OLEOMARGARINE. 33 



it, you should adopt the suggestion which has been made and put the 

 tax so high that it can not be sold at all to an}^body. 



Senator HANSBROUGH. If there were no State or national law on the 

 subject, would the manufacturers of oleomargarine seek to color their 

 product ? 



Mr. GARDNER. If there were no State law? 



Senator HANSBROUGH. Yes. You complain of the existence of State 

 laws. 



Mr. GARDNER. I do complain of the existence of State laws, not of 

 the existence of national laws. 



Senator HANSBROUGH. You say that is the way to get rid of the 

 fraud? 



Mr. GARDNER. Yes; to repeal the State laws which say that colored 

 oleomargarine shall not be sold as oleomargarine. 



Senator HANSBROUGH. And to have no laws whatever? 



Mr. GARDNER. I beg your pardon; I do not wish to have no laws 

 whatever. I say, have the most stringent possible laws to provide 

 that it shall be sold simply as oleomargarine and as nothing else. 

 Have the most stringent laws possible, but no laws forbidding the 

 sale of colored oleomargarine. The United States law to-day is strin- 

 gent. Every manufacturer is glad that it is stringent. Every manu- 

 facturer would like to have it made more stringent in the direction of 

 securing the sale of this article simply for what it is. 



Senator HANSBROUGH. If denied the privilege of coloring the 

 product, would the volume of the product diminish? 



Mr. GARDNER. It would diminish, absolutely. There would not be 

 any sold at all, in my judgment. 



Senator HANSBROUGH. Would that be the case with butter, if there 

 should be a law enacted that butter must not be colored? 



Mr. GARDNER. If people could not get any yellow substance to eat 

 on their bread they would take white, undoubtedly; but as long as there 

 is a yellow substance on the market, as I will argue to the committee 

 in a few minutes, people will not take white. 



Now, the next reason advanced why this legislation ought to be 

 enacted is that yellow is what is called the butter trade-mark. That 

 phrase was used by the advocates of this bill in the House. It was 

 said that butter has some sort of a trade-mark or copyright upon the 

 color yellow. That matter has been hashed out at great length, and it 

 is not necessary for me to go into it in detail very much; but I do want 

 to call the attention of the committee to these considerations. 



It has already, 1 think, sufficiently appeared by the admissions of 

 the author of the bill made here yesterday that there is no such thing 

 as a uniform butter color. The color of natural butter, the color of 

 butter before coloring matter is artificially applied to it, varies with 

 every change of circumstance. It varies at different seasons of the 

 year. It varies in different places. It varies at different times. It 

 varies in accordance with the way in which the animal from which the 

 base of the product comes is fed and cared for. There is no such thing; 

 no tint can be pointed at or referred to as the tint of butter. 



Ordinary butter butter the year round, butter under the usual cir- 

 cumstances of its manufacture is nearly white. It is slightly off the 

 color of white, with a slight yellow tinge. Even before the invention 

 of the great creameries, and before the use of the substance which has 

 now been adopted for coloring it, butter has always been artificially 



S. Rep. 2043 3 



