442 OLEOMARGARINE. 



counter and asked him the question, and he admitted to me that it was 

 oleomargarine. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. What law did he violate? 



Mr. MED AIRY. I do not know, sir. I am not competent to argue that 

 question. I simply know that in my own city we have a color law 

 passed by our last legislature. We have yet to have an arrest of a 

 dealer, other than a manufacturer's agent, and my statement can be 

 verified upon investigation, wherein anyone, without exception, man, 

 woman, or child, sold colored oleomargarine as and for such. I do not 

 want to trespass too long upon the courtesy of my friend. I thank the 

 committee for its courtesy. 



STATEMENT OF H. E. ADAMS Resumed. 



Mr. ADAMS. I hold in iny hand the prospectus of the Standard 

 Butterine Company, organized, 1 think, under the laws of West Vir- 

 ginia, having a capital stock of $1,000,000. The purpose of this com- 

 pany is to manufacture butterine in the District of Columbia. The 

 total cost of 100 pounds of butterine or of oleomargarine those two 

 terms are used interchangeably and mean the same thing in this dis- 

 cussion is $8.92, a little less than 9 cents a pound, including the tax 

 thereon. In the statement of this prospectus I find the following: 



It will be seen that the above cost, when deducted from the market price of 13 

 cents a pound, shows a net profit of $4.08. It will be seen that even if the com- 

 pany produce only the 400,000 pounds per month for which it now has definite 

 orders, a net profit of over $16,320 a month, or $195,840 a year would be assured. 

 This would be 8 per cent on the preferred stock of the company or 20 per cent on 

 the entire capitalization. The Standard Butterine Company is incorporated with 

 a capital stock of $1,000,000, divided as follows : 



An attorney of this company appeared before this committee yester- 

 day and made an argument against the Grout bill. The burden of his 

 argument, as I understood it, analyzing it and getting at his purpose, 

 is that this is a sort of philanthropic institution, designed for the pur- 

 pose of giving the poor men of this country a cheap substitute for 

 butter. In other words, he practically made the claim before this com- 

 mittee that this company, with a million dollars' worth of capital, 

 should be permitted to do business unrestricted by State or national 

 law; a business which would enable them to manufacture a counterfeit 

 of butter in the form and under the color of butter, and in the main be 

 sold at or approximately at a butter price to the laboring men of this 

 country, and that it is a right which the laboring men demand they 

 should have. The mere statement of thecase is argumentenough against 

 it. In the course of his remarks he drew rather a poetic picture of the 

 present conditions of the country village. He alluded to the disap- 

 pearance of certain industries in these country villages, and regretted, 

 in a way, the disappearance of the village carpenter, and called atten- 

 tion to the mysterious disappearance of the village tinker. I do not 

 know where the village tinker has gone. 1 know some of them have 

 gone into the practice of the profession of law; some of them are 

 undoubtedly upon farms: but the whole tenor and drift of his argument 

 was to this effect that, in the inarch of progress that is going on, in the 

 changes which are going on in the industrial world, some men and 

 some industries are liable to be wiped off of the face of the earth, and 

 that all these changes are legitimate. The inference from his argu- 

 ment was that this oleomargarine was of such superior character that 

 if it was not restricted by State or national law it would go on and 

 eventually eliminate the dairy farms. That was the inevitable deduc- 

 tion from the logic of that illustration. 



