Commissioner of Agriculture. 19 



twenty-first day of February, 1896, with the service of process upon 

 Armour & Co.^ in an action begun by me as Commissioner of Agri- 

 culture, in which penalties are claimed aggregating more than 

 |500,0()(). This action is still at issue and undetermined. There 

 can be no doubt that these defendants have incurred a large num- 

 ber of penalties and that the State is entitled to the recovery 

 against them of a substantial sum. 



No other actions have so far been commenced, although diligent 

 efforts have been made to procure data upon which suits could be 

 commenced against several other oleomargarine makers and 

 manufacturers, who have been not quite as open in their violations 

 of the law as Armour & Co., although undoubtedly guilty of viola- 

 tions of the same. The prosecutions during the past few years of 

 those engaged in selling oleomargarine have resulted in practically 

 doing away with its use in this State. Like all other criminal laws 

 it is undoubtedly violated from time to time, but such sales as are 

 made are done surreptitiously; as compared with the number at the 

 time of the passage of the original laws upon the subject they are 

 infinitesimal. At the time I assumed the duties of this office the 

 manufacture and sale of the commodity in this State had practi- 

 cally stopped, but at that time a new feature confronted us in that 

 the original package decisions had been handed down by the United 

 States Court; if they were to apply to oleomargarine and kindred 

 products, all the work the State had done for nine years would be 

 practically useless. During mj incumbency in ofifice, this ques- 

 tion has been strongly litigated with the final result that the 

 courts have distinguished, so that the decision in the whiskey 

 cases do not apply to this commodity, and the State is again practi- 

 ■ cally free from this product. 



Of course in the large cities a careful surveillance has to be kept 

 to see that it is not shipped in the original packages to boarding 

 houses, restaurants, hotels or other places of public entertain- 

 ment. Occasionally we find people who have the hardihood to sell 

 it in spite of the law, as is evinced by the cases we have made during 

 the year which will be discovered by examining the reports of the 

 Assistant Commissioners. Of these violations, however, the most 



