OLEOMARGARINE. 461 



pure food is what a chemist says is chemically pure, the same as he 

 must go to work and analyze all the fats of oleomargarine. He shows 

 they are chemically pure ; but suppose they come out of cats. Every one 

 of these fats in oleomargarine can come from dogs and cats and horses. 

 Some of them come from Shoemaker's place and Horner's place in 

 Baltimore. 



I thank you for your attention. 



STATEMENT OF C. Y. KNIGHT, SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL 



DAIRY UNION. 



Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I want to open this 

 matter by reading a statement which is a copy of a letter which I 

 received from a retail grocer's clerk in the city of Chicago some time 

 last year. I am familiar with the gentleman's name, but I have not 

 put it in here. I will vouch, however, for the condition, and prove it 

 to you, but I merely read it as an introduction. 



During the pa"st twenty-two years I think I have worked in nearly every first- 

 class grocery in Chicago, and I can truthfully say that eight out of every ten have 

 been and are still selling butteriue for pure butter. I recently was employed in one 

 of the largest groceries and markets on one of the most prominent streets of the. city. 

 During the time I was employed there we never sold one pound of butter, for we 

 never had it in the house to se'll. We clerks would talk among ourselves about it, 

 and would often compare notes with other clerks, and to satisfy myself I made 

 quite a canvass of all the stores in the mile and found only one that did not impose 

 on its trade. 



Gentlemen, from experience I can vouch for the accuracy of that 

 statement, and I want to give you a little experience and 1 propose to 

 demonstrate it right here. The evening before I left Chicago 1 took 

 my stenographer at 4 o'clock and started out on a tour to visit the 

 so called butter stores. I went, and was gone just one hour, and visited 

 ten stores; and while I did not think of it at the time, it corresponds 

 with that statement. Eight of those stores sold me each a package of 

 goods. At two of them they told me they had no butter. They said 

 "We do not keep butter at all;" but the other eight sold me what pur- 

 ported to be butter. Now here is a package of what was bought for 

 pure butter at 24 cents per pound, and the signature of the girl who 

 bought it is on it. There is the package [exhibiting a package.] You 

 may be able to find a mark on that. It was bought as butter for 24 

 cents a pound. 



Mr. JELKE. Do you know now that it is not butter? 



Mr. KNIGHT. We will demonstrate that, Mr. Jelke, before we get 

 through. The store which sold that butter had this sign in front: 



Try our best 



Elgin creamery butter, 



5 pounds $1.00. 



Here is a package from the store of Hughes & Schick. I will give 

 to the gentlemen of the committee a little pamphlet that we got out 

 some time ago with a photograph of a sign in the front of that place, 

 "Grass Dairy, 15c. a pound." I openly denounced those people as 

 swindlers in a publication, 150,000 copies of which I have sent broad- 

 cast. That is the place where I bought that package. 



Here is a place where we bought a pound of so-called butter, at No. 8 

 Wells street. These are all on one street. We went from one place to 

 another on the same street within a distance of several blocks. That 

 we bought at 25 cents a pound. 



