OLEOMARGAEINE. 7 



uncolored article. It might be made still less, if the legislative power 

 thought best to do so, although I do not think it ought to be less, for 

 it ought to be large enough to cover the cost of policing the business. 

 Now, when it reduces the tax to the lowest possible limit, so that oleo 

 undisguised can go to the consumer at the cheapest possible price, who 

 can fairly say that this second section is intended to destiw the manu- 

 facture of oleomargarine? No, instead of destroying, it encourages 

 the manufacture of the honest article. All that it seeks to destroy is 

 the fraud that is perpetrated when it is colored like butter. 



It may stop its sale as butter and yet not go to the extent of pre- 

 venting its manufacture, as 1 will show you a little later. The profit 

 on the sale of 104,000,000 pounds of oleomargarine and a little more, 

 last year, fairly estimated, must have been anywhere from $13,000,000 

 to $15,000,000 thirteen to fifteen million dollars between the cost of 

 the article and the price paid by the consumer. 



Some oleomargarine friend present smiles I hear a smile but such 

 is the case, disguise the matter the best they can. But we will, to accom- 

 modate the gentleman's state of mind, call the profit $12,000,000, or any 

 large sum you please along there; it can not be less than that amount, 

 as it costs but 9 cents per pound, tax paid, and the consumer pays 

 anywhere from 18 to 30 cents per poun4 for it. Call it 22 cents, and 

 for 104,000,000 pounds it would amount to $22,880,000. Take from 

 this $9,360,000, cost of production, and you have left $13,520,000 

 profit. But call it $12,000,000 for safety, if you please. Remember 

 this stuff is sold as butter almost exclusively to the consumer; that is, 

 the consumer takes it supposing it is butter. The guest at table eats 

 it and pays his $5 a day to the hotel. It passes with him as butter and 

 he pays the price of butter. The same is true at the restaurant and 

 the boarding house. And the retailer everywhere sells it as butter and 

 for the price of butter. 



Senator ALLEN. Is not that a subject of police regulation in the 

 State? 



Mr. GROUT. Yes; but we have got a regulation here in this second 

 section which transcends police regulations, and, if the Senator will 

 allow me a moment, I will make it plain to him. 



Senator ALLEN. Can you do that? 



Mr. GROUT. Oh, yes, sir, in the way we propose to do it here, as I 

 believe. 



Here are the large profits of which I have spoken. 1 might go more 

 into details, but I feel that I must not detain the committee. I intended 

 to be very brief when I began, and I will now be as brief as possible. 

 The profits are what I have indicated, twelve or thirteen million dollars 

 annually. If you put a 10-cent tax on 104,000,000 pounds of oleo- 

 margarine, that will make $10,400,000 the manufacturer would have 

 to pay before he could put the stuff afloat. And this would so reduce 

 the profits that it would take away the inducement to enter into the 

 fraudulent practices now resorted to to work it off as butter. It would 

 reduce the profits $10,400,000. 



If it be true, however, as the oleomargarine crowd claim, that 

 people really prefer oleomargarine to butter and they desire to have 

 it colored, that large numbers of the middle class of people prefer it 

 to butter that is the way one circular puts it if that be true, it can 

 be colored and sold to those people for oleomargarine at just about 

 the price it is fraudulently sold now for butter; so they can have it at 



