Commissioner of Agriculture. 61 



POINT III. 



The Prohibition of the Sale of a Dairy Product Containing 

 a Preservative was Enacted to Prevent Deception. 



1. The statute expressly states this object: 

 Section 36 of the Agricultural Law says: 



" This article and each section thereof are declared to be 

 enacted to prevent deception in the sale of dairy products." 

 Article 2 includes both section 27 and section 36. 



2. The history, context and subject-matter of section 27 show 

 this to be its object: 



The history of the different amendments to section 27 and the 

 discussions of the provisions of article 2, given above, bear with 

 equal force on this object of the statute. 



3. Even if all the preservatives are harmless, their sale can 

 be prohibited to prevent fraud: 



Defendant urges unconstitutionality against the statute 

 solely because it would prevent the sale of what he calls harm- 

 less preservatives. Admitting for argument they were all harm- 

 less, the police power may be exercised to prevent fraud. 



If the statute sought to prevent the sale of a dairy product con- 

 taining any harmless foreign substance under any name than 

 the name of a dairy product, it would manifestly be unconsti- 

 tutional under the decision of People v. Marx, 99 N. Y., 377, but 

 the statute is directed to prevent the sale as dairy products of 

 dairy products which dp contain a foreign substance. Dairy 

 products are of such character and constituency that every one 

 knows their origin and their constituents. A purchaser of 

 dairy products desires dairy products, and not dairy products 

 plus some other substance. It is most absurd for the defend- 

 ant to argue, as he did in the lower court, that this act pro- 

 hibits the sale of Matzoon, or Sparklets, or Kuyinss, or milk 

 punch, or carbonic acid gas, or boracic acid. 



He calls all of these, I suppose, within the statute's meaning 

 of the word preservative. The absurdity of this reasoning 

 would command no attention from the plaintiff were it not 



