OLIGARCHY 



4369 



OLIVE 



Oleomargarine imported from foreign countries 

 is taxed fifteen cents a pound. The justice of 

 this taxation is open to question, as good oleo- 

 margarine is not at all objectionable and should 

 be accessible at a low price to families of small 

 income. The advisability of revising the pres- 

 ent law is being urged by the Bureau of Inter- 

 nal Revenue, in whose jurisdiction the enforce- 

 ment of the law is placed. In normal years a 

 considerable quantity of oleomargarine is ex- 

 ported to the West Indies; European count: 

 especially Holland, import from the United 

 States large amounts of oleo oil. The annual 

 production of oleomargarine is over 140,000,000 

 pounds, in the United States alone. 



The name buttcrine, formerly applied to an 

 especially high quality of oleomargarine, has 

 no longer any particular significance, and is not 

 used in the text of laws regulating the sale of 

 substitutes for butter. See BUTTER; ADULTERA- 

 TION OF FOODSTUFFS AND CLOTHING. 



OLIGARCHY, ol'igarki, a form of govern- 

 ment in which the ruling power is vested in a 

 few persons, self-appointed. The word origi- 

 nated in ancient Greece, where most of the 

 cities had this form of government between 

 the time of the patriarchal kings of the Odyssey 

 and Iliad and the rise of the tyrants. Oligarchy 

 is the opposite of a pure democracy, where all 

 citizens have a direct share in the government, 

 and differs also from a republican form of gov- 

 ernment, in which the people elect officers to 

 represent them in the councils of the nation. 

 Those who favor an oligarchical form of rule 

 believe that it works for the best interests of 

 the state to have a selected group of the most 

 enlightened citizens control affairs. In actual 

 practice, however, oligarchies have always given 

 the ruling class the opportunity to further their 

 own interests. Oligarchies exist to-day in some 

 states nominally republics or monarchies, but 

 they never endure against the spread of popu- 

 1 u education. An example of oligarchical rule 

 of the better sort is the government established 

 in Kngland by Oliver Cromwell. See ARIS- 

 TOCRACY. 



OLIPHANT, ol'i}ant, LAWRENCE (1829-1888), 

 an Knuli-li writer and ti;i\.l.r, born at Cape 

 Town, South Africa. In his youth he traveled 

 extensively with his parents, lived for some time 

 in Ceylon, and on his return to England was 

 called to the bar. He visited the scene of al- 

 most every war of importance between 1853 

 and 1861. Thus he spent considerable time at 

 Sebastopol, with Garibaldi in Italy, and 

 in Japan. 

 274 



In 1865 he was elected to Parliament, but 

 two years later, having come under the influ- 

 ence of T. L. Harris, a mystic who had founded 

 a brotherhood at Brocton, N. Y., he took up 

 his residence in the community; and for fifteen 

 years he and his mother and later his wife were 

 virtually the slaves of Harris. After breaking 

 with the latter, Oliphant lived for a time in 

 Palestine, but later returned to London. He 

 was eccentric and visionary, but a man of real 

 genius. His works include The Russian Shores 

 oj the Black Sea, the novel Piccadilly, Haifa, 

 or Life in Modern Palestine and Episodes in a 

 Lift of Adventure. 



OLIPHANT, MRS. MARGARET (1828-1897), an 

 English author, born at Wallyford, Scotland. 

 In 1852 she married her cousin, Francis Oli- 

 phant, an artist, who lived but seven years 

 after the marriage. Left with three children to 

 support, she at once began to devote herself 

 diligently to novel writing, and during the re- 

 mainder of her life was a most industrious and 

 careful worker. Her works are notably uniform . 

 in quality, and their humor and sympathetic 

 character-painting give them high rank, though 

 they cannot be counted among the really great 

 English novels. They include The Chronicles 

 of Carlingford, composed of The Rector and 

 the Doctor's Family and Salem Chapel; Harry 

 Joscelyn; A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen, and 

 numerous others. She also wrote The Makers 

 of Florence, The Reign of Queen Anne, The 

 Makers of Modern Rome, The Literary History 

 of England from 1790 to 1825, and other criti- 

 cal and historical works. 



OL'IVE, one of the oldest of fruit trees and 

 one of great economical importance. It was an 

 olive leaf which Noah's dove brought back to 

 the Ark (Genesis VIII, 11), and it is thought 

 that Palestine or possibly Greece is the native 

 home of the olive. It has been introduced into 

 many other tropical and semitropical coun- 

 tries. Large olive orchards are found in Cali- 

 fornia, and the trees are raised in othei warm 

 sections of the United States. Italy raises 

 more olives than any other land, and they are 

 grown in Algeria, France, Asia Minor and Spain, 

 the latter country having been called by poet* 

 "the land of the vine and olr 



Description. The oliv. in is a hardy, long- 

 li\< .I tr. >, said to attain the age of 1,000 years. 

 It is low-branched, and the usual height is be- 

 tween twenty and thirty feet. The leaves are 

 evergreen and lance-ehaped, dusky green above 

 Alutish beneath. The flowers are fragrant 

 of a yellowish-white hue. The entire tree 



