OLEOMARGARINE. 853 



fields of the Mississippi Valley were opened up, cultivated by machinery. Then 

 South America opened up her wheat fields and produced grain at 37 cents a bushel 

 on shipboard, Australia opened up her wheat fields, and now Russia is opening up 

 Siberia to the production of the cereals. We are driven entirely out of the cereals 

 market. We have been driven out of the meat market, and there has not been one 

 word of complaint. It was done among men in open competition; but we do com- 

 plain when you take all that is left and seek to do it by fraud. I can not conceive 

 how any man who has had any experience anywhere that gives him a knowledge of 

 ethics, can sustain the man who has placed upon the market a commodity looking, 

 smelling, and tasting like another, as that other, and then say when we ask him to 

 stop it that we are trying to down a healthy competition. It is not competition. It 

 is downright robbery. 



And from Hon. W. D. Hoard, president of the National Dairy Union, 

 the following on page 413: 



This law is demanded in the interest of a broad public policy, for the protection 

 of legitimate industry against illegitimate counterfeiting and fraud. Compare the 

 policy pursued by the United States with that of Canada. The Dominion government 



fuards the purity and honesty of her dairy products to the extent of absolute prohi- 

 ition of any adulteration or counterfeiting of the same. As a result her export of 

 cheese to England alone has grown in twenty years from $3,000,000 to $20,000,000, 

 while ours has declined nearly the same amount, because we did not place the strong 

 hand of the law on the adulterated product, filled cheese, until we had lost the con- 

 fidence of the foreign consumer. 



The fears of the dairymen from the encroachment of the oleomar- 

 garine fraud find good voice in the following extract from Judge 

 Springer's statement on page 91: 



The total production of oleomargarine in the United States for the year ending 

 June 30, 1900, was 107,045,028 pounds. This was a consumption of only 1.4 pounds 

 per capita. Without repressive laws in any of the States the consumption might have 

 been as great per capita as in Rhode Island. This would have increased the demand 

 for oleomargarine for consumption in the United States per annum to over 600,000,000 

 pounds. It is not surprising, in view of these facts, that the friends of the pending 

 bill desire the enactment of the first section, which will place oleomargarine under 

 the repressive laws of 32 States in the Union, with a fair prospect of securing equally 

 oppressive legislation in the remaining 13 States. 



As the dairymen's market for butter in this country only amounts to 

 about 800,000,000 pounds outside of the producer, who consumes 

 700,000,000 pounds of the 1,500,000,000 pounds of butter produced, it 

 would seem that conditions do warrant their present alarm. 



EVIDENCE INTRODUCED UNDER FALSE PRETENSES. 



We deem it our duty to call the attention of the committee to the 

 evidence of Francis W. Lestrade, of New York City, who appeared 

 before this committee in the interests of oleomargarine. 



The record (p. 164) shows that he introduced himself as follows: 



Mr. LESTRADE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I wish to state on 

 the outstart that it is seldom I am called upon to speak in public. 



The CHAIRMAN. You are interested in the manufacture, are you, or are you acting 

 as counsel? 



Mr. LESTRADE. No; I was about to say that I am nothing more than a practical 

 everyday butterrnan. I have been in business for twenty years, and what I say 

 before you is entirely from a practical standpoint, not a theoretical standpoint, and 

 not from any scientific* point of view, but from what has come under my observation 

 as a butterrnan ever since I was a boy. 



I am a member of the firm of Lestrade Brothers, New York City. I am an owner 

 of and interested in dairy farms, both in the West and in the East. I am also inter- 

 ested in cows. I am also interested in three different creameries. I am also, and 

 this is our chief business in the city, an exporter, a packer of butter and cheese to 

 the hot countries as well as to the Continent, but mostly to the hot countries. Our 



