OLEOMARGARINE. 575 



in that intangible, uu traceable way. Take the difference between 7 

 cents and 22 cents and you have 15 cents. There were 104,000,000 

 pounds of oleomargarine manufactured and stamped last year. 



Mr. WADSWORTH. Where is your tax license fee and all that? 



Mr. GROUT. I thank the gentleman for the reminder. Add the tax 

 to the cost of the product and it makes it 9 cents. That will leave a 

 margin of 13 cents profit on every pound with the selling price at 22 

 cents, which is a low figure. There were 104,000,000 pounds manufac- 

 tured and stamped last year and two or three million pounds more not 

 stamped. Now, there is your $13,520,000 profit on the product of last 

 year between the cost of production and the price paid by the man who 

 consumes it. There is no escape from this conclusion, my friends. 



Now, if you take what they claim to be true, that, as one manufac- 

 turer puts it, the great middle class wants oleomargarine, prefer it to 

 butter, and take what the oleo folks say about the dirt and filth and 

 all that sort of thing in butter, which they talk about to help make 

 oleomargarine palatable^-I say if it be true that anyone wants oleo- 

 margarine at butter prices they can manufacture oleomargarine and 

 pay the 10 cents tax and still not have it cost more than it is costing 

 to-day. But I do not believe it to be true. I believe it is not true that 

 people want oleomargarine in preference to butter at the price of 

 butter, and that when you will institute measures which will insure 

 the article going upon the market for exactly what it is, all will prefer 

 butter, excepting those, perhaps, who want a very cheap article. And 

 under the last clause in the last section of the bill, which proposes to 

 reduce the tax on uncolored oleomargarine to one-fourth of 1 cent per 

 pound, they can have it at less than one-half what it costs them now. 



I am not going to claim here now that oleomargarine is unwholesome 

 or unnutritious. There is no question, however, that it is more difficult 

 of digestion than butter, because butter melts at 1)2 and oleomargarine 

 does not melt short of from 101 to 107. That is the fact about it, 

 correctly expressed. I refer you to the testimony which was taken 

 before the House Committee on Agriculture, in which that fact is dis- 

 tinctly stated by Governor Hoard; and it is not only chemically but 

 absolutely true it is because of the stearin or paraffin that it carries. 

 Paraffin, however, has become so expensive that they do not use it now. 

 Stearin has been used within the last few years in oleomargarine. 



Mr. TILLINGHAST. Not to any extent. 



Mr. GROUT. The New York agriculture department found 10 per 

 cent of paraffin in 6 60-pound tubs; but leaving that out, it is not 

 used now because of its great cost. Stearin is used, and that is what 

 you make tallow candles out of. 



Mr. TiLLiNGrHAST. Paraffin was never used by any manufacturers 

 in this country since oleomargarine was made, and if it was found in 

 oleomaragine it was put there by an enemy to the oleomargarine 

 industry. 



Mr. GROUT. It was found in the course of some experiments made 

 by the assistant secretary of agriculture, whatever his name may be 

 Oracke, I think. The report of the secretary of agriculture for New 

 York of that year tells you all about it. It was some oleomargarine 

 they captured that was being sold for butter, 'and on inspection they 

 found this paraffin. 



Mr. WADSWORTH. It seems to me you ought not brand a trade on 

 account of the black sheep in it. Will you condemn the butter business 

 on account of the black sheep in it? I suppose there are some who 

 palm off process butter for creamery butter. 



