OLEOMARGARINE. 523 



Senator DOLLIVER. I was inquiring whether, in the absence of any 

 regulations, State or local or national, a situation is not possible, owing 

 to the volume of oleo oil and cotton-seed oil, by which the dairy inter- 

 ests of the country might be totally expunged without the knowledge 

 of the public. 



Mr. TOMPKINS. If it were totally expunged by competition or putting 

 something else on the market that was better, by means of processes 

 that affected larger interests, by furnishing the working people and all 

 other people a better article at a cheaper price, is not that the standard 

 by which American commerce has always been judged? I absolutely 

 feel that 1 know that the dairy business would never go down; that it 

 has within it possibilities which, by education and by a better under- 

 standing of the processes of feeding and of utilizing manures from the 

 food of the cattle, butter can be produced excellently and cheaply in a 

 way to keep always in competition with the other products of the same 

 animals exactly, excepting only the vegetable part that goes in from 

 cotton seed oil. 



Now, what you want, is to leave that competition exactly iree. What 

 ought to be done is simply to require that these things shall be sold on 

 their merits and without any misrepresentation, to which the gentleman 

 acquiesces promptly. Nevertheless, all the arguments here are thatyou 

 must eliminate butter, you must eliminate everything that gives this 

 product a fair show on the market. If you eliminate in both instances 

 I am with you, and I think all the people are with you. The elimination 

 of coloring matter is not the elimination of an injurious ingredient. 

 But if you cause the butter people to put a label on their packages that 

 it is butter, and they renovate it to give it a taste by culture and growth 

 of bacteria, and give it an artificial color, all that is as absolutely decep- 

 tive when the butter is put on the market, when its appearance is 

 changed, when its taste is changed so as to represent grass butter, as it 

 is to put oleomargarine, otherwise wholesome, on the market, and color 

 it yellow, but call it by its own name. Indeed, there is no deception at 

 all in that. There is not the slightest objection to the regulation of the 

 article, to the making of everybody stand the same tests and make the 

 same degree of honest representations. 



It is absolutely no use to eliminate something that is simply used 

 for the purpose of making that article more attractive to the purchaser 

 without doing him any harm. If you will require a wholesome article 

 of oleomargarine to be made, let them color it if they want to. Kequire 

 them to put on the formula by which it was made, if you desire, just as 

 is the case with cotton-seed oil, and then do exactly the same with the 

 butter business, and there will be no trouble about honest competi- 

 tion, and neither side will have any right to ask that the other side 

 be handicapped with an embargo of a great big tax, or of being 

 deprived of the advantage of putting a good appearance on their goods 

 for the market, while they themselves are allowed to put identically 

 that thing on the market under circumstances that are more deceptive 

 in the one case than in the other. Everybody knows that oleomarga- 

 rine is colored; but not a great number of people know that butter 

 which is alleged to be spring butter, with the color made by grass or 

 by cotton seed meal, actually contains that thing at all. The color is 

 artificial and the taste is artificial. 



Mr. KNIGHT. Will the gentleman yield? 



Mr. TOMPKINS. Certainly. 



Mr. KNIGHT. You speak of spring butter and bacteria. Do you 

 think it is a fraud to use what you call an artificial flavor caused by 

 bacterial development? 



