3 OLEOMARGARINE AND BUTTERINE. 



" My experience of the trial of cases of this kind has been somewhat limited, but in all the 

 cases that have so far come up the defendants have invariably denied that they represented the 

 stuff they sold to be butter. 



" In the Hill case notice of appeal was given after the close of the trial and the payment 

 under protest of the fine of $100. It should come up before the Court of Appeals at an early 

 day, but I have not seen it on the calendar for the next sitting of that tribunal. There are 

 now pending four cases in the Court of Special Sessions, and thirty-three in the Court of Gen- 

 eral Sessions. There have been complaints as to some of the minor courts that proceedings of 

 this nature were unnecessarily delayed in order that the judges below might await the opinion 

 of those in the higher court; but 1 do not attribute the delay to this cause. In the case of the 

 Court of General Sessions, where the calendar is overcrowded, oleomargarine cases must wait, 

 as liquor license cases do, and hence it is that nearly all the dealers arrested elect to be tried 

 in that court. In many of these cases a civil suit is pending for the recovery of the $500 

 penalty for the violation of the law, but many dealers have preferred to pay the penalty rather 

 than go to trial. 



" The four cases that are to come before the Court of Special Sessions will be heard next 

 week. They are all for selling oleomargarine for butter, as are all that have been acted upon 

 hitherto, and the defendants are John H. Lyddy, John Howell, Charles H. Rohrs, and Her- 

 man Schnaars, all grocers." 



At the time of the trial of the Marks case in the Court of General Sessions, and after 

 notice of appeal had been given, the dealers in oleomargarine asserted openly that no more 

 trials for violations of the act of 1885 would be held until after the decision of that appeal by 

 the court in Albany. They intimated that the ground for their assertions came from the 

 office of the district-attorney. Several members of the trade who were deeply interested in the 

 suppression of this nefarious traffic and the enforcement of the law called upon District- 

 Attorney Martine, who had then newly assumed office. He assured them that he was in 

 ignorance whether any such agreement had been entered into by his predecessor, and declared 

 that if any arrangement of that sort had been made it would not influence his action. And 

 that it did not was evidenced by his subsequently bringing several cases to trial. That they 

 were postponed was due to the crowded condition of the calendar. 



" You can scarcely conceive to how great an extent this fraudulent traffic in counterfeit 

 butter, whose component parts are animal fat, nitric acid, and other deleterious articles, is 

 practiced by unprincipled grocers and others," said Mr. Arthur C. Salmon, the counsel for the 

 State Dairy Commissioner in the City of Brooklyn and Kings County, when asked as to the 

 progress made by the department in its efforts to enforce the law. " I came across a case not 

 long since in which it appeared that five different samples of alleged pure butter were pur- 

 chased at a single store for as many different prices, and each of these samples proved, upon 

 analysis, to belong to the same grade of oleomargarine. It is not unusual for dealers in this 

 counterfeit butter to sell the contents of a single tub at as many as three different prices, the 

 rate being fixed in each case entirely by the character of the customer. 



" We have detected oleomargarine in the stores of dealers in every part of the City a r . 

 Brooklyn, some of whom seemed to be above suspicion ; but I believe that at present very 

 few first-class grocers handle it- As to how much bogus butter is sold here it would be hard 

 to say, but the latest statistics I have seen show that the sales in the State in 1884 amounted 

 to 40,000,000 pounds. Inasmuch as the traffic has not been materially interfered with in many 

 parts of the State, the increase in 1884 must have been considerable." 



With regard to the act of 1885, which was passed while the test case was under con- 

 sideration in the Court of Appeals, and which is referred to in their opinion, Mr. Salmon 

 aid: 



" This enactment prohibits the manufacture or sale of any oleaginous substance in imita- 

 tion or semblance of butter. It not only prohibits the sale of oleomargarine as butter, but if 

 sold at all it must not be colored or made in imitation of cream butter. The intention 



