OLEOMARGARINE. 435 



Mr. ADAMS. And public morals ; yes, sir. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. And public safety? 



Mr. ADAMS. Yes, sir. 



Senator ALLEN. Grouped under those three heads are a great many 

 hundreds of thousands of things. - Anything that affects your health, 

 anything that affects the public morals, anything that affects your per- 

 sonal rights or the public rights, comes under the police power of the 

 State. 



Mr. ADAMS. That is true. 



Senator ALLEN. If this article is deleterious to health and that is 

 probably the claim is it not clearly within the plenary powers of the 

 State to dispose of the question and the duty of the courts of the State 

 to enforce that legislation ? 



Mr. ADAMS. Why, certainly ; but that is not the primary claim, Sen- 

 ator. The claim is made in these various States, in the 32 States which 

 have passed these laws, and the legislative judgment of those States 

 has been convinced, that the sale of colored oleomargarine deceives the 

 final purchaser, and they regard that practice as against public policy. 



Senator ALLEN. The only ground upon which the Congress of the 

 United States can interfere is to say that this article, which has an 

 interest in commerce, in trade, shall be labeled, or that trade shall be 

 conducted in a given way; that is, that it shall be sold white or sold 

 colored when shipped from one State to another as a part of interstate 

 commerce. But when the article passes one State line and into another 

 State, and becomes mingled with the commerce of that State, it falls 

 clearly under the police power of the State and the jurisdiction of Con- 

 gress ceases. 



Mr. ADAMS. What do I understand the Senator to wish me to say 

 with reference to that? A very amusing thing in a way to me has 

 appeared in this discussion. A gentleman representing friends of this 

 bill has insisted that there is some doubt as to whether the Plumley 

 decision gives the right to a State to deal with original packages in the 

 State, and other gentlemen on the other side have insisted that that 

 decision was reversed in the Schollenbarger case. 



Senator ALLEN. That was all settled in the case of Brown v. The 

 State of Maryland, away back pretty nearly a hundred years ago, 

 where Brown imported from Europe certain liquors. The question 

 was whether the revenue officers of the State could levy a tax upon 

 those liquors before they became mingled with the commerce of the 

 State. The Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Chief Justice 

 Marshall writing the opinion it is a very celebrated case and has always 

 been followed since then held that until it was mingled and became a 

 product of the commerce of the State the power of the United States 

 continued over it, but the moment the package was broken, the moment 

 it became mingled with the commerce of the State, the jurisdiction of 

 the General Government ceased and that of the State attached. 



Mr. ADAMS. But, Senator, in the Plumley case it was decided by the 

 court that the legislature of Massachusetts, prohibiting absolutely the 

 manufacture 



Senator ALLEN. Excuse me for interrupting you. I do not want to 

 interrupt you with a view to annoyance, but to make the suggestion 

 that the legal distinction between the jurisdiction of the State and the 

 jurisdiction of the United States is possibly well understood by the 

 committee. 



Mr. ADAMS. I understand that. Of course we must refer to the ques- 

 tion because our friends on the other side have made something of au 



