OLEOMARGARINE. 445 



They say, "If it is so small, why do you want it?' 7 We want it 

 because Wisconsin is a great dairy State; because we manufacture 

 annually 80,000,000 pounds of butter; because that butter is sent into 

 all the markets of the world. We are willing to meet any competition 

 which is legitimate in those markets. We are willing to stand up 

 against any product of science or art or skill which these gentlemen 

 may devise in the open markets, but we do not want to stand up against 

 a counterfeit which, as the courts have said, is of such a character that 

 the average consumer can not distinguish, and is thereby compelled to 

 buy a thing which he does not want. 



Have we no testimony ? Is it not true that as against the testimony 

 of the gentlemen interested in the oleomargarine business and their 

 attorneys before this committee every dairy commissioner in the 

 United States who has expressed himself upon this subject has said 

 that there is need of national legislation to wipe out what is one of the 

 greatest evils in food products in this country of ours? Is not that 

 testimony before this committee? Our friends on the other side have 

 endeavored to array the stock interests of the country against us upon 

 the ground mainly of personal interest which those stockmen may 

 have in this question. For just a moment I will refer to that. 



During the last year, as I understand it, there were in round numbers 

 5,000,000 beeves killed in this country. The total amount of oleo oil 

 which went into the production of the 1899 oleomargarine product was 

 24,000,000 pounds. In round numbers the value of that product was 

 $2,000,000. That is about 40 cents per head, as against the statement 

 of the representatives, so called, of the live-stock interests before this 

 committee that the loss, if this bill is enacted into law, would be from 

 $3 to $4 a head. Now, that is on the supposition, which is not correct, 

 that if this bill is enacted into law the oleomargarine industry will be 

 crushed. It will not be crushed. You will do what is done in Denmark, 

 in my judgment. In years to come I don't know how many it will 

 take you will sell a good lair portion of your product in the American 

 market as it is sold in Denmark. Three and a half pounds to each 

 inhabitant are sold there of uncolored oleomargarine to 1 pound to 

 each inhabitant in the United States, even with all the aids that color 

 can give and all the frauds that are perpetrated in the different States 

 in this Union. Why, gentlemen, even if they could not sell their oleo- 

 margarine product for this purpose, they can sell it as tallow, and they 

 can get half the amount which they get now, and the actual loss under 

 those figures would be less than 20 cents a head. 



Out west of the Missouri Eiver what is most valuable to those people 

 who have been raising wheat year after year and year after year and 

 exhausting their soils? We have had some experience in Wisconsin. 

 When I was a boy, away back in the seventies, the farmers in Wisconsin 

 were in financial distress. They had cropped and recropped their fields 

 and cropped again, as they have in the State of Iowa, until the produc- 

 tion of wheat had dropped from 20 bushels to 10 bushels per acre. They 

 turned to the business of keeping cows. They have made Wisconsin a 

 dairy State. They have made a product which has not taken fertility 

 out of the soil butter which is sun like, and does not come from the 

 valuable elements of plant food that lie in the soil ; and because of that 

 business they have brought back to the State prosperity and more wealth 

 and more comfort not only to the farming population of Wisconsin and 

 Iowa, and Minnesota, but also to every class of people in those States; 

 and in Nebraska and in those States beyond the Missouri that process 

 is going on. The coming industry in those States is going to be the 



