68 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



stances. I find that everywhere in this universal land of 

 freedom altogether too much liberty is taken with what men 

 eat ; and everybody is justifying it, winking at it, and say- 

 ing, "Oh, well; let every man's eyes be his chief law; let 

 every man's taste decide for himself." We have not thought 

 how very important this question of the adulteration of but- 

 ter is. Not only does it affect the purchaser, but the pro- 

 ducer has a right to ask the government to protect his busi- 

 ness against a competition based on a cheat. Competition 

 fair and square he has no right to ask protection against ; 

 but he has a right to be protected against competition based 

 upon a cheat. Out of a thousand pounds of oleo nine hundred 

 and ninety-nine pounds are consumed under the supposition, 

 when it is eaten, that it is butter. The man who makes it 

 knows what it is, the dealer who buys it knows what it is, 

 the boarding-house or hotel keeper knows what it is ; but 

 the consumer supposes it to be butter. Men tell you that it 

 is a healthful product. That it is not,true ; it is not a health- 

 ful product. It is almost entirely pure carbon. Its melting 

 point is 105°, and the bodily heat cannot melt it. Natural 

 butter melts at 98°. Artificial butter refuses to melt below 

 105°, and remains in the stomach, to the severe nervous ex- 

 haustion of the person. And yet they tell us it is healthful ! 

 Now, the French food commission investigated this sub- 

 ject, the physicians of France studied it, and they found that 

 wherever they fed this substitute for butter to the patients 

 in their hospitals there was a serious depression of nervous 

 energy — that the patients began to decline. They traced it 

 to the use of artificial butter, and they saw why it should be 

 so. Now, if it is not good for a sick man, proportionally it 

 is not good for a well man. Then, again, the present situa- 

 tion is such that you have no guarantee of the purity of that 

 article, and the wildest fraud conceivable can "have free 

 course, run and be glorified" inside of an oleomargarine tub. 

 There is no law to-day to guarantee its healthful ness. I was 

 creditably informed, a few years since, that one hundred bar- 

 rels of oil rendered from hogs that had died of hog cholera 

 were traced from Iowa to oleo factories in Chicago. Mr. 

 Sherman, dairy commissioner of Iowa, informed me that he 

 understood the same to be fact. Be that as it may, we should 



