I04 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I915. 



important from the standpoint of the purpose of the law and 

 the statement of it is very apt to be misleading to the consumer 

 and may frequently be unfair to manufacturers. 



For the intent of the law clearly is that samples shall be 

 analyzed for the purpose of determining whether they are in 

 accord with their guarantees. To state that they have been 

 found so is to state the result of the analysis. To publish re- 

 sults showing that two samples of a given brand were both up 

 to guaranty and none were 'below is to indicate that a feeder 

 may buy that brand with pretty fair assurance that he will get 

 what is guaranteed. To show that those two samples both 

 happened to be 2 per cent or so higher than their guarantees 

 frequently tends to mislead him. For the fact that two sam- 

 ples both ran high, is no indication that the goods of that brand 

 which he buys from a different lot will do equally well. No 

 matter how high some single sample mny test, the only analysis 

 that a buyer has any right or reason to expect from a feed is 

 that guaranteed by the maker on the label. 



If, however, some brand of feed uniformly runs as much as 

 2 per cent above its guaranty, the manufacturer is not living 

 up to the spirit of the feeding stuffs law in placing so low a 

 guaranty upon his goods. For it is clearly the intent of the 

 law that feeds shall carry guarantees indicative of their value ; 

 and to be so the guarantees should be as high as possible with- 

 out making it likely that some lots will run below them. And 

 if in publishing the exact percentages of protein, etc., found 

 in each individual sample, the Experiment Station helps such 

 a manufacturer to prove to customers that his feed is as good 

 as another with an honest guaranty which means something. 

 it is throwing all its weight against the man who is living up 

 to the spirit of the law in favor of the man who is trying to 

 keep within the letter of the law while evading its spirit. 



It may also happen that two brands of feed of the same sort 

 with the same guarantees and on th*' average about the same 

 analysis are shipped by different manufacturers. The samples 

 examined may give considerably better results in the case of 

 one than of the other; whereas if other cars of each brand 

 had happened to be the ones sampled the one making the poorer 

 showing might have shown up as well as the other did and 

 vice versa. A man assuming on the basis of one or two 

 analyses that one of those feeds was decidedly superior to the 



