OLEOMARGARINE AND BUTTERINE. 



whose laws forbid the' sale of these bogus goods, urging them to buy and deal in them, and 

 tempting them by the promise of abnormally large profits to violate the laws of their own 

 States and to commit a crime for which they may be punished by fine and imprisonment. The 

 manufacturers of these adulterated goods purposely make them a close imitation of butter in 

 order to facilitate gross deception ; and while it is true that the manufacturers and wholesalers 

 generally sell the goods for imitation of pure dairy butter, they know perfectly well that the 

 retailers are going to sell them for genuine, and they know also that were it not for the fact 

 that the retailer can and will sell them for butter these goods could not be sold at all. < 



"So rapidly has this deplorable disposition to defy law in order to make money been 

 developed and strengthened by the friends of this slaughter-house butter, in order to hinder 

 us in our work and prevent, if possible, the enforcement of our present statute, that a large 

 number of grocers in New York City have perfected an organization to resist the execution of 

 these laws, and have raised a fund and employed attorneys with that unworthy object in view. 

 Every one of these dealers, when he leaves the store at the close of the day, goes home for 

 the night well knowing that his property is quite secure because he is protected by the laws of 

 this great State, and that the whole power of the commonwealth is pledged to protect him 

 and his property against all who would do him harm. And yet we witness to-day the startling 

 and shameful spectacle of a number of business men, so called, banding themselves together 

 to resist the laws of their own State, upon whose protecting care they so confidently and com- 

 pletely rely for all that makes them secure in their property and safe in their persons and 

 homes." 



In Ohio a strong movement is under way to procure the passage of a statute by which a 

 dairy commission shall be constituted for the purpose of enforcing laws already in 

 existence against the manufacture and sale of fraudulent dairy products. Last autumn the 

 Ohio Dairymen's Protective Association, a recently formed organization, took a hand in the 

 election, and in several counties their interest was sufficient to elect members of the Legisla- 

 ture who were pledged to use their best efforts against bogus butter and its allies. 



In August last the National Dairymen's Protective Association, formed for the purpose of de- 

 vising means to guard the agricultural interest against the frauds that bid fair, if continued, to 

 ruin them, adopted a resolution instructing their officers to issue an address to the dairy farmers 

 of America, and this has recently been published. Its terse and epigrammatic statement of the 

 evils growing out of the nefarious traffic in counterfeit butter are well worthy of reproduction 

 here, and will be read with interest not only by the farmers to whom the address is made, 

 but by the merchants whose interests are jeoparded and the public whose health is endangered. 

 The address says : 



" For ten years an enemy to the interests of butter producers has been steadily gaining 

 strength by fraud and deception, until the natural product of the dairy has become profitless 

 and ruin threatens an industry second to none other in agriculture and the equal of any in our 

 national economy. Oleomargarine, butterine, suine, and other compounds fraudulently sold 

 under the name of butter have made an investment in land and cattle of over $200,000,000 

 devoted to dairy purposes and an annual production of $500,000,000 per year almost value- 

 less, not by honest competition, but by deception of the most criminal kind, while the con- 

 sumer has been swindled correspondingly. 



" Our export trade in butter has been almost ruined by the prejudice created against our 

 product in the foreign markets of the world. Values of dairy products have declined more 

 than 50 per cent., and what would be a profitable industry under natural conditions has become 

 a losing trade. Through the paralyzation of this great industry, all others in America suffer 

 in sympathy. 



" Those who are the cause of this loss and injury to the farmers of America and the com- 

 merce of the country are enemies of the public weal. They not only wrong the producer of 

 legitimate butter, but impose upon the consumer. Were their products sold honestly for 

 what they are the wrong would be great enough, but marketed under the name of butter, at 

 prices far below what a genuine article can be procured for, consumers are hoodwinked into- 



