284 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



HIGH PRICE OF BUTTKR FIXED BY THE MAKERS. 



Creamery butter is now too high priced for poor people, and the laws of New York 

 State forbid the sale of oleomargarine and butterine, thus depriving the public of a valu- 

 able food product, and compelling those who can afford to use butter to pay an exorbitant 

 price for it. 



This is thrown into create the impression that the National oleomargarine 

 law is responsible largely for the fact that those children have to go to school 

 breakfastless, because butter is so high the children can not have any break- 

 fast. 



Indeed, as Mr. Shilling said a while ago, the butter industry is the only 

 industry where supply and demand has anything to do with fixing the price. 

 It is refreshing for me to read that the high price of butter is fixed by the 

 makers, as stated by oleomargarine campaign document. 



There was a misstatement in saying that the State of New York forbid 

 the sale of oleomargarine, and they knew that the laws of the State of New 

 York did not forbid the sale of oleomargarine if not colored in imitation of 

 butter. 



Then they go on and quote from Prof. Chas. F. Chandler, of Columbia col- 

 lege, of New York, as saying: "Not a single chemist of standing in the pro- 

 fession has uttered a word against artificial butter. All the great chemists of 

 this country and Europe have pronounced in its favor. I regard it as a most 

 valuable article of food and consider it entirely unexceptional in every re- 

 spect." Well the other fellows have more money than we have to get 

 utterances from those chemists, who are like lawyers and say what they are 

 paid for, consequently there is not a great deal of evidence from chemists 

 on our side, although we have some. 



EXTRACT FROM THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 



Any person manufacturing, selling, offering or exposing for sale any commodity or 

 substance in imitation or semblance of butter, the product of the dairy, shall be deemed 

 guilty of a violation of the agricultural law, whether he sells such commodity or substance 

 as butter, oleomargarine or under any other name or designation whatever, and irre- 

 spective of any representation he may make relative to such commodity or substance. 



In the abstract that looks pretty severe. As a matter of fact, it only 

 means that he is not allowed to sell or have for sale oleomargarine manu- 

 factured in semblance of butter, colored to look like butter, so people can 

 not tell them apart, and he can not make the excuse and say he is selliag is 

 as oleomargarine, because we know that a man getting oleomargarine that 

 looks like butter five times he may sell it as oleomargarine and five times at 

 butter. If he were allowed to have it at all, we know that in five cases out 

 of ten he would sell it for butter. 



Then there is an extract from the United States internal revenue law. 

 This extract is from section 8 of the new law, which says: 



Upon oleomargarine which shall be colored to cause it to look like butter, of any 

 shade of yellow there shall be assessed and collected a tax of ten cents per pound. 



Butter sells in Europe at eight cents per po,ind less than here. I presume 

 that it is a crime for the buttermaker to get a little more in the United 

 States for his butter than in Europe, which has the advantage of all the 

 cheap labor of the continent. We are to pay a high tariff tax on all kinds 

 of imported goods, wearing apparel, and everything else, as the system of 

 the Government is based on high tariff and in the eyes of the oleomargarine 



