22 OLEOMARGARINE AND BUTTERINE. 



gradients of this butterine may be reckoned about as follows : 40 pounds fine creamery butter, 

 25 cents per pound, $10 ; 50 pounds leaf lard, 6 cents per pound, $3 ; 5 pounds stearine, 8 

 cents per pound, 40 cents ; labor, salt, and sundries, $1.60. Total cost of 100 pounds, say 

 $15, or 15 cents per pound average cost. Sold by the manufacturer at 20 cents per pourid, it 

 gives him a profit of five cents on every pound made ; and retailed by the grocer at 25 cents 

 per pound it gives him a profit of $5 on every 100 pounds sold. The other grades are scaled 

 in about the same proportions, the lowest priced article of butter being 13 cents per pound. 

 All the processes under which the butterine is made are covered by United States patents. 



" In one factory which I visited," said this gentleman, Hon. Joseph Sampson of Storm 

 Lake, Iowa, "I found that the owner had been obliged to change his engine three times 

 during the present year with a view to increasing the capacity for greater production of his 

 * fine creamery butter.' At first he only had a capacity of 10,000 pounds per day, he said, 

 'but now, he added, with a self-satisfied air, ' I can make 55,000 pounds per day ; and if I had 

 orders enough I could make more by running night and day.' I accompanied him into his 

 refrigerator and shipping room and saw the 'butter' ready for shipment in all sorts of pack- 

 ages, ranging from the five-pound box for select family use up to the fifty-six pound tub. 

 -designed for the pineries of Wisconsin and the mining camps of Colorado and Montana. 

 ' How do you brand it ?' I asked him. 'Oh,' was the reply, anything a man pleases. Any- 

 thing we are asked to put on we put on to suit the fancy of the customer.' When I wanted to 

 see the lard hashing machines in the upper rooms of his factory, he smiled and shrugged his 

 shoulders, and declined to accompany me to the place where the lard was getting its initiatory 

 'baptism of chemicals." 



All the manufacturers he visited frankly admitted that when the butter left their factories it 

 lost its identity, and was sold by retailers everywhere for first-class creamery butter. In his 

 quest he learned also that many grocers engaged in the traffic made it a practice to keep low grade, 

 rancid dairy butter in stock, side by side with the oleomargarine product, and ask their cus- 

 tomers to try the samples and judge which was the best. This, he said, was a favorite trick 

 in the Chicago retail trade. 



OLEOMARGARINE NOT WHOLESOME. 



" Soon after I made my first annual report," said State Dairy Commissioner Brown, speak- 

 ing of his recent report, which is regarded as a very valuable contribution to what may be 

 termed the literature of oleomargarine, " and when I had become thoroughly awake to the 

 magnitude and the iniquity of the traffic in counterfeit butter, and the evils it gave rise to through- 

 out the State, I determined to institute a thorough investigation with a view of satisfying my- 

 self upon what I regard as the main question, Whether oleomargarine is \vholi$ome or not. 

 It was obvious to me that if it was wholesome as an article of food, the only legislation that 

 could long endure would doubtless be as to regulations for its sale ; but if unwholesome, that 

 its sale could be absolutely prohibited. When I began this investigation, I secured the ser- 

 vices of Drs. Elwyn Waller and Edward D. Martin, of the School of Mines, Columbia College, 

 tooth chemists of established reputation and acknowledged skill. Their labors, together with 

 those of other gentlemen, including Dr. R. D. Clark of Albany, who assisted them, have been 

 extended over a period of about eight months, and have resulted in proving, beyond the perad- 

 venture of a doubt, that the product so largely sold here and elsewhere for human food is un- 

 wholesome. They established, by a series of experiments on oleomargarine manufactured in 

 accordance with the formulas laid down in the patents, and with fresh beef fat as the chief con- 

 stituent, that these artificial butters are so decidedly insoluble and indigestible as to be utterly 

 unfit for human food. One of their experiments, which is described and illustrated in the re- 

 port, was in artificial digestion. I am not enough of a chemist to give you a technical descrip- 

 tion of the process, but I can tell you that samples of the counterfeit butter that were sub- 

 jected to the fluid representing the gastric juices, retained their consistency "and solidity for 



