302 OLEOMARGARINE. 



I aim to stop at the best hotels, or at least the highest priced. My 

 clients pay the bills, and I have no object in going anywhere else. In 

 New York I stop at the Waldorf-Astoria, and I know their butter is 

 fine butter, creamery butter, but it is colored artificially. On my last 

 trip here before the holidays I stopped at the Arlington. There we 

 had butter artificially colored. I am stopping now at the Shoreham, 

 where I get butter artificially colored highly colored. And that has 

 been my universal experience in all the cities which I have visited. m 



Now, this is my conclusion on this phase of the subject: No factory, 

 through me, or in any case in which I was engaged, or with which I 

 was connected, has ever paid a fine, or defended a dealer for selling 

 oleomargarine for butter. And I want to say that as far as 1 know 

 (and I am in position to know pretty accurately) there is not a factory 

 in existence which defends the dealers for selling oleomargarine for 

 butter, assertions of the friends of the bill to the contrary notwith- 

 standing. They do not show any instances ; and I defy them to show 

 any instance where it has been done. 



The factory says to the dealer, " If you break the law you must pay 

 the penalty. If the violation is mine, through use of color or in any 

 other way my fault, then I will hold you harmless. I do not answer 

 for you, but I answer for myself." And what else could the factories 

 do? I do not know that they all do that; but my people do it. If they 

 break the law they pay the penalty. 



The Ohio laws are all right, except the color clause, and the one as 

 to informing the purchaser. The latter I think is idiotic the " inform 

 the purchaser " part, flaunting in a purchaser's face the suggestion, 

 " You are too poor to buy butter; consequently you have got to take 

 something that is less costly." 



The color clause is unjust; and with these exceptions, I say, gentle- 

 men, the laws are obeyed and are enforced. I think the Department 

 misses but few dealers who are guilty of any actual fraud, and it 

 sometimes arrests the innocent. I have known that to be the case. I 

 admit that the color laws are hard to enforce. In a case recently tried 

 by a justice without a jury in Cincinnati, he found the defendant 

 guilty, but is said to have remarked that he considered it an unjust 

 law, but could not overrule the supreme court of the State of Ohio. 

 But they say they do not want a color prohibition. They merely want 

 us to u shinny on our own side," so to speak. If so, where is the hard- 

 ship of nonenforcernent of the color law, so long as the oleo-for-butter 

 laws are enforced ? 



So much, gentlemen, for their alleged purpose in this bill. The bill, 

 like oleomargarine, like butter, is permeated through and through with 

 the false color; and then they cover it up on the outside with a coat of 

 shellac. If the purpose is what we belive the actual purpose to be, to 

 destroy the production of colored oleomargarine, why not say so? 

 Why are they not honest about it? Why are they not fair? 



How much better are they, when they come here asking you to pass 

 a bill under a false name a bill which is not what it purports to be, a 

 bill which they concede could never stand a constitutional test for a 

 minute except under false colors than the man who sells oleomarga- 

 rine for butter for the purpose of defrauding his customers? And how 

 infinitely worse are they than the man guilty of a mere innocent decep- 

 tion, not deception at all, but an innocent sale where he knows that 

 the purchaser wants oleomargarine, although he says butter in order 

 to conceal his poverty from bystanders. 



Let them name the bill properly. Let it stand for what it is. Do 



