Si^6 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



BUTTER AND ITS ADULTERATIONS. 



HARVEY W. WILEY, 



Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry U. S. Dep't Agr., Washington, D. C. 



Mr. President and Members of the Indiana Jersey Cattle Breeders^ Association : 



Good butter is a mark of a higher civilization. You may find a school house 

 on every square mile of land, and church spires may be so numerous in every 

 village that they remind you of the masts o'f Liverpool, but if the butter is streaky 

 and rancid, full of big lumps of uncrushed salt, and little lakes of curdy brine> 

 the community has not yet reached the higher civilization and the, nobler culture. 

 Wherever you find sweet, pure butter, there you will find peace, contentment, pros- 

 perity and refinement. 



You have kindly asked me to address you on the subject of "Butter," and from 

 what I have just said the address might also be called the " History of Civilization 

 in America." 



We find the same differences in butter as in men. At the bottom are the pro- 

 telarians — the tub and scrap butters of commerce. Then we rise to the middle 

 class — the butters of good farmers and their wives, full of solid merit, but without 

 pretention. Then the " upper class " is represented by the creamery butter, often 

 depending for value more on a name than on any particular merit. Then we 

 have the genuine aristocracy butter, with a pedigree and a future, old in lineage 

 but fresh in composition. This, of course, is the " Jersey butter." 



Then we have too, the race of shams and dead beats, the oleaginous tramps. 

 These are typified by the oleomargarines, the butterines, and all the other substi- 

 tutes which try to pass in the world as realities. 



To study the characteristics of all these classes, to describe the properties by 

 which they can be isolated and detected, and to point out the way by which the 

 real can be separated from the spurious will be the object of thifs address. - 



METHODS OF COLLECTING BUTTITR FOR ANALYSIS. 



Two methods of collection are employed, viz.: (a) purchase in open market, and 

 (b) from reliable dairy men. 



It is evident that by the first method it will be easy to arrive at the percentage 

 of adulteration, especially when it is considered that these purchases will be made 

 in various parts of the country, and under the operation of State laws bearing 

 on the manufacture and sale of butter substitutes. 



By the second method, samples will be secured which will give accurate data of 

 the composition of genuine butter. 



This research at the present time acquires additional interest from the fact that 

 the manufacture of butter substitutes has reached in this country large proportions. 



