OLEOMARGARINE. 531 



tendency to deceive anybody by dealers, if the article were left 

 uncolored. 



Mr. TOMPKINS. Your proposition is that all grades of butter be made 

 in imitation of a butter that costs 5 cents a pound, because it certainly 

 can be produced for people who want it. On the other hand, you have 

 forbidden any appearance of that sort of thing on the part of the oleo- 

 margarine people themselves, and made a great distinction. The two 

 subjects would naturally lap if you let them both alone and let all col- 

 ors take care of themselves absolutely, simply forbidding artificial 

 colors anywhere. But by means of artificial color you so criticise one 

 product in connection with this traffic that the other becomes oppro- 

 brious at once. 



Senator DOLLIVER. There is some force in that, but I would rather 

 take the testimony as to the grades of the manufactured article called 

 oleomargarine, whose business methods are less subject to criticism, I 

 think, possibly, than any other. 



Mr. JKLKE. I think those reasons have been stated here by a labor- 

 ing man. 



Senator DOLLIVER. That story, I will say to my friend, sounded a 

 little fishy to me. 



Mr. JELKE. A man does not seek here to display the quality of food 

 on his table three times a day. 



Mr. TOMPKINS. I assert that the whole aim of the human family 

 seems to be to get food and other necessary articles as cheaply as pos- 

 sible. I have never heard it was a reproach that cheap goods were sat- 

 isfactory to the purchaser. 



Mr. JELKE. Would you want to eat uncolored oleomargarine on your 

 table? 



Senator DOLLIVER. No; I have a constitutional prejudice against it, 

 I must confess. 



Mr. JELKE. Would you want to eat white butter? 



Senator DOLLIVER. Oh, yes; I have eaten it the year round, and in 

 youth I churned it. As Senator Allen says, everybody eats white butter 

 on the farm. 



Mr. JELKE. As soon as that butter is shipped to the city it is colored. 



Senator DOLLIVER. 1 am talking about my own taste. 



Mr. SCHELL. The wholesale dealers in Cincinnati have tried to put 

 white oleomargarine on the market, but have reported to me that it was 

 absolutely impossible to do it. Mr. Seither, who claims to be and I 

 believe is the oldest man in that business in this country, tells me he 

 has tried it from time to time, but it is utterly impossible; that the peo- 

 ple will not take it. He has not told me the reason why, but I think 

 one of the principal reasons is the fact that there is an unwarranted 

 sentiment attached to it, an unwarranted prejudice against it, and peo- 

 ple do not want to put it on their tables for the criticism of their 

 neighbors. You know how a neighboring woman will say: "Mrs. 

 Smith uses oleo," etc. 



Senator ALLEN. Is not this the fact: That the man does not want to 

 put oleomargarine on his table knowingly, because of his natural 

 inclination for butter? 



Mr. SCHELL. No, I think not. I was telling the committee about an 

 experience I had during the holidays on one occasion where I found 

 what I knew to be oleomargarine on the table of a physician, a man 

 amply able to have the very best. I called attention to it, and brought 

 blushes to his wife's face at the same time. But he explained it, and 

 said it was all right. Why? Because he liked something upon which 



