DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 203 



national government to regulate commerce between the states, 

 so that then it would apply, so far as the states are concerned, 

 only to interstate traffic. There are those who believe that 

 it ought to be thus placed, so that the national government 

 would control regulations in that traffic and leave it to the states 

 to control the commodity after the goods have become com- 

 mingled with the goods of the state, so as to become subject to 

 state surveillance. This may be a question for further con- 

 sideration. 



Litigation. 



In the year 1884 the State of New York passed a law for- 

 bidding the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine to be used 

 as a substitute for, or to take the place of, butter; and then 

 Pennsylvania passed a similar act. The constitutionality of 

 these two statutes was questioned in both states. In the State 

 of New York the Court of Appeals, the court of last resort of 

 that state, held the law to be unconstitutional on the ground 

 that the product prohibited was not a product simulating or 

 imitating another product, but that the statute prohibited the 

 manufacture of any oleaginous substance not the product of 

 milk or butter being manufactured or sold for the purpose of 

 taking the place of butter ; that irrespective of the particular 

 substance under consideration, to wit, oleomargarine, which 

 might in time to come be produced and which would be health- 

 ful and wholesome and not deceptive in any way, yet the ban 

 of this law would be upon it. Plainly, it said it would be beyond 

 the power of the legislature to so enact. People v. Marx, 99 

 New York. 



Practically, the same statute was declared by the court of 

 last resort of the State of Pennsylvania to be constitutional, 

 i. e., that it was within the power of the legislature of that 

 commonwealth to so enact under the police power of the state 

 for the protection of the health of the public and for the pre- 

 vention of fraud. It is to be noted that in both cases last 

 referred to. the state courts had passed upon the constitution- 

 ality of the statutes from the standpoint of the constitutions of 

 the respective states. The Pennsylvania case was taken to the 

 Supreme Court of the United States on the ground that it 



