102 Ninth Annual Report of the 



bidding the manufacture or sale of vinegar containing any arti- 

 ficial coloring matter was also held valid. 



From these cases the following propositions may be deduced: 

 1. That the Legislature cannot forbid or wholly prevent the sale 

 of a wholesome article of food. 2. That legislation intended and 

 reasonably adapted to prevent an article being manufactured in 

 imitation or semblance of a well-known article in common use 

 and thus imposing upon consumers or purchasers is valid. 

 3. That in the interest of public health the Legislature may de- 

 clare articles of food not complying with a specified standard 

 unwholesome and forbid their sale. Though these principles, like 

 most legal principles, are true only within limits, there would 

 not seem much chance of conflict in their practical application 

 except between the first and last. In the first of the milk cases 

 (People v. Cipperly, 101 N. Y. 634, decided upon opinion of 

 Learned, P. J., in 37 Hun, 319) it was held that the statutory 

 declaration of what was wholesome milk was conclusive, and 

 the defendant was not allowed to show in defense that the 

 milk sold by him was in fact unadulterated and not unwhole- 

 some. The first oleomargarine case can be differentiated from 

 this on the ground that the statute forbade its sale as a sub- 

 stitute to take the place of butter and not as an unwholesome 

 article of food. Still that distinction is narrow and I imagine 

 that the sale and consumption of a well-known article of food 

 or a product conclusively shown to be wholesome could not be 

 forbidden by the Legislature even though it assumed to enact 

 the law in the interest of public health. The limits of the 

 police power must necessarily depend in many instances on the 

 common knowledge of the times. An enactment of a standard 

 of purity of an article of food, failing to comply with which the 

 sale of the article is illegal, to be valid must be within reason- 

 able limits and not of such a character as to practically pro- 

 hibit the manufacture or sale of that which as a matter of 

 common knowledge is good and wholesome. 



The statute before us cannot be justified as an exercise of 

 power to prevent fraud or imposition on buyers and the con- 



