420 OLEOMAKGABINE. 



Senator MONEY. I never know that I have got the genuine article 

 except when I go home. 



Secretary WILSON. After living a winter in Washington and eating 

 bogus butter our taste becomes vitiated. Some of the first-class hotels 

 and first-class restaurants here do get first-class butter from reputable 

 dealers, but the majority of them use oleomargarine. 



Senator MONEY. If we are all eating bogus butter and we can not tell 

 it by the taste and we can not tell it by the color and we can not tell it 

 by the effect, what harm has happened to anybody? 



Secretary WILSON. The bogus butter deceives you in your pocket- 

 book. It costs you far more than it should. There is where the trouble 

 comes. It costs you too much. 



Senator MONEY. Would I get the fine-grade butter any cheaper if we 

 abolish oleomargarine? 



Secretary WILSON. If you abolish the coloring proposition. I would 

 not abolish oleomargarine. The manufacture of that is legitimate, but 

 the moment you buy it you are deceived by somebody. We are not 

 the men who select the butter that we eat if we board at a hotel or 

 boardinghouse, and the boarding-house man can deceive us and he does. 



Senator MONEY. I am afraid he does sometimes, and I am also afraid 

 we are deceived in a great many other things. I think in the bread 

 we eat we get a fair amount of terra alba. 



Secretary WILSON. That may be, but we are dealing with butter 

 just now. 



Senator MONEY. I know, but there is not a solitary thing we eat or 

 drink, including the whisky that some of us drink I do not that is 

 not poisoned in some way. We get cabbage leaves in bright wrappers 

 for cigars; and a young man traveling on the train with me, who intro 

 duced himself to me last March, said that in a great manufacturing 

 establishment in Cleveland, Ohio, manufacturing all kinds of table 

 delicacies pickles, marmalades, flavoring extracts, etc. there was only 

 one genuine thing in the whole line that could not be imitated, and 

 they had been trying to imitate that. 



Secretary WILSON. If the commerce among the States regarding 

 foods is not regulated, we will become like some nations in Europe by 

 and by. We will be unable to reproduce ourselves. 



Senator MONEY. The next thing we know we will not be able to eat 

 anything without getting sick from it. 



Secretary WILSON. That is not the proposition, Senator Money. It 

 is illustrated by a story in one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, where a 

 fellow built a castle on an island in the middle of a lake. Everybody 

 said that the man that built that castle was a thief in his heart. The 

 man who manufactures oleomargarine and colors it intends to deceive. 



Senator MONEY. What about the man who colors the poor butter; 

 is he a thief also ? 



Secretary WILSON. The renovated butter is as much of a swindle 

 as oleomargarine. 



Senator MONEY. What about the butter man that takes the color 

 that is used in oleomargarine and puts it in his butter, high grade or 

 low grade? 



Secretary WILSON. I can not admit your premises there. 



Senator MONEY. That is what I am told. 



Secretary WILSON. The cow made yellow butter before chemistry 

 was discovered. 



Senator MONEY. I know that some cows do. 



Secretary WILSON. All cows do. 



