OLEOMARGARINE. 203 



he did get; in other words, if they had bought the farmer's product 

 instead of oleo, figuring that as 16 cents a pound, the farmer would 

 have received $4,000,000 or the farmers would have received it as a 

 class, as a whole $2,500,000 more than they did receive when they 

 bought oleo instead of butter. What percentage of profit would that 

 figure to the farmer? The profit is there, because the farmer only lost 

 his profit. He could not receive the $2,500,000 for his butter without 

 giving up something for it. He would have to give up labor; he would 

 have to give up cows; he would have to give up everything that went 

 into the cost of the butter; and I am told here by farmers that with 

 butter at 16 cents a pound the profit is not anything; but assuming the 

 profit to be at least a cent a pound, or 5 per cent, which the wholesale 

 dealer tries to make, then the profit which the farmer lost would be 

 exactly $500,000 the farmers as a class. 



If we speak of the farmers as a class, that is what they would have 

 lost, $500,000; and if the estimate is correct, that there are 5,000,000 

 farmers in the United States, the loss to each farmer would be exactly 

 10 cents, and no more. But it is not right to speak of farmers as a 

 class and say that they lost it, because we are only a part of this great 

 community of 75,000,000 people, and instead of the farmers getting it 

 it went elsewhere, perhaps into channels as meritorious as the farmers 

 themselves. It is sometimes wrong, it seems to me, to speak of farm- 

 ers as a class. The farmer of to-day becomes, perhaps, the mechanic 

 of to-morrow, or becomes the teacher or the legislator. His daughters 

 and his sons become teachers and professors and lawyers, so that it is 

 not quite correct to single out a certain class and say that class is entitled 

 to so much money. It is simply a part of one growing unit. 



So that the loss to the farmer was not more than 10 cents apiece 

 throughout the United States, what possible reason is there, gentle- 

 men, for their coming here to Congress to make the howl about this 

 bill that they are making ? What possible benefit would it be to the 

 farmer over and above that small amount to have this amount of oleo 

 which is sold for butter admitting that there was so much sold for 

 butter taken out of the market and butter supplied in its place ? You 

 understand, gentlemen, that if these people are honest in their conten- 

 tions they mean simply this: They say they have no objection to the sale 

 of oleo so long as it is sold for what it is; that they have no objection to 

 selling oleo, whether colored or uncolored, if it can be sold for what it 

 is. They simply tell you, gentlemen, that it can not and never will be 

 sold for what it is unless it is so made that it can not be sold for butter, 

 so that nobody can be deceived. 



Now, gentlemen, it seems to me that the ingenuity of a legislature, 

 it seems to me that anybody with ordinary capacity, could so frame a 

 law and enforce it that oleo must be sold for what it is, whether it is 

 colored or uncolored. It strikes me that if we had a law providing 

 that the packages themselves must be so done up in certain paper, so 

 marked, so branded, as to make it distinguishable, and then if we had 

 a regulation that it should only be sold in those original packages from 

 the factory, nobody could ever be deceived as to what they were 

 buying. 



Now, if you tell me that even then the deception would be continued, 

 because a man would buy it and take it home to his wife and deceive 

 his wife and his children in putting it on the table and telling his wife 

 he was buying butter, I submit to you, gentlemen, that if you attempt 



