OLEOMARGARINE. 



glowers of the great State of Iowa the second largest cattle growing 

 State in the Union with their 3,442,000 head of cattle, $4,357,458 to 

 build up the creamery industry of their State? Or the Kansas stock- 

 men contribute $4,319,098 to the creamery industry when the total out- 

 put of butter for the entire state was only $5,890,272 ? Shall the owners 

 of the 1,387,615 head of beef and stock cattle in the State of Missouri 

 consent- to a depreciation of $2,775,230 in their property when the State 

 contains only 659,731 milch cows and not one-third of those used for 

 commercial purposes, their uses being entirely domestic? The same is 

 true of many of the other States. New York has one- third as many 

 other cattle as milch cows, and Pennsylvania one-half as many. 



By this bill you are asked to do three things: Take from the fruits 

 of labor by depreciating the property of a large class of the American 

 people over $62,000,000 that another and a far less numerous class 

 might profit thereby ; to cripple the industries and retard the growth 

 of thirty-one States and Territories of this great Union that a favored 

 few in the remaining seventeen States might be correspondingly bene- 

 fited, thus helping to establish a commercial sectionalism, to close and 

 destroy one vast branch of our commercial industries in which are 

 employed over $5,000,000 and thousands of laborers, that a lesser indus- 

 try, which is unable to compete on fair and equal grounds, might assume 

 to itself the monopoly in its line of trade. The enactment of such laws 

 is a long step toward paternalism, antagonistic to the freedom of our 

 American institutions and contrary to the principles of our republican 

 form of government. An able writer in a paper on the subject of "Food 

 and legislation" before The National Pure Food and Drug Congress, 

 held in Washington March 7 to 10 of this year, said: 



The aim of all food legislation should be for the general weal and the public 

 health. The tendency of State legislatures is to control by local interests, arid the 

 result of this domination is a breed of selfish local statutes which tend to block 

 national distribution. The primary object of such provincialism is gain and not the 

 public welfare. Interstate free trade and free distribution has been the boast of 

 pnr federal system of sovereign States. In spite of this boast State legislatures, 

 influenced by local interests for the mere purpose of additional profit, are erecting 

 State-line barriers and manacling the internal commerce of our free system. No 

 wise economist can ask a State legislature to destroy competition, and Congress 

 should not do so. If a thing is an injury, kill it entirely. If butterine is pure in its 

 constituent parts and is healthful food, it has a free and perfect right to an unham- 

 pered market. 



It is therefore to Congress that the live stock-growers of the country 

 look for protection of their rights and their interests, and they ask and 

 expect absolute fairness and impartiality. The cattle and hog growers 

 of the West could with as much consistency ask Congress to put a 

 prohibitive tax on mackerel from the coasts of Maine, the oysters along 

 the Maryland shores, or the fish from the northern lakes, thereby 

 increasing the consumption of beef and pork, as well as the creamery 

 interests to ask the passage of this bill. 



But, gentlemen, do the creamery and dairy interests need your fos- 

 tering care in the shape of special legislation, or is it for the purpose 

 of getting a monopoly on one of the chief necessities of life? Legislate 

 out of existence their only competitor, oleomargarine, and might not 

 the supply of butter in this country be regulated by the Elgin Dairy 

 Exchange as the price of butter is now fixed for the United States by 

 that institution every Monday morning? 



Representative ALLEN. You say that the price of butter "is fixed 

 by that institution every Monday morning"! 



Mr. McCoY. That is common report. I suppose it is within the 

 power of this committee to find out absolutely whether that statement 



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