The manufacture of artificial vitamins is an industry organized along the lines of the famous international cartels and at least one of the corporations of this country was party to an agreement with the I. G. Farbenindustrie. Millions are spent in advertising and in subsidizing research. Vitamins are sold over the counters in America today in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars a year.

During the early part of the last War much publicity was given to the fact that industrial workers were given daily quotas of vitamins to increase their productiveness. This was accomplished by the vitamin makers or their advertising men going to the heads of these industrial plants and persuading these men to permit the manufacturers to supply the vitamins to the men as a "scientific" test. It was done as an advertising program and the cost was charged off to advertising. It resulted in no good. No doubt many thought they were benefitted, just as many think they are benefitted by taking drugs in other forms. One of the soldiers used in the tests at the University of Minnesota reported that he felt much better after taking the tablets given him in the tests. A careful check disclosed that he had been taking the placebos and not "vitamins" at all.

The German experience with a vitamin pill called piroxin is instructive. The German government requested the workers to take these pills. At first they thought they were getting wonderful results, because the pills seemed to lessen the fatigue of the workers. For a few weeks there was a step-up in production but after a few months industrial accidents had increased thirty per cent. Investigations showed that the piroxin had undermined the workers' nervous systems and had made many thousands of drug addicts. Synthetic vitamins are drugs.