Oleomargarine and Butterine. 



A PLAIN PKESENTATION OF THE MOST GIGANTIC SWINDLE 



OF MODEEN TIMES. ' 



HISTORY OF OLEOMARGARINE. 



OLEOMARGARINE, the basis of all the frauds in butter, is the outcome of an ingenious 

 Frenchman's notion that the butter diffused through the milk of the cow is due to the absorp- 

 tion of the animal's fat. Taking some minced beef suet, a few fresh sheeps' stomachs cut 

 into small pieces, a little carbonate of potash and some water, this Frenchman Hippolyte 

 Mege by name subjected the mixture to a heat of 113 degrees Fahrenheit; and so, by the 

 action of pepsin in the sheeps' stomachs, separated the fat from the other tissues. By 

 hydraulic pressure this fat was again separated into stearine and margarine ; and putting ten 

 pounds of the latter into a churn with four pints of milk, three pints of water, a little annoto, 

 Mege succeeded in turning out a compound sufficiently like butter to pass for that article, its 

 only lack being the golden yellow color that characterizes all good butter. 



Whether he had produced a deleterious stuff containing the germs of disease and of all 

 manner of loathsome parasites, as one set of scientific experts pronounced, or something far 

 more wholesome than half the butter in the market, as another set emphatically declared, was 

 of little moment to the discoverer, so long as the thing was likely to prove profitable. He 

 patented his process, and found no difficulty in selling rights to handle it in France, England, 

 Holland, Germany, and the United States. 



The sole right to issue license for the making of oleomargarine under this patent now lies, 

 it is said, with the American Dairy Company (whose dairies are all fat-boiling factories), 

 which has issued licenses to factories in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cincinnati, New 

 York, New Haven, and other cities. Several parties embarked in the business without troub- 

 ling themselves about paying for the right to do so, but the bulk of the trade is in the hands 

 of licensed firms. The Commercial Manufacturing Company of New York had the lead in 

 this business for several years, but when the new patents, under which animal fat of all de- 

 scriptions could be used, began to come into operation, it was found that material more fit for 

 the soap boiler than for human consumption was being extensively manufactured into butter, 

 and in 1882 the company abandoned this branch of their business. 



The Commercial Manufacturing Company began operations in 1876, and their trade soon 

 attained considerable proportions, as much as 500,000 pounds of fat per week having been con. 

 verted by them into oleomargarine in a single week, which, at the rate of 2^ pounds of fat to 

 i pound of oil, would yield 200,000 pounds of oil or butter. This rate of production was 

 maintained up to the middle of 1882, when it fell off, owing to two causes, one the passage of 

 an act by the Legislature of New York directing that all oleomargarine should be branded 

 with its true name and forbidding its being colored to resemble butter, and the other the gen- 

 erally prevailing low prices for dairy butter at that time. These low prices rendered the 

 manufacture of sham butter unremunerative. When the retail price of genuine butter falls be- 

 low twenty-three cents a pound it does not pay to make the imitation product. The average 

 wholesale price for oleomargarine up to the time of the passage of the act was thirteen 



