

OLEOMARGARINE. 525 



Mr. TOMPKINS. It would be white at any time of the year if the cow 

 were fed on food stuff that would produce white butter. If you feed 

 the cow on cotton seed, the butter will be as white as cotton. 



Mr. KNIGHT. What I want to get at as to that is to bring out this 

 point about the alleged deception in color. You talk about the coloring 

 of butter as being deceptive. Do you know that butter is colored in 

 the winter and not in the summer? 



Mr. TOMPKINS. No, I don't. 



Mr. KNIGHT. Then I will say for your information, and you will find 

 out that it is true, that white butter comes in the winter. I think the 

 oleomargarine people will tell you that. 



Mr. JELKE. I believe that if Mr. Knight will wire to a half dozen of 

 the leading creamery men of the United States that furnish butter for 

 Washington or St. Louis he will find that they use artificial coloring 

 twelve months in the year. 



Mr. KNIGHT. No; that is not true. 



Mr. JELKE. I am making that as a suggestion to the committee. If 

 you wish to controvert that, simply send your telegrams. 



Mr. KNIGHT. I have a statement which has been filed with the com- 

 mittee on that point. It appears that I can not bring it out by these 

 questions, and I would like to make a statement right here, so that it 

 will go in the record. 



Senator HANSBROUGH. 1 suggest that you give Mr. Tompkins a 

 chance to finish his statement. 



Mr. TOMPKINS. I am perfectly willing to yield to Mr. Knight. 



Senator HANSBROUGH. For a short statement. 



Mr. KNIGHT. This great deception that is claimed in the practice of 

 coloring butter is based on the supposition that in the winter time, 

 when butter is naturally white, people are deceived into buying it, 

 thinking it is spring butter because it is colored. Now look at the 

 proposition. You come down here in December or January and buy 

 some butter; it is highly colored, but it is butter. Do you buy that 

 butter because you think it was made last summer? Do you want 

 butter made last summer? 



Mr. TOMPKINS. It may be made with cotton-seed meal, which is per- 

 fectly wholesome; but as against butter made from cows fed on swills, 

 many people consider it poor stuff and object to it. 



Mr. KNIGHT. I will say in that connection that I have been in the 

 butter trade for twelve years, and I have never heard that the color of 

 butter was indicative of its quality, so far as its wholesomeness is con- 

 cerned. Senator Dolliver has had experience in New York to the effect 

 that at the Waldorf-Astoria, they serve you with butter perfectly white. 

 I was in England for the Agricultural Department investigating but- 

 ter in that country, and they served me there with white butter all the 

 time I was there, and I never heard anybody complain because it was 

 white. 



Mr. TOMPKINS. Why do they ever want to have the color in it? 



Mr. KNIGHT. The average natural color of butter is two-thirds nor- 

 mal. You take our dairies throughout the United States, and one cold 

 wave or storm will change the color of the butter. One cold wave that 

 will drive the cows from feeding on the green pastures to feeding on 

 hay or any kind of grain food will make the butter white this week 

 which last week was yellow. That is true of any place. 



The tendency of all commerce is toward uniformity in everything. 

 Butter is put up in packages or in tubs. Everybody puts up every- 

 thing with this idea of uniformity in view. That is what the public 



