14 OLEOMARGARINE AND BUTTERINE. 



" Not long ago I attended a convention of the National Butter, Cheese, and Egg Associa- 

 tion in Chicago, at which Mr. Stern, who represents Armour & Co., of that city, admitted 

 before a committee that his firm sold neutral lard to creameries in the West. When he was 

 asked whether the firm bought butter for manufacturing purposes from those creameries, he 

 replied naively; ' No, indeed; we buy pure butter, as we prefer to do our own mixing.' He 

 said also that the firm colored their product so as to make it look like June butter. Now, 

 neutral lard is simply lard deodorized so that it has neither taste nor smell. Take 5 or 10 per 

 cent, of dairy butter and mix it with this substance, and you can produce a butter that only an 

 expert can distinguish from the genuine dairy product. This neutral lard is heavily shipped 

 throughout the West, and there can be no question that much bogus butter comes into the 

 market under the guise of the genuine article. 



" The injury done to our export trade and to our reputation abroad as an honest-dealing 

 nation cannot be estimated. The frands in the trade have become so glaring that the German 

 Government has taken measures to prevent them, and now every shipment of butter to Ger- 

 many must be guaranteed. In other words, upon its arrival it is subjected to analysis, and if 

 not found pure, it is rejected." 



DAMAGE TO THE DAIRY INTERESTS. 



With regard to the injury done to the dairy interests of the State by the traffic in oleomar- 

 garine, Commissioner Brown says : 



" There is invested in the dairy business of this State more than $300, 000,000, and the annual 

 product of the dairy amounts to more than $600,000,000. That an industry of such magnitude 

 as this, and contributing so much to the material interests of our State, is well worthy a full, 

 fair share of the care and attention of our Legislature cannot be gainsaid, and that the pro- 

 ducts of the dairy being consumed by the people to so great an extent as an article of food 

 should be kept pure and free from adulterations of all sorts will not be disputed by any one, 

 saving only those who would get gain by imposing a fraud upon their customers. I am a 

 resident of the county of Oneida, and know that it requires a much larger sum to maintain 

 police establishments and to enforce the criminal statutes in that county alone than was appro- 

 priated by the Legislature to carry on the work of this department. It will be readily seen 

 that to cover the entire State with our work, and to give to each dairy county and to every 

 .section of the State that care and attention which its importance demands is impossible, and 

 we are obliged to prosecute our work at such points within the State as will result in the ac- 

 complishment of that which promises to best serve the interest of the whole. Our appropria- 

 tion is $50,000. This, to the average farmer, seems to be a large sum of money, and so it is, 

 but if, for instance, we had at our disposal $120,000, which would enable us to accomplish 

 very much more than we can now, the tax would amount to about four cents on every $1,000 

 of valuation. To raise such a sum, the farmer whose farm is assessed at $5,000, would pay a 

 tax of twenty cents. Two pounds of cheese at ten cents per pound, a single pound of fine, 

 pure creamery cheese, or even the price of two ten-cent cigars would pay his tax." 



" The dairymen of New York are not the only ones who suffer fro'm this nefarious traffic," 

 said Assistant State Dairy Commissioner Van Valkenburgh. "In all parts of the country 

 oleomargarine factories are in full blast, and the annual product of the United States must be 

 at least 50,000,000 pounds. I cannot give you the exact figures of the butter trade in this city, 

 but it will sufficiently show the break in the price to mention that while we have handled 13,- 

 000,000 more pounds of butter in 1885 than we did in 1882, we have received less for it by 

 $3,500,000 than we did in that year. " 



New York, which leads all the States in the matter of dairy production, is, of course, the 

 chief sufferer ; but there are other sections where the abuses of the nefarious traffic are se- 

 verely felt. Hon. W. D. Hoard, President of the Northwestern Dairymen's Association, said 

 recently : 



