838 OLEOMARGARINE. 



Secretary WILSON. If you abolish the coloring proposition. I would not abolish 

 oleomargarine. The manufacture of that is legitimate, but the moment you buy it 

 you^re deceived by somebody. We are not the men who select the butter that we 

 eat if we board at a hotel or boarding house, and the boarding-house man can 

 deceive us, and he does. 



In Twelfth Missouri Appeals appears the following in relation to 

 the coloring of oleomargarine to imitate butter: 



The mere fact that experts may pronounce an article intended for human food to 

 be harmless does not render it incompetent for the legislature to prohibit the manu- 

 facture and sale of the article. The test of the reasonableness of the police regula- 

 tion prohibiting the making and vending of a particular article of food is not alone 

 whether it is in part unwholesome and injurious. If an article of ^food is of such^a 

 character that few persons will eat it, knowing its real character, if at the time it is 

 of such a nature that it can be imposed upon the public as an article of food which 

 it is not, and yet to which and against which there is no protest, and if in addition to 

 this there is probable ground for believing that the only way to prevent the public 

 from being defrauded into the purchasing of the counterfeit article for the genuine 

 is to prohibit altogether the manufacture and sale of the former, then we think that 

 such a prohibition may stand as a reasonable police regulation, although the article 

 prohibited is indeed innocuous, and although its production might be found bene- 

 ficial to the public if in buying it they could distinguish it from the production of 

 which it is an imitation. 



******* 



The manufacturer may brand it with its real name. It may carry that brand with 

 it into the hands of the broker and commission merchant and even into the hands 

 of the retail grocer, but there it will be taken off and it will be sold to the consumer 

 as real butter or it will not be sold at all. The fact that the present state of the 

 public taste, the public judgment, or the public prejudice with regard to it is such 

 that it can not be sold except by cheating the ultimate purchaser into the belief 

 that it is the real butter stamps with fraud the entire business of making and vend- 

 ing it and furnishes a justification for the police regulation prohibiting the making 

 and vending of it altogether. 



And when asked why color butter in winter and not oleomargarine, 

 Secretary Wilson said (page 419): 



I have had that question asked me before and have thought a great deal about it. 

 The reply is simply this: The coloring of butter in the winter time deceives nobody. 

 The coloring of the fats of commerce to make an imitation deceives everybody. 



THE LIVE-STOCK QUESTION. 



The most active, aggressive opponents of the Grout bill have been 

 the live-stock organizations. 



A little idea of the cause for their aggressiveness may be had from 

 a review of the statements made before the committee by their repre- 

 sentatives, or through them. 



The basis of the opposition of the National Live Stock Association, 

 represented by Judge Springer, before the committee, is shown in 

 the resolution he presents from his association, which contains the 

 following (page 78 printed testimony) : 



The "butter fat" of an average beef animal, for the purpose of making oleomarga- 

 rine, is worth from $3 to $4 per head more than it was before the advent of oleomar- 

 garine, when the same had to be used for tallow; which increased value of the beef 

 steer has been added to the market value of the animal, and consequently to the 

 profit of the producer. 



To legislate this article of commerce out of existence, as the passage of this law 

 would surely do, would compel slaughterers to use this fat for tallow, and depreciate 

 the market value of the beef cattle of this country $3 to $4 per head, which would 

 entail a loss on the producers of this country of millions of dollars. 



