He slanted Annabelle a knowing look. “I confess that I’ve tried to wiggle off the hook a time or two....”
“I always reel him back in,” Annabelle told Mrs. Sharpe with a confidential wink.
“You just keep reeling,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “And give him a firm talking-to about those food purity laws. We need men fromthe food industry on our side.” She sent him a sugary smile with only a hint of barbed wire. “And trust me, once I’ve got them on board, there will be no wriggling off the hook, sir.”
His eyes widened. Mrs. Sharpe was a combination of Fannie Farmer and General Sherman. Anyone who underestimated her was likely to have his head handed to him on a Wedgwood china plate.
The door opened and Mr. Feldman joined them. A scarecrow-thin man wearing a dark suit, Horatio Feldman could not be more different than the matronly Mrs. Sharpe.
“I’ve got ten minutes to hear about this counterfeit applesauce,” he announced, plunking a stack of paperwork on the table and making the teacups rattle. “Let’s get down to business. Where’s the applesauce?”
The atmosphere pivoted, and Gray pivoted along with it. He set a jar with an original label from the Magruder factory on the table. With its colorful label featuring shiny red apples in a basket, it looked perfectly harmless.
“We have had scientists examine the contents, and they concluded it is a cheap mixture of stewed pumpkin and chemicals that simulate apples.”
Horatio Feldman twisted the lid off and spooned some into a bowl. “Mrs. Sharpe?” he asked.
“I’ll wait for our own tests,” she said with a slight wrinkle in her nose.
“A wise decision,” Gray said, passing her the list of ingredients. “As you can see from the test we commissioned, this is not an appealing concoction. In fact, it’s outright fraud to pass off a vegetable as apples.”
“A vegetable?” Mr. Feldman asked. “I thought pumpkins are considered a fruit.”
“They are,” Annabelle said, turning a smug look on Gray. “A fruit is a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant. Vegetables are other edible parts of a plant,such as the leaves, roots, or stems. Everyone knows pumpkins are a fruit.”
He stiffened. He hadn’t gone to college and couldn’t spout off formal definitions, but before he could say something to redeem himself, Mrs. Sharpe came to his rescue.
“Not precisely,” she corrected Annabelle. “In culinary terms, only sweet items are deemed fruits. Savory edibles such as tomatoes and pumpkins are fruits by the botanical definition, but the culinary definition considers them vegetables, my dear.”
Gray shot to his feet and kissed the back of Mrs. Sharpe’s hand. “That was exactly what I was about to say. Thank you for not forcing me to correct my beloved Miss Larkin.”
“Because you hate doing that,” Annabelle said.
Mr. Feldman continued in a businesslike tone. “You claim that millions of these jars might be circulated. Will they all be consumed as straight applesauce, or can applesauce be used in cooking?”
Annabelle was ready with the answer. “Applesauce is often used as a sweetening element in baked goods and sauces. Young mothers routinely use it as baby food.”
“Baby food!” Mr. Feldman shouted, rising to his feet. He grabbed the list of ingredients, his face flushing red. He was so angry he stammered. “They intend to feed babies potassium chromate and formaldehyde? That’s an abomination. To think of a child who has known nothing but mother’s milk to have his first bite of real food be laced with formaldehyde. Science has run amok! We can’t wait for the law to catch up with it. We must act now. This shall not stand.”
Every instinct urged Gray to stand up and cheer, but he forced himself to remain seated. The war was tilting in his favor, and he must do nothing to interfere.
Annabelle was not so restrained. “Exactly!” she said. “If we can stop one young mother from giving her baby this tainted food, I will consider it worthwhile. Can you help us?”
Mr. Feldman sat back down and folded his arms across his chest. “The better question would be, canyouhelpus? The Department of Agriculture has spent years advocating for purity laws but has never accomplished anything. Why is it left to a ladies’ magazine to lead the charge?”
Annabelle turned to him. “Gray, darling? Perhaps you’d like to answer that.”
He was outnumbered here. These people might think having government inspectors prowling through factories was a better alternative than self-policing, but he wasn’t here to fight that battle today. Passing the laws Mr. Feldman alluded to could take decades, and he wanted the Magruders’ applesauce yanked off the shelves today.
“The government can never hire enough inspectors to stamp out food adulteration in the thousands of factories throughout the land,” he said. “But your magazine can shame producers into policing themselves. People will fight to earn your magazine’s approval, and they’ll cringe at the negative exposure if they try to pass off adulterated food as the real thing. The power of the pen is more powerful than any legislation that is currently snarled up in Washington.”
“Good point,” Mr. Feldman said bluntly. “Let’s get down to work. I want this applesauce to serve as a case study of the abuses in the industry.”
Mr. Feldman’s ten minutes stretched into an hour as he outlined his recommendations to knock the momentum out from under the Magruders’ applesauce. Public awareness among consumers was only one facet of the puzzle. The bigger prize would be to stop the distributors from carrying the product. The Sears Roebuck catalog was sensitive to negative press and would likely stop carrying products believed to be tainted. Grocery stores on the local level would be a harder challenge because the industry was so decentralized, but Mr. Feldman recommended using the power of the trade associations to get the word out.
“Do you have that sort of pull?” Gray asked.
Mr. Feldman snorted. “We buy ink by the barrel. Of course we have that sort of pull! And I won’t stop until this country is blanketed with the information. I don’t care if a new mother lives in Boston or Des Moines or Timbuktu. No infant shall be spoon-fed a concoction of pumpkin laced with formaldehyde if I can stop it.”
