OLEOMARGARINE. 43 



Mr. GARDNER. Butter and milk do tinge oleomargarine. Cotton- 

 seed oil does tinge oleomargarine. Therefore, if cotton-seed oil is 

 allowed to enter into it the State can pass a law which forbids the 

 manufacture and sale of oleomargarine at all. 



Gentlemen, 1 ought to have concluded long ago. I should have done 

 so if it had not been for these interruptions, which I have been very 

 glad to answer as far as I can. In concluding, I should like to ask 

 you to forget all these questions of expediency. I should like to ask 

 you to forget that there are 5,000,000 people who are mistakenly call- 

 ing for the passage of this legislation, 5,000,000 people who, during 

 the pendency of these different bills, have been told for the last six 

 years that everything that is unsatisfactory in their condition is due 

 to oleomargarine, people whose condition can not be benefited at all 

 by the passage of this act, but people who believe that it can. 



I should like to ask you to forget that those people are demanding 

 it. 1 should like to ask you to forget also that the people whose 

 circumstances are to be injuriously affected by the passage of the act 

 are protesting against it, and I should like to ask you to go back and 

 simply and absolutely consider nothing else but the principle upon 

 which this act is based, which we considered yesterday, that it is an 

 act which pretends to be a revenue act; that as a revenue act under 

 the Constitution of the United States you have a right to pass it; that 

 as a revenue act, unless the real purpose of it appears too grossly upon 

 the face of the act itself, the Supreme Court of the United States would 

 perhaps uphold it; but that it is not a revenue act; that every gen- 

 tleman who appears here in advocacy of it says that the revenue which 

 it is calculated to produce is not entitled to any consideration, but that 

 it is an act simply and solely to affect competition between two legiti- 

 mate articles of manufacture and trade. That is avowed by everyone. 

 As such an act, as an act with that purpose, it is an act which those 

 who regard the Constitution of the United States as sacred would not 

 be induced to pass by any considerations of expediency or by any 

 demands of selfish private interests. 



The Supreme Court may say,- as they have said before, that they 

 can not impugn the motives, purposes, or intentions of the legislative 

 branch of the Government. But no less than the members of the 

 Supreme Court have the members of Congress taken an oath to uphold 

 the Constitution of the United States, and the members of Congress 

 to-day who are authorized by the Constitution of the United States to 

 levy taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the United States 

 and providing for the maintenance of the General Government know 

 in their own consciences that they have no right to levy a tax for the 

 purpose of regulating competition between different industries. Gen- 

 tlemen, it does seem to me (I can not throw it away or get it out of 

 my mind) that the Congress of the United States is asked absolutely 

 to disregard the highest obligation which they have assumed. 



I appear here to-day as an advocate. I appear as an attorney. I 

 ask no more belief in my statements, no more consideration for my 

 argument, than is due to the statements and the argument of a paid 

 attorney. But to-day, as I contemplate the possible results of this 

 act, as I see the possibility of any class of our citizens or persons 

 engaged in any kind of trade who believe that their interests in that 

 trade may be injuriously affected by some new rival coming time and 

 time again to the Congress of the United States and asking that that 



