Dr. Harvey Analysis

Historians debate as to what the motives were of Dr. Harvey in campaigning for the 1906 laws and what purpose of the Pure Food and Drug Act was. Hunter Dupree stated that Wiley’s motives weren't to act out of pure selflessness, and loyalty to the public. Wiley pushed for reforms in the food and drug regulation via his adulteration of foods to save his Division of Chemistry, which Wiley thought was going to come to an end due to the large government agencies that were hiring their own private chemists (9, 277). Richard Hofstadter thought that the act was an example of the shift from the concern of the producer, to the concern of the consumer. Robert Wiebe saw the act as an example of experiment in bureaucratic reform. Conflict also arose about
Charles Beard and V. L. Parrington viewed the Progressive Era as just another battle between the forces of democracy and the forces of the privilege. Richard Hofstadter has a more skeptical attitude and says that history progressed through a cycle of conflicts along economic lines. He says progressivism was led by men who suffered from the harsh events of their time through the changed pattern of respect and power. Food and drug reforms were passed during the time of the progressive era because muckraking writers, especially middle class urbanites, pushed for and secured “something in the form of legislative change and social free-washing” (qtd. 9, 279). This category of theirs included the food and drug laws as they realized the terrible conditions of the manufacturing industries from Sinclair’s “Jungle.” Historian Robert H. Wiebe agrees that the Progressive era really pushed for the Pure Food and Drug Act, but from a different perspective than Hofstadter looked at it. Wiebe linked progressivism with ‘bureaucratic reform’ and said that the Pure Food and Drug Acts were experiments in “bureaucratic reform” (qtd. 9, 279). Regarding food regulation, James Kane states that it’s unlikely that the Progressive Era affected food regulation because Wiley was always a high tariff Republican, and would abandon the Republican party, and support Wilson years
Historian Mark Sullivan states that Roosevelt played a central role in the passage of the act but the act was strengthened by the muckrakers and Wiley. In contrast to Sullivan’s views, Historians C.C. Regier and Louis Filler view Roosevelt as having more of an insignificant job regarding the act's passage (9, 75-76). Filler states that it was purely a chance that Roosevelt was president during the time of the passage. Filler focuses on the muckraker journalists who, he considered, to play the primary role in the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug