14 Ninth Annual Report of the 



garine is larger and more of it is manufactured. Our friends 

 have reversed the facts in their reasoning. Another argument 

 made by these people to show that these goods are wanted 

 by the consuming public may be illustrated by the argu- 

 ment made by their counsel before the Committee on 

 Agriculture and Forestry of the United States Senate 

 upon the Grout bill. The attorney stated that the peo- 

 ple desired oleomargarine, and as a proof of it he would 

 call the attention of the committee to the fact that in the State 

 of Rhode Island, where no State law was enforced relative to 

 oleomargarine, the people had consumed during the previous 

 year eight pounds per capita, while in the State of New York, 

 where the enforcement of the law was practically complete, 

 seven and one-half million people had only consumed 222,228 

 pounds, or a little over four ounces per capita; that if they had 

 been left free to have purchased it and consumed it as the peo- 

 ple of Rhode Island had, it is fair to assume that they would 

 have consumed per capita as much as the Rhode Island people 

 or sixty million pounds during the year. As a matter of fact 

 the 222,228 pounds of oleomargarine charged to this State dur- 

 ing the year, to which he refers, was not all consumed by the 

 people of this State. As to the argument of the people 

 desiring the goods, any person, knowing the methods of the 

 oleomargarine people, particularly as those methods get nearer 

 to the consumer, knows that the goods are hardly, if ever at all, 

 sold as and for oleomargarine, but they reach the consumer in 

 a form or guise that makes him believe he is purchasing butter, 

 and he is told, as a rule, that he is. The men disposing of the 

 goods seem to be, in their methods, as ingenious as the most 

 enterprising vendors, and I am compelled to say with candor 

 that wherever this traffic is not properly regulated a proportion 

 of the people are obliged to eat the goods whether they desire 

 oleomargarine or not under representations that are made to 

 them. 



Our law relative to oleomargarine is, in my judgment, a good 

 one. I have no suggestions to make as to amendments, but 



