OLEOMARGARINE. 693 



that uoder the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the 

 States, a man had an inalienable right to get drunk on Christmas, and 

 I furnished it to them. [Laughter.] 



Now, gentlemen, I feel that we of the South have been stepchildren 

 of this Government, For a hundred years we have been paying the 

 indirect import tax on almost all that we used for the benefit of the 

 factories North. We have been paying the fiddler for a hundred years, 

 and have never been allowed to dance in the set. But after a while we 

 discovered that there was money in cotton-seed oil, and all over the 

 South we built up cotton-oil factories. But as soon as we did, why, 

 here comes the dairy interest, the curled darlings of the nation, and 

 says, " You shall not produce a product that competes with ours." That 

 is the proposition. Why, do you know that we are paying taxes to-day 

 on olive oil from Italy, high taxes why? Because there are a few olive 

 orchards in California. We have more cotton interest in one county in 

 Texas than they have olive interest in the whole State of California. 

 See how anxious the Government is to protect every interest in the 

 Government until it comes to the poor devil of a cotton man. 



Yes, sir; we began manufacturing cotton- seed oil. One of the 

 products of cotton seed oil is oleomargarine. Now they say, " Because, 

 forsooth, oleomargarine competes with our product, we, the Imperial 

 Cow- Milkers of the United States are to be protected by this Govern- 

 ment against the poor cotton farmer." 



Well, if our own Government is going to kick us, that teaches all of 

 Europe to kick us. Any mother that kicks her own child licenses the 

 whole world to kick and cuff it. And they will quickly follow suit. 

 We are in competition over there with the olive interest, mainly of 

 Spain and France; and they will kick. We thought it horrible that 

 those Dutchmen over there objected to the importation of our meat 

 against them; yet they are foreigners to us. 



Now, it is not the best butter makers that are in this fight against 

 oleomargarine at all. We do not compete with the Elgin people. 

 They do not complain of us. There are rich people all over this country 

 that are going to have butter, and pay for it; and we are not in coin- 

 petition with the class of butter they buy. But when you go down to 

 the low grades, then we are; and they are the people that are com- 

 plaining to-day. I heard Bob Ingersoll make a speech at Forest 

 Garden in 1896, in the political campaign. While I wanted to throw 

 a rock at him all the time he was talking, some things he said have 

 stuck to me. I remember a picture he drew of a horse race. He 

 said: "Here is a fine race horse, with flashing eye and nostrils dis- 

 tended, and sinews of steel, ready to outfly the wind." He said : "The 

 owner of that horse does not object if somebody wants to put a mule 

 in the race. But," he said, "every owner of a little scrub, who 

 doesn't believe he can beat a mule, and is contesting for second, third, 

 or fourth money in the race, objects to competition with a mule." And 

 to-day the best butter makers of this country, the clean butter makers, 

 are not in this fight against oleomargarine; but it is these men that 

 want to offend the nostrils and vitiate the taste and poison the stom- 

 achs of men with inferior butter that are clamoring here to Congress 

 to shut out a perfectly pure, clean product, with which they find they 

 can not compete. That is the situation. 



What is oleomargarine, gentlemen ? Now, I am going to read two cer- 

 tificates from gentlemen right here in the city. One. is from Professor 

 Atwater. It is only a few lines: "Butterine" (which is oleomarga- 



