Seen & Heard by Megargee, James Hoyt

Seen & Heard by Megargee James Hoyt, 1901 One particular firm makes under its own roof in a Western city the finest wines of France, the famous cordials of Italy and the popular brands of all kinds of liquors, bitters and fancy drinks. It sells imitation bottles, labels, corks, brands, cases and wrappings. There is nothing about its trade that is not bogus, but its fraud falls short of infringement of the law because its imitations are not exactly within the meaning of the trade-mark statute. The favorite brands of French and Italian cordials are the most frequently imitated, because on them the margin of profit is greater than on most other imported drinks. Take, by way of illustration, a bogus Absinthe label and compare it with the original of the famous cordial made by D'Edouard Pernod, the standard drink of Absinthe lovers all over the world. The signature is almost the same, but the name is spelled Edouard Perere. The intricate scroll work and the red crosses on the label are all there, and the bottle is blown with the changed name. Even the cork is branded. But the Absinthe is not the production of the delicately bitter herbs of Europe, and it is a concoction of a firm of frauds in Cincinnati, having wormwood as its only legitimate basis.