4 OLEOMARGARINE AND BUTTERINE. 



cents a pound for the oil and fifteen cents for the butter. Since that time it has sold 

 as low as eleven cents, and now rules at about eleven and one-half cents. Last summer it 

 sold as low as ten cents per pound. 



In a report prepared in 1880 by Mr. Archibald, British Consul at this port, that gentleman 

 furnished the following particulars to the British Board of Trade, at whose request the report 

 was made : 



"During the past two years the quantity of fat manufactured into oleomargarine oil and 

 butter by the Commercial Manufacturing Company of New York has been about 200,000 

 pounds a week, yielding 80,000 pounds of oil and butter. Of this about 75 per cent., or 60,- 

 ooo pounds, was the oil product, oleomargarine, all of which was exported in barrels or 

 tierces, for the most part under the name of oleomargarine, but sometimes as butter fat, 01 

 simply as oil. This would give a yearly exportation by this company alone of about 3,000,- 

 ooo pounds. But it is estimated that nearly an equal quantity is being made by the manufac- 

 turers outside of New York, so that the total quantity of oleomargarine exported from this 

 port may be stated at about 6,000,000 pounds annually." 



Besides this quantity of oil for making sham butter, a large quantity of the butter itself 

 was and is exported, Great Britain coming in for the lion's share of it. Sometimes it is 

 shipped as butter fat, oleomargarine, or butterine, but nearly always as butter, pure and sim- 

 ple. An effort was made by the dealers in legitimate dairy products to prevail upon the cus- 

 toms' authorities to require that nothing but natural butter should be exported; but as it was 

 impossible to inspect and test all the shipments, and as the oleomargarine interest was fully 

 able to look after itself, this proved unavailing, and from that time to this the compounds 

 turned out by the oleomargarine factories have found their way in ever-increasing quantities. 

 to England and the Continent. All of the export bogus butter is put up in half butts or fir- 

 kins in precisely the same way as the genuine article, or made up into pound pots, covered 

 with muslin wrappers, stamped like pure butter and packed in boxes. It is sold every day in 

 London shops at from ninepence to a shilling a pound. 



The great bulk of the oil finds its way to Germany and Holland, enabling the latter coun- 

 try to keep up its reputation as a butter market, without the trouble and expense of keeping 

 up its stock of cows. The heaviest shipments are to Rotterdam, whence the oil is sent to a 

 place called Oes, where it is mixed with a certain proportion of milk, to give it a suspicion of 

 the real butter taste, then colored to make the outward resemblance perfect, aad then churned 

 into butterine. This the thrifty Hollanders ship to France and England to be sold as best 

 Dutch butter, although a proportion of what goes to France finds its way to England under 

 the guise of the product of the dairies of Normandy and Brittany, side by side with tubs of 

 " real Irish butter " hailing from the self-same factory on the American side of the Atlantic* 



No wonder that the reputation of genuine American butter than which the world pro- 

 duces no superior should suffer in foreign lands when practices like these prevail. Every 

 pound of the sham butter that is sold takes the place of a pound of the genuine product of the 

 dairy, and thus the dairy products of the United States are brought into disrepute, and the 

 foreign demand, instead of increasing rapidly, as it naturally should, is daily becoming 

 smaller and smaller. The crime of the traditional Connecticut Yankee who gloried in selling 

 the Britishers wooden nutmegs, sinks into utter insignificance as compared with this monster 

 swindle. 



MOVEMENTS AGAINST OLEOMARGARINE. 



Among the recent movements against the shameful traffic in this city the action taken by 

 the New York Retail Grocers' Union was most significant. This body, which includes among 

 its members most of the respectable grocers of New York, has definitely put itself on record 

 as encouraging the sale of all pure goods, and discouraging and endeavoring in all legal 

 ways to prevent all deceptions that are or may be practiced on customers by the sale of imita- 



