222 OLEOMAEGAEINE. 



Mr. JELKE. Do these sheets specify that you have calls for reno- 

 vated butter ? 



Mr. CLEAYER. Oh, we keep that, you understand. We keep that. 

 The question I refer to, you must understand, is this: " Have we had 

 calls for anything that we do not keep?" Now, we keep renovated 

 butter. 



Mr. KNIGHT. To what class of trade do you cater ? 



Mr. CLEAVER. I think I said that we are known as cut grocers, and 

 of course we reach the masses, those who want good goods for little 

 money. Of course our aim is all the time to improve our quality, but 

 we are known as cut grocers, and of course our customers want goods 

 cheap. I should suppose, therefore, that if these dear people who are 

 said to want oleo are anxious for it they certainly would come to us 

 for it. 



Mr. SPRINGER. You would not sell that which the law prohibits you 

 from selling? 



Mr. CLEAVER. Well, there is no way that they would know our rep- 

 utation in the pure-food line except by coming and finding out. We 

 do not publish to the world that we are strictly reliable and straight- 

 forward. They would have to find it out by coming and asking. 



Mr. SPRINGER. You doubtless have a good reputation in the com- 

 munity where you live ? 



Mr. CLEAVER. Well, we try to have. 



Mr. KAUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, the next gentleman will be E. D. 

 Edson, who is one of the largest wholesale butter dealers in the city 

 of Philadelphia. 



STATEMENT OF E. D. EDSON, OF PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



Mr. EDSON. Mr. Chairman, I can only indorse the sentiment that 

 has been expressed by those gentlemen that have preceded me. As a 

 business man and a butter dealer, I can but add to what they have 

 already stated, that in a business of eighteen years I have been in con- 

 stant touch with the creamery men, the dairymen, and the butter 

 makers throughout the East and the West, and right in touch with 

 the retail butter dealers, a great many of whom during the past sev- 

 eral years have sold oleomargarine. Recently a number of them have 

 gone out of the oleomargarine business, on account of the prosecutions 

 in Philadelphia. And in almost all cases, without any exceptions, 

 those men with whom I have discussed this oleo question have admitted 

 to me that they could not sell oleo unless they sold it as pure butter. 



Now, as a matter of business, if the public wanted oleo, every rep- 

 resentative butter house in Philadelphia would sell it to them if it could 

 handle it legally. I might venture to say that there is hardly a respect- 

 able commission butter house to-day in Philadelphia which would 

 entertain the idea of selling oleomargarine, because they all have the 

 knowledge before them that the} r can not sell it legally. That is, if 

 they were to sell it legally, they would have to sell it as oleomargarine, 

 and they know that they can not do that, and they also know that the 

 retail dealers to whom they would sell this oleomargarine would have 

 to sell it as butter in order to dispose of it. 



Now, in order to get at the marrow of this oleo business, just com- 

 pare the way the farmers or the butter makers dispose of their prod- 



