OLEOMARGARINE. 573 



Senator MONEY. How can we distinguish them? 



Mr. GROUT. I did not intend to go into that, and I do not care to 

 now. If the committee want me to do so, however, I am willing to 

 stand here and have a conversation, and a long one, on that subject of 

 coloring butter. I expressed myself fully in my opening statement on 

 that subject and I do not think I need repeat it, but still if you desire 

 I will gladly discuss it with you. 



Senator MONEY. I have no desire to hear anything further about it, 

 except you made the statement, and it was in answer to that statement, 

 that you detected oleomargarine by its color in the hash, that I asked 

 you the question. 



Mr. GROUT. Precisely. 



Senator MONEY. Then I wanted to ask you if the same color did not 

 enter into the butter that enters into the oleomargarine? 



Mr. GROUT. Yes, sir; it does. It belongs to butter. Yellow is the 

 natural color of butter and always has been, and if you allow them to 

 color oleo just like butter, that enables them to make you believe it is 

 butter whether you spread it on your bread or see it in chicken hash. 



Senator MONEY. It has been testified here that the natural color of 

 butter is white. 



Mr. GROUT. Can that be possible? Excuse me, but I should not 

 suppose anyone would make that claim. I had always understood that 

 butter is always yellow. The cow makes it yellow. 



Mr. WADSWORTH. What is the color of the butter that Delmonico 

 uses in New York? 



Mr. GROUT. I do not think Delmonico uses white butter. 



Mr. WADSWORTH. And it is unsalted? 



Mr. GROUT. Yes, but not white butter. He uses butter, very likely, 

 without any coloring matter, and my own taste approves that. Tastes 

 vary as to degrees of the yellowness for butter, or which should belong 

 to butter, and of course it is colored to meet those varying tastes; but 

 it is all the time a butter color. It is only a little more colored or a 

 little less. It is always in some degree yellow. Nobody ever saw but- 

 ter but what it was in some degree yellow. 



Senator WARREN. You speak of a case of chicken hash. You would 

 naturally be an expert, and especially so at this time when your mind 

 is turned toward this. Do you think the presence of oleomargarine in 

 that chicken hash you speak of would easily be detected by an ordinary 

 boarder? 



Mr. GROUT. Not without the clue which we had in the difference of 

 color between the butter and the oleo, which we had before us, both of 

 which were in the house. Of course chicken hash would be more 

 palatable to the man who ordered it if it disclosed the use of butter in 

 serving it up than it would if it disclosed a white grease simply like 

 lard or oleo without color. And so, as in this case, oleomargarine is 

 put into cooking where it will show to give the guest the impression 

 that they have made a free use of butter in serving chicken hash or 

 whatever, and it goes off at the rate of $5 a day, or whatever price may 

 be paid. 



Senator WARREN. It seems to me that the oleomargarine in the 

 chicken hash would be less discoverable if it was white than if it was 

 colored. I do not want to take from your argument, but what I am 

 getting at is the purpose of this bill. I want to get at whether the 

 purpose is to protect the butter men, whether it is to protect the board- 

 ing-house men, and the percentage of protection ; whether it is one-half 

 of the consumers and one half of the buttermen, or two-thirds one 



