132 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS being less civilized and less hypocritical. Our impulse to make a clean breast of it and rise to higher things is our most precious national char acteristic, and no president has ever surpassed Mr. Roosevelt in fostering it. He sent for the author of "The Jungle" and talked with him. It was on June 30, 1906, that an act was passed, known as the Agricultural Appropriation Act, providing for in spection of meat and food products used in inter state or foreign commerce, and imposing penalties. That this law today does less good than it ought, and that our only strict inspection is of meats ex ported to foreign countries because foreign coun tries also subject the meat to inspection, is due to the eternal vigilance of American rascals and the eternal inattentiveness of the American people. We allow the Beef Trust to sell us inferior meat and send the good meat abroad, where less is paid for it than we pay for the scrapings. On the same day in June was passed another most valuable act, rendered of less value through the reactionary in fluence of Mr. Taft s administration, and known as the "Pure Food and Drugs Act." This forbade the manufacture, sale or transportation of adul terated or misbranded or poisoned or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines and liquors. In this case too the organized alertness of American rascals is triumphing over Democracy s unpiloted and helm- less mind.
