210 OLEOMARGARINE. 



sen ted their goods, put them before the people, and they have said to 

 the people, ""Here, try these goods; take them home. Take them to 

 your wife. Don't tell her it is butter, but tell her it is butterine. 

 Make an honest, fair test of it." That is the way the oleomargarine 

 dealers have tried to introduce their product. It is the way they have 

 introduced it, and it is because the} 7 have introduced it in that open, 

 straightforward manner that it has grown in favor throughout the 

 United States. And 1 say because it has grown in favor it must be an 

 article which the people desire, and one which scientists, doctors, and 

 chemists have indorsed and will indorse, whatever may be said to the 

 contrary by anyone who has not made that investigation which it is 

 necessary to make to find out whether it is an article that is really 

 deleterious to health. 



Why, gentlemen, while I am on this point I want to call your atten- 

 tion to an advertisement that I have seen I think a thousand times. It 

 is very short, and I will read it: 



"Have you ever seen any butterine? Did you ever try it on your 

 table or for cooking ? If not, we ask you to do so. Try it. Take home 

 a pound. Don't tell your family it is butter. Tell them it is butterine. 

 Show it to your family physician. Ask his opinion about it. All we 

 ask is a fair show, and the truth." 



That is all, so far as the oleomargarine industry is carried on in Rhode 

 Island, at least, and in the East, that the oleo dealers have done. They 

 have tried to put their product on the market honestly and fairly. 

 They want people to use it for what it is, and for nothing more than 

 what it is; and I tell you when people come here and say they must 

 have a law which will tax that product at 10 cents a pound because it 

 is sold for butter, and because no law can be framed, as they say, that 

 will prevent its being sold they asked this law to be passed because 

 they say no law can be framed whereby it will be sold for what it is 

 except this taxation law you know, as intelligent men, that that can 

 not be the fact, and that that can not be true. Frame a law, if you 

 please, and no one will take any exception, no matter how strenuous 

 you make it, no matter how many safeguards you may put around it. 

 You may say that every pound of it shall be put in a piece of paper of 

 a certain color; that it shall have all the printing on it that is necessary 

 to inform everyone as to its contents; and that it shall only be sold in 

 that original package. Now, if they are honest, if they mean what 

 they say, what objection would there be to such a law as that? They 

 tell you, gentlemen, and they have told me, that they only care to stop 

 the sale of oleomargarine as butter. If so, gentlemen, it can be 

 arranged so that it can not be sold for anything except oleo, by the 

 proper law. 



Senator DOLLIVER. I have often wondered where the swindle comes 

 in. There have been prosecutions in this city of grocers for selling 

 oleomargarine for butter, and some of the grocers claimed that they 

 were swindled in buying it. The public has claimed that they were 

 swindled in buying it; and you seem to have laid it off on the man 

 who takes it home and swindles his wife with it. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. I would sa} 7 that that undoubtedly has happened, 

 that men have taken it home to their wives and have not told them 

 anything about it. 1 have heard of many such cases, and I have no 

 doubt you have. As a matter of fact, I can not see how the retail 

 dealer can be deceived, because he buys necessarily in the original 



