650 OLEOMARGARINE. 



A BYSTANDER. I would like to ask if the two cases we read in the 

 press of to-day on the train were not an exception to the rule? 



Mr. HEWES. Yes; I have not come to that point yet. I want to say 

 I was going to follow that right np by stating that there were two cases 

 to-day reported from Cumberland. Now, when the Plumley case, which 

 is the case that was decided in the Supreme Court of the United States 

 and reported in 155 when that case was decided it was supposed we 

 would not need any further legislation on the subject, that then the State's 

 right to legislate on this subject was recognized as a valid exercise of 

 the police power of the State and would be supported in every instance, 

 and when we came down here and asked for the passage of the Hill 

 bill and the Grout bill before, we were met with the objection in the 

 House and in the Senate, " Have not you enough law in the opinion of 

 Justice Harlan in the Plumley case?" and we said, "Yes; we would 

 have enough law but for the fact that the personnel of the Supreme 

 Court is liable to change, and will change in all human probability, and 

 then we do not know how it is going to be. 7 ' Now, our fears were veri- 

 fied in the Scholleuberger case; and when Justice Peckham delivered 

 his opinion and declared in that opinion 



The CHAIRMAN. Where is it reported! 



Mr. HEWES. 171 U. S., p. 1. When he declared that that was not 

 reversal of a decision in the Plumley case, Justice Gray arid Justice 

 Harlan filed a dissenting opinion, showing it certainly did overturn the 

 law in that case; and what was the consequence? The consequenc 

 has been that there have been varying interpretations of the Schollen 

 berger case now going on over the United States. Only recently two 

 habeas corpus cases, one in Missouri and the other in Minnesota, were 

 decided, different cases; and the judge said in those cases that they 

 were at variance; and the most remarkable thing of all, Judge Lochren, 

 in the Minnesota case, has always been a friend to butter and has in all 

 his decisions heretofore decided rather in favor of butter and against 

 oleo until that time, and he said, " I am confronted by the opinion in the 

 Schollenberger case," and discharged the petitioner. On the other 

 hand, Judge Adams, in the Missouri case, stated that the Schollen- 

 berger case did not overturn the opinion of the Plumley case, and he 

 would be be bound by the Plumley case. 



In our own court of appeals in the State of Maryland, in the Fox 

 case, tried since the Schollenberger case was decided, the opinion from 

 Judge Fowler simply stated that it was the opinion of the court that 

 under existing law since the Schollenberger opinion had been delivered 

 it was impossible to prevent the introduction into a State of an original 

 package of pure oleo, but, he said, the State having made its prima facie 

 case, the burden shifts from the defendant to show that the article was 

 not deleterious to health. How has that been construed? There are 

 45 cases hanging up, criminal cases, in the city of Baltimore, and four 

 or five of them original-package cases, and the city's attorneys do not 

 attempt to do anything; they will not do anything, because they are 

 satisfied that when they go to the court of appeals it will be impossible 

 for the State to make a case, and they do not want to try to make a 

 case. 



That is one of the principal reasons why we want a commerce clause 

 limit in respect to oleomargarine, so that we may be able to meet this 

 article upon our borders with our laws, meet them there and say, "You 

 can not introduce your stuff into this State because we do not want it." 

 Let it be as good as it may, let the article be just as wholesome as Mr. 

 Allen suggested, let the stuff be melted in the human stomach, although 

 I have heard that oleo was not melted under such temperature, let oleo 



