OLEOMARGARINE. 425 



he was agent for Armour & Co., and that his largest customer was one 

 of the most celebrated creameries at Elgin, 111. 



Secretary WILSON. Elgin butter is made all over the country. There 

 may be one scoundrel living at Elgin. 



Senator MONEY. I suppose there might be. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. I desire to ask you, Mr. Secretary, if I may, if 

 there is not quite a large amount of the best creamery butter that does 

 tin ally become rancid and poor? 



Secretary WILSON. If you do not take care of butter it will become 

 rancid. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. I am asking you if it is not a fact that a large 

 part of it does become in that condition? 



Secretary WILSON. Oh, no. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. So that there will always be quite a quantity of 

 butter to be renovated ? 



Secretary WILSON. No, sir. Fine butters are handled so as to be 

 kept in cold condition to prevent the development of bacteria until they 

 are sold. Now, let me illustrate that point. If you make butter this 

 morning and want it consumed this evening, you press a very little 

 buttermilk out, so as to leave the casein there in order to develop bac- 

 teria rapidly and bring up your flavor at once. If you are going to ship 

 it, so that it will not be consumed for a week, you must work it over 

 and get nearly all the buttermilk and casein out, because the casein is 

 the element in which the bacteria multiplies. If you send it from here 

 to Great Britain, you must work it twice over; and the habit in old 

 times with the Dutch women when they wanted to furnish butter for 

 the Dutch navy was to work it twelve times. They worked in those 

 days with their hands, and when they had worked it twelve times they 

 had all the casein washed out. Then they put it into a keg, put it in 

 the hold of a Dutch man-of-war, and it crossed the Tropics twice and 

 came back sweet, because all the opportunity for multiplying bacteria 

 had been taken out of that butter. That was the old way, and butter 

 is worked now so as to suit the times intervening when it will be 

 consumed. 



Mr. TiLLiNGrHAST. Then, you say by the improved methods of 

 handling butter in time the renovated butter will go out of existence? 



Secretary WILSON. I think so. We had a letter yesterday from the 

 Iowa Agricultural College in which they told me they had four stu- 

 dents there in the short course. Every year they turn out hundreds of 

 educated dairymen. Out in Nebraska there is a fine school doing that 

 very work ; and the time will come when you will not find a bit of 

 renovated butter in Iowa or Nebraska; and in Vermont and many other 

 dairy States I do not believe there is any now. 



Mr. SPRINGER. I see that in your statement, Mr. Secretary, you say 

 the domestic consumption of oleomargarine is in excess of 1 pound per 

 capita as against the estimated consumption of 18 J pounds of butter. 

 1 was mistaken about the amount. It is 18 pounds. Is 1 pound in 

 18 a serious competition? 



Secretary WILSON. Very serious. 



Senator DOLLIVER. I received a telegram from a cattle dealer in 

 Iowa stating that this bill was likely to very greatly damage the value 

 of beef cattle. 



Secretary WILSON. Yes j he does not know what he is talking about, 

 that same cattle dealer. 



Senator DOLLIVER. I would like a little fuller statement from you as 

 to the relation of the cattle industry and the dairy farm. 



