MAY 191 



cheap. What matters it to them that an ancient and festering mid- 

 den heap stands before the door of the dairy, or that the water with 

 which the vessels are washed is practically a concentrated sewage 

 fluid, or that the butter itself is treated with boracic acid, fusel 

 oil, and any other half-poisonous chemical that, forbidden upon 

 the Continent, may be freely used to ' bring up ' foodstuffs for 

 the benefit of the British customer ? 



Nor is it only with the foreign butter that we have to compete ; 

 there remains the margarine which, as the deputation reminded 

 Mr. Chaplin, is coloured to imitate it, and, thanks to such colour- 

 ing, very frequently sold as butter by the ingenious British trader. 



A few years ago I had the advantage of going over a large 

 margarine factory on the Continent. In the course of con- 

 versation with the proprietors, I mentioned that I had been 

 informed that persons in Great Britain who purported to supply 

 the public with the best of butter were among their largest 

 customers, and asked them if they felt at liberty to tell me 

 whether or no this were the truth. After a little hesitation they 

 replied that it was quite true, and changed the subject. 



This margarine factory was a fearful and wonderful place. 

 There were the barrels of fat extracted from American cattle or 

 other animals a great deal of the success in the manufacture 

 depends upon a fine taste in fat ; indeed, I gathered that the 

 buyer will never do well unless he is gifted with the true flair in 

 this important matter. Then there were the steam churns, for the 

 best qualities of margarine are mixed with a proportion of genuine 

 butter ; and with these other machines innumerable. What chiefly 

 remains upon my mind, however, is a vision of the subject-matter 

 of the stuff, great lumps of oily nastiness large as men's heads, 

 that bobbed up and down in cauldrons of seething yellow grease. 

 If their ultimate consumers could have seen them at this stage I 

 think they would have given up ' butter ' for a week or two. 

 Yet after those lumps had gone through all the necessary processes 

 and refinements, the results were quite pleasing to behold there 

 lay the ' butter ' in shining heaps, some of it yellow, some white, 



