164 OLEOMABGAKINE. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. They know what they are using? 



Mr. BLACKBURN. Certainly; the manager knows, but does the guest 

 who pays $5 a day for entertainment know? 



Mr. SPRINGER. They must have good oleomargarine when they 

 deceive the guests of a $5 a day hotel. 



Mr. BLACKBURN. It is good oleomargarine. I have no feeling against 

 their goods at all. That only illustrates the necessity for this kind of 

 legislation. 



I have studied this matter for four years. I went into it abso- 

 lutely without bias or prejudice. I do not now, and never did, own 

 a nickel's worth of interest in any dairy farm nor in any cow, nor 

 am I interested the other way in anything that goes into oleomargarine, 

 directly or indirectly. I have studied the matter for four years, and 

 it is my earnest conviction that it will require national legislation of a 

 very radical character to stamp the fraud out of the manufacture and 

 sale of oleomargarine, and I refer especially to the sale of oleomar- 

 garine, because the manufacturer produces oleomargarine as oleomar- 

 garine, and usually sells it to the jobber and agent and dealer for 

 precisely what it is. There is very little deception practiced at that 

 stage of the game. 



STATEMENT OF FRANCIS W. LESTRADE, OF NEW YORK CITY. 



Mr. LESTRADE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I 

 wish to state on the outstart that it is seldom I am called upon to speak 

 in public. 



The CHAIRMAN. You are interested in the manufacture, are you, or 

 are you acting as counsel ? 



Mr. LESTRADE. No; I was about to say that I am nothing more than 

 a practical everyday butter man. I have been in business for twenty 

 years, and what I say before you is entirely from a practical stand- 

 point, not a theoretical standpoint, and not from any scientific point 

 of view, but from what has come under my observation as a butter 

 man ever since I was a boy. 



I am a member of the firm of Lestrade Brothers, New York City. 

 I am an owner of and interested in dairy farms, both in the West and 

 in the East. I am also interested in cows. I am also interested in 

 three different creameries. I am also, and this is our chief business 

 in the city, an exporter, a packer of butter and cheese to the hot 

 countries as well as to the Continent, but mostly to the hot countries. 

 Our business extends over all the hot countries that is, the tropical 

 climates, consisting of the West Indies, the East Indies, South Africa, 

 China, South America, and even nowinco the Philippine Islands. 



So what I have to say is entirely in my own interest, and more par- 

 ticularly as an exporter of the genuine butter that goes out of this 

 country to foreign climates. 



In the few opening remarks that I have to make I may go over some 

 ground with which you are all more or less acquainted. I desire to 

 state to you maybe some of you do not know the fact that in this 

 country of ours there are, we will say, four classes of butter. The 

 first is the packing stock, or the original dairy butter. That is the 

 commonest butter that comes before us, as butter men. It is made by 

 the innumerable farms throughout the great West. We get very little 



