382 OLEOMARGARINE. 



of Charles the Second, and the King and council were petitioned to 

 decree that no public coach should be permitted to have more than 

 four horses, to start oftener than once a week, nor to go more than 30 

 miles a day. Macaulay's comments on this historical record reads 

 like prophesy. We smile at these things he said and predicted. It is 

 not impossible that our descendants when they read of the hostility 

 offered by cupidity and prejudice to the improvements of the nineteenth 

 century may smile in their turn. 



At the outset let me make myself thoroughly understood on one 

 point, and that is, I am not here to try in any way to discourage legiti- 

 mate legislation nor any legislation that will result in the identification 

 to the consumer of oleomargarine as oleomargarine. Such legislation 

 will have my hearty approval and moral support. But with great 

 emphasis I object to class legislation, or legislation on any subject that 

 favors one individual at the expense of another. If the Grout bill, 

 which I am here to oppose, becomes a law, the result will be the abso- 

 lute annihilation of a legitimate industry. The object of this bill is to 

 prohibit and exterminate the sale of oleomargarine, and not to regulate 

 it. A tax of 10 cents per pound would place oleomargarine at an aver- 

 age price per pound over that of the best creamery butter for six 

 months in every year. The Grout bill is urged by its friends as a pro- 

 tection to the dairy interests. It has not been shown that it is for the 

 benefit of the large consuming class of the country, nor what is expe- 

 dient, nor what is wise in the way of legislation to protect the interests 

 ot the large majority of the people living under the protection of the 

 Constitution of the United States. The reduction of tax on uncoloi ed 

 oleomargarine is only a subterfuge, the framers of the bill knowing in 

 their hearts that such a product can not be sold. The guise under 

 which it attacks the oleomargarine interest is that of fraud, and I am 

 opposed to fraud in every shape whatever. But because one individual 

 may prefer his butter white and another prefer his butter yellow it 

 does not mean that the one who prefers the yellow butter is defrauded 

 when his taste is catered to in something that his sight makes palatable 

 in his eyes. 



Nothing can be pleasing to the palate and satisfactory to the digest- 

 ive organs that is not first good to look upon. Nature has provided 

 harmless coloring matters for this purpose, and, by universal custom, it 

 has been deemed desirable to have a generally yellow tint to butter. 

 Oleomargarine, which in foreign countries is abbreviated to the word 

 u margarine" (and which I believe would be well for this committee to 

 consider in any legislation that might occur, inasmuch as the word " oleo- 

 margarine" has thirteen letters and superstitious people believe that 

 is the one hodoo that has followed this business thus far), is a natural, 

 wholesome, and economical substitute for butter in every sense. I do 

 not believe that a single member of this honorable committee believes 

 that oleomargarine is more or less wholesome with or without an infin- 

 itesimal amount of coloring matter, such as is used by the manufac- 

 turers of butter, nor that any single ingredient that enters into the 

 production of oleomargarine is more or less wholesome than butter, 

 and particularly to what is the average quality of commercial butter. 

 It has been urged that the price of butter has been kept down by the 

 production and sale of oleomargarine. Is that a hardship to the wage 

 earner and the consumer who, in the colder sections of the United 

 States, require a fatty, heat-producing food? 



In the far North of this continent the Eskimo consumes whale 

 blubber and tallow for the purpose of maintaining a warmth in their 



