126 OLEOMARGARINE. 



Take that into consideration, and then take into consideration the 

 fact that these people send out all over the country I will modify that 

 a little; I will say that they send into the State of New York, and 1 

 know whereof I talk agents who try to induce our people to enter into 

 the business of selling those goods; and we are told that they promise 

 to indemnify them against the State law. Mind you how I put it 

 that we are told by parties who have been approached that they 

 offered to indemnify them. When you think of that state of facts as 

 I have given it, can you listen with equanimity to the statements made 

 here that there is a demand for those goods ? There is no demand in 

 the State of New York for oleomargarine by any consumer. 



They talk about it as the poor man's goods, and yet not long since, 

 when the great strike was on in Pennsylvania, which we knew of 

 all over the country by the results it produced, the papers, looking 

 into the facts and trying to show how the poor man had to work prac- 

 tically for nothing $200 or $300 a year gave us a schedule of the 

 goods the laborers purchased and the prices paid, and the price for 

 oleomargarine on that list was 30 cents a pound; and there is not 

 a farmer in the United States who would not have been glad to 

 furnish butter all the year round for 25 cents. And yet they call it 

 the poor man's butter. The poor man in our State does not want it. 

 If he does, he wants it for what it is and at its true value. 



The great difficulty is they are imitating our goods. We have used, 

 or the butter people have used, that color so long that it has become a 

 trade-mark. If you are familiar at all with the fundamental principles 

 of the laws of trade-marks, you know, sirs, that when a man or a firm 

 has used for a given length of time, under certain conditions, a trade- 

 mark, others are estopped by the laws from trespassing upon it. Why 

 do they come and take our color and take our smell and take our taste 

 and put it in their goods and then come forward and sell them as our 

 goods, and yet come here and talk about healthful competition ? In 

 the way the oleomargarine business is carried on there is no competi- 

 tion at all. If I go into the open market to compete, I have to put my 

 goods up against yours and let the consumer know what he is buying. 

 When I put my goods in with yours and declare they are yours, you 

 can not call that competition. 



Let us see. I will go outside of the State of New York. Not long 

 ago I started from New York and I went to Fort Worth, Tex. In St. 

 Louis we stopped to get something to eat. We went to as good a res- 

 taurant as we could find. Mr. Kracke was with me. He is an expert 

 and can tell oleomargarine every time. I can not always do it. He 

 said to me, "That is oleomargarine." I said, " I want butter; not 

 oleomargarine." The waiter said, "That is butter." I said, "It -is 

 not butter." After a good deal of confab he came back and said it was 

 butter. I insisted that it was not; and by and by he came back and 

 said. "That is the only kind we have here; that is oleo." The same 

 thing happened to us on Pennsylvania avenue, in this city, with Mr. 

 Adams present. The same thing happened at the Worth House, the 

 best hotel, I understand, in the city of Fort Worth, Tex. These 

 people do not sell it for oleomargarine. Ninety-nine times out of a hun- 

 dred they sell it for butter. I do not mean the manufacturers. 1 

 mean when it gets down to the last parties from the last man to the 

 consumer. I know when you turn it out at your factories you turn it 

 out as a rule, though not always, as oleomargarine. You comply with 

 the letter of the law, but you make your goods in the best possible 



