they spent in getting there? This may be decided by a brief review of the gold discoveries which have been made. In the fall of 1896 the first news of MacCormack's strike went down the Yukon and across the border to the established Alaskan mining camps of Forty Mile and Circle City. A stampede resulted and the Eldorado, Bonanza, and Hunker Creeks were staked. That winter the news crept out to salt water" and civilization. But no excitement was created, no rush precipitated. The world proper took no notice of it.

At this very

In the summer of 1897 a stampede from the three creeks mentioned went over the divide back of Eldorado and staked Dominion Creek, a tributary of the Indian River. moment the first gold shipments were reaching the Pacific coast and the first seeds of the gold rush being sown by the newspapers. During this period and the early fall Sulphur, Bear, and Gold Run Creeks were being staked in a desultory fashion-as of course were many others which have since proved worthless. Regardless of glowing reports and the ubiquitous "wildcats," and with the exception of a very small number of bench claims, there have been no more paying creeks discovered in the Klondike. And this must be noted and em

phasized All the paying creeks above named were located before the people arrived who were hurrying in from the outside.

It is thus clearly demonstrated that those who participated in the fall rush of 1897 and in the spring rush of 1898 were shut out from the only creeks which would even pay expenses. But, the stay-at-home at once exclaims, were there not other ways of playing even? How about the benches and the "lays"?

A

Let the benches" be first considered. bench claim is a hillside claim as distinguished from a creek claim. The Skookum bench strike was made prior to the influx from the outside, and subsequent to it came the discovery of the French Hill and Gold Hill benches, situated between Skookum and Eldorado. These last two are the only strikes in which the newcomers could have taken part. But at this point two factors arise limiting their participation. In the first place, not more than a score of French Hill and Gold Hill bench claims are rich, and not one will turn out more than $100,000. In the second place, these benches were right in the heart of the old workings, where the old-timers were on the ground, not five minutes' walk away. If the newcomers succeeded in possessing one claim out of each twenty staked they did well; and since not one claim in twenty developed pay dirt, the amount of dust taken out by the newcomers is practically nil.

Now as to the "lays." In the winter of 1896 the lay men did well. But at that time conditions were entirely different from those of the following winter. The importance of the Klondike strike was not appreciated, the value of the

gold in the gravel problematical, grub was scarce, and the demand greatly in excess of the labor supply. Under these circumstances it was easy for men to obtain profitable lays. But in 1897 these favorable conditions had disappeared. The owners knew the true worth of their holdings, grub was plentiful, and the labor market stocked. Now, no mine owner was silly enough to let a lay to a man which would clear that man $50,000, when he (the mine owner) could work that same man on wages the same length of time for $2,000. However, many newcomers, with an ignorance really pathetic, took such lays as were offered, used their own tools and grub," worked hard all winter, and at the washup found they would have been better off had they idled in their cabins. It is a fact that hundreds of lay men on the various creeks refused to put their winter's dumps through the sluices. It is thus evident that the Yukon district returned no equivalent to the gold-seekers who expended $75,000,000.

It is an old miner's maxim that two dollars go into the ground for each dollar that comes out. This the Klondike has not failed to exemplify, and a startling balance sheet may be struck between the cost of effort and the value of the reward. On the one side legitimate effort alone must be considered; on the other the actual gold taken from the earth.

Scores of new transportation and trading companies, formed during the excitement with an enterprise only equaled by their ignorance, lost in wrecked river and ocean-going craft and in collapse several millions of dollars. The men in the country before the rush-the mine owners, middlemen, and prospectors-between their expenses and their labor form an important item, as do also the expenditures of the Canadian and American governments. But disregarding these items and many minor ones, the result will still be sufficiently striking. Consider only the 125,000 gold-seekers, each of whom on an aver age, in getting or in trying to get into the Klondike, spent a year of his life. In view of the hardship and the severity of their toil, $4 per day per man would indeed be a cheap purchase of their labor. One and all, they would refuse in a civilized country to do the work they did do

been made. The figures stand for themselves : $220,000,000 have been spent in extracting $22,000,000 from the ground.

Such a result would seem pessimistic were not the ultimate result capable of a reasonable anticipation. While this sudden and immense ap plication of energy has proved disastrous to those involved, it has been of inestimable benefit to the Yukon country, to those who will remain in it, and to those yet to come.

Perhaps more than all other causes combined the food shortage has been the greatest detriment in the development of that region. From the first explorer down to and including the winter of 1897 the land has been in a chronic state of famine. But a general shortage of supplies is now a thing of the past. About 1874 George Holt was the first white man to cross the coast range and the first man to penetrate the country avowedly in quest of gold. In 1880 Edward Bean headed a party of twenty-five from Sitka

to the Hootalinqua River, and from then on small parties of gold-seekers constantly filtered into the Yukon Valley. But these men had to depend wholly upon what provisions they could carry in with them by the most primitive meth

ods. Consequently thorough prospecting was out of the question, for they were always forced back to the coast through lack of food. Then the Alaska Commercial Company, in addition to maintaining its trading posts scattered along the river, began to freight in provisions to sell to the miners who wished to winter in the country. But so many men remained that a food shortage was inevitable. With every steamer that was added more men hurried over the passes and wintered; and as a result démand always increased faster than supply. Every winter found the miners on the edge of famine, and every spring, with the promise of more steamers, more men rushed in.

But henceforth famine will be only a tradition in the land. The Klondike rush placed hundreds of steamers on the Yukon, opened the navigation of its upper reaches and the lakes, put tramways around the unnavigable Box Cañon and White Horse Rapids, and built a railroad from salt water at Skaguay across the White Pass to the head of steamboat traffic on Lake Bennett.

With the dwindling of population caused by the collapse of the rush, these transportation facilities will be, if anything, greater than the need of the country demands. The excessive profits will be cut down and only the best

equipped and most efficient companies remain in operation. Conditions will become normal and the Klondike just enter upon its true development. With the necessaries and luxuries of life cheap and plentiful, with the importation of the machinery which will cheapen many enterprises and render many others possible, with easy traveling and quick communication between it and the world and between its parts, the resources of the Yukon district will be opened up and developed in a steady, business-like way. Living expenses being normal, a moderate wage will be possible. Nor will laborers fail to hasten there from the congested labor markets of the older countries. This, in turn, will permit the employment on a large scale of much of the world's restless capital now seeking investment. On the White River, eighty miles south of Dawson, great deposits of copper are to be found. Coal, so essential to the country's exploitation, has already been discovered at various places along the Yukon, from "MacCormack's Houses" above the Five Finger Rapids down to Rampart City and the Koyukuk in Alaska. There is small doubt that iron will eventually be unearthed, and with equal certainty the future goldmining will be mainly in. quartz.

As to the ephemeral placers, the outlook cannot be declared bad. It is fair to suppose that