392 OLEOMARGARINE. 



STATEMENT OF ME. HENRY E. DAVIS. 



Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I would 

 not have troubled you with appearing before you were it not that my 

 relation to this question is peculiar, growing out of the fact that 1 rep- 

 resent the only concern engaged in this industry or interested in it over 

 which the Congress of the United States has direct and exclusive juris- 

 diction. There is no oleomargarine factory in any Territory of the United 

 States. There is an oleomargarine factory in process of erection here 

 by the Standard Butterine Company, which is a company organized 

 with a capital of $1,000,000 and which has started the erection of a 

 building to cost $300,000, which, if it goes into operation, will employ 

 several hundred persons, who it is estimated will have depending upon 

 them, including themselves, a population of 1,500 people right in the 

 District of Columbia, within the shadow of this Capitol almost within 

 the shadow, and surely within sight of the Capitol. 



In presenting the interests of this concern to your attention, it will 

 of course be necessary for me to say something a little outside of the 

 special establishment itself, but I have read with a great deal of care 

 and interest the entire proceedings before the House Committee on 

 Agriculture, and I have also read so much of the proceedings before 

 this committee as have been accessible to me, including the very able 

 and thorough argument of Judge Springer. As a result, I will spare 

 the committee a great deal that I had intended to say, because the 

 ground has been to an extent occupied before me. But there are cer- 

 tain considerations that I have failed to observe as having been brought 

 to the attention of the committee, and it is to get these before the com- 

 mittee principally that I have asked this privilege. 



This bill, as you know quite by heart, is entitled "A bill to make 

 oleomargarine and other imitation dairy products subject to the laws 

 of the State or Territory in which they are transported, and to change 

 the tax on oleomargarine." 



The first section of the bill provides that when oleomargarine or any 

 similar product shall arrive in a State from another it shall be subject 

 to the police power of the State in which it arrives, just as any other 

 similar product within the State itself, with a proviso, to the pecul- 

 iarity of which I wish to ask your attention 



that nothing in this act shall be construed to permit any State to forbid the manu- 

 facture or sale of oleomargarine in a separate and distinct form and in such manner 

 as will apprise the consumer of its real character, free from coloration or ingredi- 

 ent that causes it to look like butter. 



I shall presently call your attention to the fact that that proviso by 

 implication authorizes every State in this Union to forbid the sale of 

 colored oleomargarine, even though the color be due to an ingredient 

 of the oleomargarine, which in the case of cotton-seed oil is unavoida- 

 ble. The next section of the act simply provides for a change in the 

 tax as to oleomargarine, making it one-fourth of a cent per pound when 

 the same is not colored, and when it is colored then it is to pay 10 cents. 



I submit, gentlemen, that the first section of this bill can not be 

 defended upon the ground that it intends to submit oleomargarine to 

 the taxing powers of the States for revenue purposes, for it is not open 

 to argument that a State has such power as to an article of interstate 

 commerce. The only taxing power which a State has as to such arti- 

 cles that is, articles of interstate commerce is to make laws impos- 

 ing taxes to the extent of what may be absolutely necessary for 

 executing its inspection laws; and even as to those, the net profits of 



