OLEOMARGARINE. 629 



internal revenue show that New York is about the only important con- 

 suming State thus situated. 



The other class comprises the other States which have found it im- 

 possible with State laws to prevent the sale of oleomargarine contrary 

 to their State laws. 



The New York dairymen, as well as the dairymen in other Eastern 

 States, fear an onslaught upon their laws which will break the hitherto 

 impenetrable barrier and flood their markets with the forbiden counter- 

 feit article. Their fear is that some Federal courts may interpret some 

 rather ambiguous decisions in the same way they were interpreted by 

 the court of appeals of Maryland and a district Federal court of Minne- 

 sota, denying the right of the State to exclude yellow oleomargarine in 

 the original package. It is to forestall any such a probability that 

 State control is asked, as in section 1. 



But the very large majority of the States will not, under present con- 

 ditions, be at all benefited by section 1 alone. Such decisions would 

 have no effect upon their laws, because the violations in these States do 

 not consist of the sale of the article in the original package, which 

 might be protected by the interstate-commerce laws, but it is retailers, 

 over whom the State, so far as Federal interference is concerned, has 

 never been denied jurisdiction, and which right to regulate has never 

 been questioned by the judiciary. 



The obstacle these States find to the enforcement of their laws is 

 the persistent, systematic, and powerful opposition of the manufac- 

 turers, who regularly appropriate a portion of their earnings to cover 

 legal expenses, and whose fixed policy it is to induce retailers to become 

 lawbreakers and protect them against the prosecutions of the State. 



Nothing but the enactment of the 10-eent tax clause, which will take 

 the abnormal profit out of the sale of this counterfieit, will ever make 

 it possible for the States to enforce their laws against dealers in oleo- 

 margarine, as they would against violators of other laws. 



DAIRY FARMERS DISCRIMINATED AGAINST. 



The chief argument against our bill now is that the oleomargarine 

 manufacturers ought to have the same rights to color their goods that 

 the dairymen enjoy ; that depriving them of that right would be placing 

 them at a disadvantage which we ought not to do; that it is not right 

 to make their goods unattractive by prohibiting the coloring of them. 



The manufacturer of oleomargarine, upon payment of $600 license 

 fee and 2 cents per pound tax, is given the right to use for producing a 

 substitute for butter a fat enabling him to make it for 10 or 12 cents 

 per pound at the outside, including the 2-cent tax. He has the right 

 to use a 6-cent fat, and can, if he chooses, mix butter with it. The 

 dairy farmer is confined by law to the use of butter fat that can not be 

 produced, even under the most favorable circumstances, for less than 

 12 cents per pound, and in winter months the cost to him is nearer 

 18 and 20 cents per pound. If he were permitted to use neutral lard, 

 oleo oil, or cotton-seed oil in his production, as does the oleo manufac- 

 turer, he could make the cost much less, and might make goods for 

 10 or 12 cents that would outclass in quality the oleomargarine maker's 

 goods. In this way the oleomargarine manufacturer is given a monop- 

 oly on the trade for a cheap substitute, and restrictions are placed 

 upon the dairyman which keep him out of the field and out of competi- 

 tion. If he is to be barred out of this field by restrictions, is it any 

 more than fair that the oleomargarine manufacturer should be barred 

 out of the field of pure butter by some restrictions t And can anyone 



