The Official U.S. Maple Syrup Almanac 2015 | Page 39

W

as it REAL-ly Maple??
Well, no! Not REAL maple!
Sugarmakers knew! In January, 1893 the Vermont Maple Sugarmakers’
Association was formed to “improve quality,
increase quantity and protect manufacturers
and consumers from the many fraudulent
preparations placed on the market as pure
maple goods!”
(How many people were aware of the
deceptions, and were harmed by them?) In
1889 an estimated 10,000 Vermonters each
made at least five hundred pounds of sugar.
That’s just those in the Green Mountain State.
How many more maple farmers throughout
the sugarmaking region were being cheated
by adulterated products sold as pure maple?
Victor I. Speare, President of the Vermont
Maple Sugarmakers’ Association, in a comment quoted from the 1895 Vermont Agricultural Report, stated “I know of no way in
which these foods can be kept out of our market, except by national legislation prohibiting
their sale except as adulterated foods.”
“. . . . to supply the demand for maple sugar
by putting on the market a combination of
glucose, corn and and maple syrup, and selling it as pure maple goods. Some of the poorest quality of Vermont maple sugar enters
into the compound for flavoring purposes . .
. . Car loads of the last run of Vermont maple
sugar orchards are sent to these cities each year
for this purpose. . . . The adulterated maple
goods trade is to the legitimate business just
what oleomargarine is to honest butter. They
are both frauds, sold for what they are not. .
. .WHAT ARE WE TO DO ABOUT IT?”
Ohio sugarmakers had been proactive. At
a 1905 Vermont Maple Sugarmakers’ annual
meeting, A. R. Phillips of Chagrin Falls, Ohio
shared the Ohio “Maple Sugar and Syrup
Law” and urged Vermonters to do likewise.
“Let me call your attention to some of the
uses of the word Maple as it is found upon
labels of the adulterated article. Here are some
of them.
U.S. Maple Syrup Almanac

2015

A SWEET
HISTORY
By BETTY ANN LOCKHART

Don Lockhart/Perceptions, Inc.

Real maple syrup in an antique glass
pitcher.

OPEN KETTLE MAPLE SYRUP.
How suggestive to the consumer that he
is getting some of the real old pioneer maple
syrup boiled down in the old cauldron kettle.
LOG CABIN MAPLE SYRUP.
Don’t that take the lover of maple sugar and
syrup right back into the maple woods to the
crude log cabin where our father boiled down
the delicious stuff?
MAPLE LEAF BRAND OF SUGAR
AND SYRUP
Beautiful isn’t it.
Mr. Phillips described several more of the
offensive labels, and ended with:
“PURE VERMONT SYRUP.”
Here the word Maple is not used, but
another word in its stead . . . to suggest to the
innocent consumer that the package contains
pure maple syrup.”
At the conclusion of the 1905 Vermont
Maple Sugarmakers’ meeting a resolution was
passed to urge Vermont members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives
to pass a national pure food law.
Senator Redfield Proctor, a member of the

Vermont Maple Sugarmakers’ Association,
was aware of the adulteration allegations, and
became even more aware when he ran out of
Vermont maple syrup and sent his butler to
a local Washington, D.C. shop, where the
butler purchased “Towle’s Log Cabin Maple
Syrup” Burlington, VT and St. Paul, Minn.”
(Perhaps upon tasting the syrup, Senator
Proctor said “Ugh!) He determined it was not
maple syrup, (“I cannot detect any maple taste
in this, or very slight”) and the Senator went
about urging a law for false branding. A letter
about his Towle Log Cabin experience was
published in the Burlington Free Press, and
there was an exchange of correspondence with
an angry Mr. Beeman of Fairfax, Vermont
who claimed to supply the Towle Company
with maple sugar – some $30,000 worth.
Senator Proctor continued with his quest for
accurate, non-deceptive labeling. Indeed, in a
November 15, 1905 letter to President Theodore Roosevelt, he wrote “I hope you will say
a word in favor of Pure Food Legislation” and
ended with “But that every man, woman and
child in the country may eat and drink what
is free as possible from harmful adulteration is,
it seems to me, of vital importance to the welfare of the country. On account of high prices
the temptations for adulterations are great.”
The first Pure Food and Drug Act became
effective on January 1, 1907.
In spite of current labeling and Pure Food
laws, the deceptions persist. Check the ingredient’s lists on labels – the ones that say
“maple.” Often there is little or no REAL
maple in the package – sometimes “natural
maple flavor” – not REAL- ly maple. In the
words of Vermont Maple Sugarmaker President Victor Speare 120 years ago “WHAT
ARE WE TO DO ABOUT IT?”
— Betty Ann Lockhart
All quotations are excerpted from the book Maple
Sugarin’ in Vermont – A Sweet History, and were originally taken from primary sources by the author, who is
also author of this article. Interested readers may read
more in the aforementioned book, Chapters 8 and 9
titled The Auspicious 1890s and Vermont Maple Sugarmakers and The Pure Food and Drug Act.

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