CONGRESS. (OLEOMARGARINE AND DAIRY- PRODUCTS.) 



199 



for the majority of the Committee on Agriculture, 

 said: 



" The proposed legislation is not intended to be 

 oppressive or unduly arbitrary, and only proposes 

 adequate protection for the consuming public. It 

 is the manifest duty of the governing power to 

 prevent fraud and imposition upon those unable 

 to protect themselves. Legislation tending to this 

 end is as legitimate as laws for the prevention 

 and punishment of crime and misdemeanors. 

 Pure food of all kinds should be guaranteed to 

 every citizen. The purchaser of all articles of 

 food has a right to know what he is buying and 

 consuming. If disguised, mixed, or blended, the 

 manufacturer should be compelled to disclose the 

 kind and quality of the ingredients used and 

 certify to the purity and wholesomeness of the 

 materials sold to a trusting public. It is not un- 

 just or inquisitional to subject producers and man- 

 ufacturers to governmental inspection and control. 

 Police supervision has long been exercised over 

 the production and sale of milk and other dairy- 

 products. Proper supervision is sought rather 

 than opposed by every honest manufacturer and 

 dealer. Reputable and inviolate trade-marks are 

 invaluable. Manufacturers in all branches of 

 textile and other industries fully realize this fact 

 and carefully maintain high standards of excel- 

 lence. This is equally true of the producers of 

 cereals and other food-products. Why should 

 manufacturers of oleomargarine or butterine be 

 an exception to the general rule? Indeed, it is 

 difficult to understand upon what reasonable 

 grounds manufacturers of honestly made oleo- 

 margarine object to the proposed legislation. 



" The pending majority bill, if enacted into 

 law, will, hopefully, make the manufacture of 

 oleomargarine colored in imitation of butter and 

 deceptively sold unprofitable. To this end the 

 internal-revenue tax upon colored oleomargarine 

 is increased from 2 cents to 10 cents per pound, 

 while the tax upon the uncolored article is re- 

 duced to one-fourth cent per pound, a nominal 

 tax, merely imposed to maintain Government 

 supervision and police control. 



" The discrimination between the colored and 

 uncolored will not and is not intended to ruin a 

 legitimate industry. Your committee were 

 strengthened in this conviction by testimony given 

 at the committee hearings by manufacturers of 

 oleomargarine. One manufacturer stated that 

 one-half of his monthly product of 700,000 pounds, 

 or about 350,000 pounds, is uncolored. Another 

 manufacturer, when asked ' If, in his opinion, 

 uncolored oleomargarine can be profitably made 

 and sold,' replied : ' It is sold to some extent al- 

 ready, and I am one of those who believe that 

 oleomargarine, having been used for more than a 

 quarter of a century, there are some people at 

 least who have learned that it is a wholesome 

 and cheap article of food, and will continue to 

 use it. These people, if the colored is not obtain- 

 able, will use the uncolored.' 



" Properly manufactured from pure materials, 

 the wholesomeness of oleomargarine is not chal- 

 lenged. The only question at issue is: 'Shall or 

 shall not oleomargarine be colored and sold in 

 the semblance of yellow butter?' Using the 

 words of ex-Gov. Hoard, who ably argued the 

 case from a diaryman's standpoint before the 

 Committee on Agriculture, ' It is not oleo- 

 mrgarine the substitute for butter that we are 

 ighting, but oleomargarine the counterfeit.' We 

 lo not care how much oleomargarine is made and 

 aid as long as it is so manufactured as not to 

 anflict through deception with the sale of our 

 3roduct. If a man prefers a mixture of lard, 



tallow, and cotton-seed oil to butter, there is no 

 reason why he should not have it. We do not 

 ask that a single ingredient that is nourishing 

 be omitted from the mixture. He can have it to 

 imitate butter in taste, smell, grain, and con- 

 sistency we concede him all this. We only ask 

 one thing that there be about the product itself 

 some characteristic by which the public can read- 

 ily distinguish it from an article of food which 

 has been known for four thousand years in the 

 form it is now produced. We demand the dis- 

 tinction in color because there is no nutrition in 

 color. 



" The great consuming public are still unpro- 

 tected from the imposition of unscrupulous man- 

 ufacturers. The present Federal laws are obvi- 

 ously inadequate to correct a growing evil, and 

 more stringent measures are demanded. Farmers 

 and dairymen in all sections of the country be- 

 lieve that the bill reported by the majority of 

 your" committee, if enacted into law, will, without 

 injustice to the honest manufacturers of oleomar- 

 garine, afford a fair and just degree of protection 

 and give needed encouragement to the great farm 

 industries of the country industries that all will 

 admit form the bed-rock foundation of our na- 

 tional prosperity." 



The minority of the members of the committee 

 presented a substitute bill described as not shaped 

 to prevent the manufacture of oleomargarine or 

 its legitimate sale, but to prevent its fraudulent 

 sale as butter. They said: 



" The purpose of the substitute bill, offered by 

 the minority, is not to prevent the manufacture 

 of oleomargarine or its legitimate sale, but to 

 prevent it from being fraudulently sold for butter. 

 To accomplish this end it throws such safeguards 

 about the retail sale of the article (the only 

 operation in which, under existing law, it is pos- 

 sible for fraud to be committed) as, in our opinion, 

 to entirely eliminate all possibility of fraud in 

 such retail sales and compel all dealers in oleo- 

 margarine to sell it for what it really is and not 

 for butter. The substitute offered is really an 

 amendment to sections 3 and 6 of the existing 

 oleomargarine law. The annual licenses for the 

 manufacture and sale of oleomargarine ($600 for 

 manufacturers, $480 for wholesalers, and $48 for 

 retailers) are not lessened, while the penalties im- 

 posed for violation of the law are materially in- 

 creased." In advocating the minority measure, 

 Mr. Foster, of Illinois, said: 



" Mr. Chairman, in my judgment the bill re- 

 lating to oleomargarine as reported by the major- 

 ity of the Committee on Agriculture is the most 

 unjust and vicious measure in principle ever sub- 

 mitted to a legislative body. To begin with, the 

 bill is not properly named. It should be entitled 

 ' A bill to create a butter monopoly, by throttling 

 legitimate industry.' I can not understand, Mr. 

 Chairman, how any fair-minded man can vote for 

 this bill, especially when he has the alternative 

 of voting for the entirely just and proper measure 

 proposed by the minority of the committee. 



" Let us examine briefly these two measures and 

 see what it is they would accomplish if enacted. 

 The majority biH'on its face provides that oleo- 

 margarine shall be subject in any State to the 

 laws of that State. Now, as 32 States, through 

 their legislatures, have been prevailed upon to 

 pass laws forbidding the manufacture and sale 

 therein of oleomargarine colored in resemblance 

 of butter, if this bill should become a law such 

 colored oleomargarine manufactured in other 

 States could not be taken into and sold in those 32 

 States, even in the original packages. This would 

 at once deprive oleomargarine of the larger part of 



