The 



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OLEOMAEGAEINE. 261 



The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Just a moment, Mr. Schell. The charge, 

 as 1 understand it, is that you sell oleomargarine for butter. Is not 

 that the specific charge that is made? 



Mr. SCHELL. That is the specific charge; and yet the plaintiffs, as I 

 term them, in this case, have gone beyond the lines of legitimate inquiry 

 in making the case upon that question, and we feel entitled to make 

 some reference to the claims which they have adduced. 



On the question of the alleged injurious effects of this product, oleo- 

 margarine is, as I am advised, used in the majority of the National 

 Soldiers' Homes air over the country. There have been no complaints 

 from them. Gentlemen, the intelligence of the members of the Grand 

 Army of the Eepublic is such that if there were any question about it, 

 it would have been raised. These gentlemen come in here and with 

 their other accusations accuse the nation of feeding its old soldiers on 

 something that is absolutely injurious to health, if they seriously make 

 that claim, which 1 do not think they do. 



Mr. HOARD. Its use is forbidden in the old Soldiers' Home in Wis- 

 consin. 



Mr. MILLER. He refers to National Soldiers 7 Homes, Governor Hoard. 



Mr. HOARD. And protests have been raised there repeatedly. 



Mr. SCHELL. Now, Governor, I have said that you would have your 

 turn after a while. 



Gentlemen, these products are both butter, and nothing else; many 

 of us have had experience on the farm ; and in the country we have 

 heard the dairy product distinguished from the other butter used on 

 the table of the farmer by designating it u cow butter." We have eaten 

 on those same tables apple butter, peach butter, quince butter, and 

 pumpkin butter; and yet nobody disputes that they are butter. Oleo- 

 margarine butterine is butter. As a gentleman stated the other 

 day, it has been given the name of butterine legislatively. The pro- 

 ducers, the manufacturers of the product, have accepted that name. 

 We do not object. We are willing to be distinguished. As Commis- 

 sioner Wilson stated in his report, if the name could be branded on the 

 article it would be one of the best recommendations to the consumer 

 the article could have. The only difference is the way in which this 

 finished product is produced. Is flour any the less flour because, 

 instead of being turned into flour as it used to be by the different proc- 

 esses through which it used to have to go, it now goes through different 

 and improved processes? Formerly the grain was cut with the sickle, 

 thrashed out with flails on the barn floor (or by the stock, as the case 

 may be), put in a sack, thrown over a barebacked mule, and carried to 

 the mill by the farmer's boy, barefooted, and with the hair sticking 

 through the top of his straw hat, and then turned to flour by the old 

 process. Is it any the less flour because now the grain is reaped in the 

 most improved fashion, thrashed in a way that will save all the product, 

 and put through the latest improved processes, such as are used by 

 Pillsbury and others? None the less. And yet they are making this 

 distinction between butter and butterine. It is an unfair distinction; 

 and yet we accept it. We take the name " butterine," and ask 



Senator DOLLIVER. But the laws of the United States have distin- 

 guished between flour and mixed flour that is, flour whose chemical 

 properties are reenforced from the outside with cornstarch, and sand, 

 and things like that. 



Mr. SCHELL. That is an adulteration; and, gentlemen, I want to go 

 on record here, in the interests of all the people I represent, that any 

 law passed by the United States or by any State for the purpose of 



