112 OLEOMARGARINE. 



of the inventive Frenchman was seized and improved upon by the ever- 

 inventive Yankee. Our Patent Office has been besieged with app-ica- 

 tions for patents." 



After pointing out the various articles said to be used in the manu- 

 facture of oleomargarine, comprising 60 in all, Mr. Hopkins proceeded 

 as follows: 



"If these imitations of, and substitutes for, pure butter were marked 

 or labeled what they really are, and the dealers and consumers advised 

 of what they are purchasing and eating, no complaints would be made 

 by the dairymen." 



I am sorry that they have now departed from the doctrine Mr. Hop- 

 kins announced. 



Mr. FLANDERS. 1 announce that we have not. 1 will take that up 

 and show that we have not. 



Mr. SPRINGER. If you get up a bill providing in the most stringent 

 manner that the consumer shall be advised of what he is purchasing I 

 do not think any of the opponents of the bill will object to it. Mr. 

 Hopkins continued: 



" The great wrong is the fraud and deception practiced in selling 

 such loathsome compounds for genuine butter." * * "It is asserted 

 by the friends of these bogus substitutes for butter that they are 

 healthy. They are not. All kinds of filtlw fats are used in their man- 

 ufacture. Animals dying from all kinds of diseases are utilized, and 

 after going through their bleaching and deodorizing processes are man- 

 ufactured into oleomargarine and sold for pure butter." 

 "Gentlemen of rare scholarship and scientific attainments have given 

 this whole subject years of careful thought and study, and are unquali- 

 fied in their statements of its unwholesome and loathsome character. 

 Its consumption in their judgment leads to insanity, Bright's disease, 

 and many of the ailments that undermine the strongest and most robust 

 constitutions." 



He did not disclose the names of those u gentlemen of rare scholar- 

 ship and scientific attainments" who thus exposed oleomargarine. 

 They probably existed only in the minds of the butter manufacturers. 

 Before Mr. Hopkins closed he made it clear that his chief object in 

 favoring the antioleomargarine bill was to protect the working-man. 

 He said: 



"Has it come to this in America that the laboring man must live 

 upon adulterated food ? Must his wife and family use for pure butter 

 of our dairies an artificial butter, the compounds of diseased hogs and 

 dead dogs ? " 



Mr. Hatch, of Missouri, now deceased, was the author of the bill 

 and the champion of the cause of pure butter. He was very pro- 

 nounced in his views. He denounced oleomargarine as "the monu- 

 mental fraud of the nineteenth century," a sentiment which w;is 

 received in the House with "applause. " He was willing to admit that 

 the Chicago packers made the very best and purest oleomargarine that 

 is used in the United States. He added: 



u But that is not the danger. The danger is in the hundred and one 

 little dead-animal factories on the lines of the railroads, where they 

 buy broken-down, diseased, and dead animals from the railroads; these 

 little rendering establishments in out of the way towns and villages 

 that simply operate by purchasing the refuse and scrapings of the 

 butcher shops and making this oleo oil to be used in the manufacture 



