OLEOMARGA RINE. 725 



On the other hand, it is one of the purest and most delightful of the 

 vegetable fats. The seed comes to our mills fresh from the cotton fields, 

 and is never touched by hand from that time until it is delivered to the 

 refiners or the ultimate buyers. It is handled exclusively by machinery. 

 The oil that part of it which is now under discussion here to-day is 

 hermetically sealed by nature in an air-tight case, which is the seed. 

 It is carried to the expressing machinery by machinery itself, and it is 

 not touched by human hand, but is expressed by machinery. There is 

 no possible opportunity for contamination. The process of expressing 

 is extremely simple. Nothing is left after it but the pure oil itself. 

 There could not possibly be any purer fat. There could not come to 

 any table anything cleaner. I am not a technical man, and do not 

 propose to enter into any discussion upon butter or any of the dairy 

 products, but we all know that they have a thousand processes of being 

 handled in a small way, and that they are all subject to a great deal of 

 contamination. None of these things apply to cotton seed. 



We have in the United States virtually three buyers of cotton-seed oil. 

 The oleomargarine people take our best product and pay us a little more 

 money for it than anybody else. They demand an exceptionally good 

 oil, made by special processes from selected seeds. Those mills which 

 have the facilities for furnishing this oil enjoy that trade to the exclu- 

 sion of the mills who through any cause furnish an inferior article. 

 Next comes the lard people, who are nearly as critical in their demands. 

 Next the soapmakers, who will take anything we give them. It is 

 because we do not want to lose a customer who buys from us $3.000,000 

 worth of cotton-seed oil every year that we are opposing this bill. It 

 is because we do not want to lose a customer of that kind, and it is 

 because they tell us that the imposition of a tax like this will put them 

 out of business that we are here protesting against it. As I said, two 

 of the gentlemen here are directly interested in this business. Some of 

 them have been interested in it from its infancy. I believe there are 

 five gentlemen in the room who have been interested in the business 

 since possibly the mills in the United States could have been counted 

 on the fingers of your hands. To day I think there are about three 

 hundred and twenty-five of these mills. I believe there is present 

 in the room the oldest man in the business I mean in a business 

 way, for he is yet a boy in some respects. I myself have been con- 

 nected with the business during the whole of my business life. Unfor- 

 tunately in this great development of the business, the demands for 

 the product have not quite kept pace with the improved facilities. 

 Unfortunately, too, the exact statistics in regard to our business are 

 absolutely unattainable. 



The mills are widely scattered. The large majority of them are small 

 enterprises, and the owners are men who are not accustomed to give 

 out the details of their business, and absolutely refuse to do so. 

 Secondly, exact statistics in regard to the business are unattainable, 

 and any figures given with regard to the business must be taken as 

 very wide approximations. But it is now estimated that there is 

 crushed in the United States about two million tons of seed annually. 

 In round figures, a bale of cotton means half a ton of cotton seed. 

 Giving a crop of ten millions of bales, that would mean five million 

 tons of seed. Not over one and one half million tons of seed are required 

 for the repletion of the crop each year. That would leave, on the face 

 of the figures, a very large portion of the seed to be crushed. It must 

 be remembered that a large portion of that seed is produced in out-of- 

 the-way places, away from large centers, and away from freight facili 



