402 OLEOMAEGAE1NE. 



that is expressed or not, it is so plain that he who runs may read, and 

 the Congress of the United States is now asked to pass a law to suppress 

 and strike down an industry in which thousands on thousands of dol- 

 lars are invested and which is supporting thousands on thousands of 

 people, in respect of an industry which the highest court in the land has 

 set its approval upon as being wholesome and nutritious in its product. 



Suppose you call this a bill to raise revenue or to increase revenue. 

 It would not stand the scrutiny of a minute. Why? Because I would 

 send to the document room and bring you the pending bill to reduce 

 the revenue, because you have too much of it. I would call to your 

 attention the indubitable fact that if you want to collect revenue in the 

 face of what these gentlemen have told you here you are going to cut 

 off revenue instead of collecting it, because you are going to put a tax 

 on it so high that the manufacture will be stopped and your source of 

 supply will be stopped. 



I do not speak too strongly when I say that the object of this bill is 

 perfectly plain to any man who can use his eyes and will indulge in a 

 moment's reflection. It is not an honest bill in the sense that it means 

 what it appears to show upon its face that it is for the regulation of 

 an industry. It is intended to destroy an industry; and I ask you if 

 that be not so what is the meaning in this second section of this very 

 great discrimination between colored and uncolored oleomargarine. 



You are doing what? You are putting this tax on colored oleomar- 

 garine, if you do it, only in order that the butter industry may not be 

 trespassed upon. You are not doing it to collect revenues, because 

 the higher the revenue you exact the less of it you collect. You are 

 not doing it to prevent fraud, because the greater profit you hold out 

 to the man who commits fraud the more you tempt him to do it. 

 Tested from every moral point of view, the bill will not stand a 

 moment's scrutiny; and, as I have already said, this proviso that has 

 been put in here, "Provided, That nothing herein contained shall pre- 

 vent the prohibition of the sale of oleomargarine that is in a separate 

 and distinct form, and in such manner as will advise the consumer of 

 its real character, free from coloration or ingredient that causes it to 

 look like butter," enables the States, by implication, to forbid the manu- 

 facture of oleomargarine into which cotton-seed oil enters, because I 

 say this on my own responsibility, and as a fact when I was trying 

 these cases in western Pennsylvania I demonstrated to the jury and to 

 the court that the reason for the color in the product then under con- 

 sideration was the use of cotton-seed oil, and they put upon the stand 

 I can not give you the name, but I can furnish it the chemist of the 

 Western University of Pennsylvania, who, under niy cross-examina- 

 tion, admitted that to be true, that cotton-seed oil inevitably causes a 

 yellowish color to the product. 



If you pass this bill with that proviso, you destroy the manufacture 

 of oleomargarine with cotton-seed oil throughout the United States. 

 I know that by my own experience in trying these cases. It is a fact 

 that I have not seen adverted to in any statements that have been made 

 before either committee. 



Senator DOLLIVER. On the contrary, Mr. Davis, the statements have 

 been quite numerous here that the natural color of oleomargarine with 

 cotton-seed oil was not the color of butter, but a white color. 



Mr. DAVIS. I will tell you that the State chemist, whose name I can 

 furnish you, so stated under oath to me in the presence of that jury 

 and trial judge. 



Senator DOLLIVER. Then there has been a good deal of misinforma- 

 tion unloaded on us here. 



