OLEOMAKGAKiNE. 179 



garine, let us fight them with their own weapons. Let us make more 

 butter. Let us make bettei butter. Let us make more creamery butter 

 and fight them that way. . We have got a wide margin yet. We have 

 got a good profit yet in butter. There is no danger of oleomargarine, 

 as one gentleman said this morning, wiping out the butter industry. 

 It has not wiped out the butter industry. Oleomargarine has been 

 advancing year after year in quantity, and butter has been advancing 

 year after year in quantity and going up in price, and there has been 

 a better profit year after year. Consequently there is no danger in 

 that way. So, if you want to do anything, if you want to go to an 

 extreme, why not propose to you gentlemen down here in Washington 

 to take the 2-cent tax on oleomargarine there is a good deal of talk 

 about subsidies just now and give that 2-cent tax as a subsidy to the 

 farmers to make better butter and fight oleomargarine in that way, 

 the same as England did with Australia. The dairymen down in Aus- 

 tralia made nothing but the same kind of truck which we were making 

 before oleomargarine came into the country. It was so bad that it 

 was damped in the sea when it arrived in England; and England 

 offered a subsidy. 



Mr. HOARD. Did England offer the subsidy or did Australia offer it? 



Mr. LESTRADE. England. Australia is a colony of England. 



Mr. HOARD. I know that, but did England offer the subsidy? 



Mr. LESTRADE. What difference does it make ? 



Mr. HOARD. It makes a great deal of difference. One is a colonial 

 subsidy and the other is a general subsidy. This was a colonial subsidy. 



Mr. LESTRADE. I do not think it is a matter of argument. It makes no 

 difference whether the colonial government offered it or whether Eng- 

 land offered it. There was a subsidy offered to Australia for a better 

 grade of butter. If it came up to a certain test they were to receive 

 a certain percentage. I do not recall it now, but possibly, we will say, 

 a shilling on so many pounds. To-day the quantity of butter has 

 advanced from 250,000 pounds a year to two or three or four million 

 pounds a year, and they are putting as fine a piece of creamery butter 

 into England as you want to see. That was done by subsidy. I say 

 to the farmer and I say to Congress, if you want to do something for the 

 farmers, give them 2 cents as a subsidy and fight the oleomargarine, so 

 that we will make a better creamery. 



In talking to some of the gentlemen connected with the dairy asso- 

 cation I have said to them, "As a matter of fact, you and I know that 

 oleo is not hurting butter in this country." They said, "Well, we are 

 going to wipe it out. It has got to be wiped out." Then I used the 

 arguments that I have used to you. I told them my position per- 

 sonally that cheap butter was getting to that price that very soon if 

 it kept on I could not ship it; that all our export would stop. They 

 had no answer to that except to say, " Well, we are going to wipe out 

 oleo if we can." I said, "All right; it will give a chance to you fellows 

 who have a lot of money to go ahead and speculate." They said, 

 ' ' That may be. We won't make money on the other side of the grave. " 

 I said, "That will be benefiting the few at the expense of the dairy 

 interests again, and they will be the losers." I am trying now to 

 interest a certain number of farmers up in Massachusetts to buy cer- 

 tain lands that I know of where there is good cold water and endeavor 

 to make a cooperative society there for the making of fancy creameries 

 by the Danish process, 



