by Terrence Aym

Created on: February 17, 2010

Mention the name Teddy Roosevelt and different people conjure up different images of the man. To some Roosevelt was a progressive Republican president and a famous Rough Rider in the U.S. Cavalry during the Spanish-American War; to others he was the man who inadvertently lent his name to stuffed children's toys after a famous newspaper photograph depicted him saving two cuddly, orphaned bear cubs.

Our twenty-sixth president was many things: an historian, a biographer, a statesman, a big game hunter who traveled to Africa, a devout naturalist and an accomplished speaker. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 after brokering peace between warring Japan and Russia, Roosevelt truly deserved the label "A Man for All Seasons."

Amongst his campaigns—and he mounted many during his prodigious life—was the little known political and legal war his administration visited upon the Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia.

This strange footnote of history began with Roosevelt's appointment of a man on a mission: the medical crusader and nutritional agitator Dr. Harvey W. Wiley.

Before Wiley's appointment as chief of the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry, the good doctor had invested decades of his life towards the goal of making Americans healthier. Indeed, by the time this activist doctor met Roosevelt he had become almost obsessed with the nation's health. His list of evils seemed to grow each month and heading that list was the Coca-Cola Company and their flagship brand. Wiley accused the company of manufacturing sweetened poison in a fancy bottle.

Roosevelt, somewhat of a crusader himself, was impressed with the knowledge and the passion that Wiley radiated. Defining himself as a new breed of Republican—a progressive—Roosevelt accepted some of the socialist fervor sweeping across Europe. He believed that part of the mission of the U.S. government should be to make life better for Americans whether they wanted it or not. In Wiley, Roosevelt saw a comrade-in-arms: a crusader, a man of vision and a fellow progressive.

The food additive industry had grown almost exponentially during the last few decades of the 19th Century. Newspaper editors and public interest groups had pressured the U.S. Congress for years to establish a government agency empowered to police the burgeoning list of chemicals agricultural processors were adding to the nation's food supply. Finally Congress acted and on January 1, 1907 a law went into effect (the Pure Food and

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