200 OLEOMARGARINE. 



to characterize the spirit of the advocates of the measure. This bill, 

 if it rests upon good legal foundation, must of necessity base its 

 strength upon the taxing power of Congress, an all-powerful weapon; 

 and it is confessedly, by its advocates and by its opponents, a bill 

 which will not raise a revenue, but which will destroy the revenue 

 which is now collected by the present tax on oleomargarine. There- 

 fore, we must say at once that the bill is not honest in raising revenue, 

 but really is an attempt under the guise of a revenue measure to do 

 that which it could not do directly. In other words, Congress could 

 not pass an act prohibiting the sale of colored oleomargarine. Its 

 police power would not extend to the States in that matter. The po- 

 lice power of the States, and they have almost sovereign power within 

 the limits of the State constitution and the Constitution of the United 

 States, is supposed to extend itself to those matters affecting the pub- 

 lic health, public morals, and public safety; and within those limits 

 the States have the right to legislate and do legislate, so that if any 

 State requires to pass a law against colored oleomargarine, it has been 

 decided, as you well know, that they have that power; and, indeed, 

 I am told that some thirty-two States have already passed laws against 

 the sale and manufacture, or against the sale, at least, if not the man- 

 ufacture, of colored oleomargarine, or oleomargarine made in sem- 

 blance of butter. 



So that the States having full power to pass those laws and having 

 the entire machinery of the States to enforce them may do so as they 

 please. They have no excuse whatever to come to Congress and ask 

 Congress to pass police regulations for the several States. The only 

 excuse that can possibly be offered in coming to Congress and asking 

 it through the guise of taxation to extend itself and pass police regula- 

 tions in the several States, is the cowardly confession that the laws of 

 those States are not enforced; that the laws against colored oleomar- 

 garine are violated in those States while those laws obtain; and they 

 would have just as good an excuse to come here to Congress and ask 

 Congress to pass some sort of legislation under some guise or other, 

 taxation or whatever you please, to enforce the laws against larceny or 

 adultery, or any one of the criminal code. 



Therefore, gentlemen, the proposition for you to extend the police 

 regulations of the United States to the several States is something which 

 you have not the constitutional or moral or historical right to do, if it 

 came in exactly that form. It must be done under the deception of a 

 revenue measure, and that is the way it is attempted to be done here. 

 What possible right, what possible reason can be suggested that you 

 shall impose upon the State of Rhode Island a police regulation which 

 it does not desire. The State of Rhode Island is quite well satisfied 

 with the enactments of its own legislature. It legislates concerning 

 this oleomargarine question just as it pleases, and it is quite satisfied 

 with that legislation. It looks with alarm, as every jurist and thought- 

 ful person must look, at the attempt on the part of Congress to extend 

 a police regulation into a State that is supposed to have had heretofore 

 the right to make its own police regulations. 



I am not attempting a constitutional argument. That can better be 

 made by those who are more qualified to make it than myself; but I 

 am enforcing that point, that Rhode Island, with other States, claims 

 the right. to exercise its own police powers, and that this is nothing 

 more than a police law. 



