572 OLEOMARGARINK. 



and selling it to you at $5 a day or $4 a day, or whatever you may 

 cbance to pay for board, for butter! 



Mr. WADSWORTH. He can not get it from the retail dealer except as 

 oleomargarine. 



Mr. GROUT. Ah, but he does not take it from the retail dealer. He 

 gets it straight from the manufactory or through the wholesaler. 



Mr. WADSWORTH. Very well; he can not get it from the manufac- 

 tory, he can not get it from the wholesale dealer, he can not get it 

 from the retail dealer, except in that form. 



Mr. GROUT. Precisely so. 



Mr. WADSWORTH. Let him take that to a hotel, and he immediately 

 puts himself in the hands of his help. He quarrels with a waiter or a 

 cook and dismisses him, and the man turns on him and says, "You 

 have been selling oleomargarine to your customers for butter." That 

 is the objection. 



Mr. GROUT. You will not find a first-class hotel, I believe, in the city 

 of Washington but you will know, when you talk this matter over with 

 them, that they feed oleomargarine to the help, and that will account 

 for its entrance into the house; and once in the house its uses can not 

 be so easily traced. 



Senator WARREN. If it is your idea to protect the hotel guests and 

 the restaurant guests from oleomargarine, has it suggested itself to you 

 in what way you will protect them from the use of oleomargarine that 

 is uncolored I 



Mr. GROUT. Why, the color tells the whole story. If they bring an 

 uncolored article on the table the guest knows it is not butter. He 

 knows it is hog fat or cattle fat. 



Senator . WARREN. A great many men do not eat butter at all on 

 bread; others eat little. No one eats much in that way, but everyone 

 eats a great deal that is used in cooking. 



Mr. GROUT. Very well. 



Senator WAIJREN. So that ifc seems to me if you take the matter of 

 color only, and only prohibit as to color, you are not reaching the con- 

 sumer, and he is the one we are trying to reach. You are not reaching 

 the matter of the consumer getting oleomargarine instead of fresh but- 

 ter, except as it may come before him, put upon his plate. The great 

 mass of butter that is used for cooking, it seems to me, is not reached 

 by this bill. 



Mr. GROUT. It would not reach the butter that goes into pie crust 

 or into shortening cake, but fat is frequently, almost always, used for 

 that instead of butter, and the hotel man uses fat almost exclusively for 

 that purpose. I am not saying that it would absolutely exclude the 

 use of it for cooking purposes. There is no pretense that it would, and 

 yet there are many kinds of cooking in which it betrays its color, as it 

 did in the chicken hash the other day, that I referred to. If it were 

 seasoned or made suitable for some people to eat with the shortening, 

 and that were an uncolored article, it would falsely pretend to be but- 

 ter; and the same with whatever may be put on your toast in the name 

 of butter. 



Senator MONEY. Is not the butter and oleomargarine color the same 

 thing f 



Mr. GROUT. How is that, sir ? 



Senator MONEY. Is it not true that the butter and the oleomargarine 

 that is offered are colored the same? 



Mr. GROUT. Yes, sir; sometimes butter is colored. There is no 

 debate about that. 



