436 OLEOMARGARINE. 



argument here ; but I am perfectly willing to leave that question with 

 the gentlemen of the committee. 



Senator ALLEN. You must not construe anything I say or anything 

 that is said by any member of the committee as indicating any opinion 

 on the subject. 



Mr. ADAMS. I have not the slightest sensitiveness in those matters; 

 but the Supreme Court of the United States has decided in the Plumley 

 case that the State had a right to prohibit and that it was a proper 

 exercise of police power to prohibit within its borders the manufacture 

 and sale of oleomargarine colored in imitation of yellow butter. 



When we come to the Schollenbarger case some of our friends on the 

 other side claim that was a reversal of that decision, and other gentle- 

 men, lawyers, on the other side, better informed, claim it was not a 

 reversal of that decision, and Judge Lochran, up in Minnesota, a Fed- 

 eral judge, who had made a decision in accordance with the Plumley 

 decision, reversed that decision after the decision in the Plumley case. 

 I am perfectly willing to admit the decision in the Pennsylvania case 

 overcame the decision in the Plumley case so far as original packages 

 are concerned ; but within sixty days after that Judge Adams, the judge 

 of a district court in St. Louis, made exactly the same decision as Judge 

 Lochran, and the first section of the bill was put in there, not because 

 we believe the decision in the Plumley case had been reversed by the 

 decision in the Schollenbarger case, but because we knew that Federal 

 district judges disagree and had disagreed in two specific cases as to the 

 meaning of that decision. We wished to write into the law of the land 

 the views, as we believe, properly laid down and the principles properly 

 established in the decision of the Plumley case. 



I am not going to take up very much time reading decisions upon this 

 law, and it is not for the purpose of arguing about the constitutionality 

 of the law, but to give to this committee, not only for its benefit but for 

 the benefit of such Senators as may read this report, and who may desire 

 by the reference to this decision and the few sentences which are read 

 here, to have the decisions and read them and see upon what grounds 

 the courts have made the decisions that they have made. 



Here is an extract from a case in Twelfth Missouri Appeals : 



The mere fact that experts may pronounce an article intended for human food to 

 be harmless does not render it incompetent for the legislature to prohibit the manu- 

 facture and sale of the article. The test of the reasonableness of the police regula- 

 tion prohibiting the making and vending of a particular article of food is not alone 

 whether it is in part unwholesome and injurious. If an article of food is of such a 

 character that few persons will eat it, knowing its real character, if at the time 

 it is of such a nature that it can be imposed upon the public as an article of food 

 which it is not, and yet to which and against which there is no protest, and if 

 in addition to this there is probable ground for believing that the only way to 

 prevent the public from being defrauded into the purchasing of the counter- 

 feit article for the genuine is to prohibit altogether the manufacture and sale of the 

 former, then we think that such a prohibition may stand as a reasonable police regu- 

 lation, although the article prohibited is indeed innocuous, and although its produc- 

 tion might be found beneficial to the public if in buying it they could distinguish it 

 from the production of which it is an imitation. 



Further: 



The manufacturer may brand it with its real name. It may carry that brand with 

 it into the hands of the broker and commission merchant and even into the hands 

 of the retail grocer, but there it will betaken off and it will be sold to the consumer 

 as real butter or it will not be sold at all. The fact that the present state of the 

 public taste, the public judgment, or the public prejudice with regard to it is such 

 that it can not be sold except by cheating the ultimate purchaser into the belief 

 that it is the real butter stamps with fraud the entire business of making and vend- 

 ing it and furnishes a justih' cation for the police regulation prohibiting the making 

 and vending of it altogether. 



