ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 263 



The manufacture and sale of yellow oleomargarine is now prohibited in 

 31 states with five-sixths of the population of the country; yet four-fifths 

 of all that is sold is sold in these same states in defiance of their laws. If 

 your state prohibits the sale of yellow oleomargarine by law, why shouldn't 

 your congressmen and senators vote to aid in enforcing these laws by 

 placing a 10 cents tax upon the outlawed article? They will if you will ask 

 them to. But the farmers themselves must ask this. 



State laws are not enforced because the counterfeit is of such a char- 

 acter that is cannot be detected except by chemical analysis. 



The sale of oleomargarine is so damaging because it goes right to the 

 market centers where our surplus butter should find sale, and there de- 

 presses the price of butter by being offered largely as butter, but at lower 

 prices than we can produce butter from milk. While only a very small 

 proportion of the butter made in this counthy is consumed in Chicago, New 

 York, Boston, and Philadelphia, it is those markets which set the prices 

 for the entire country. When Chicago is filled with oleomargarine, and 

 large quantities are sold in Philadelphia and other markets where cream- 

 eries might otherwise ship, they are compelled to flood New York and 

 Boston with butter, which drives prices downward in every market in the 

 country. Thus the overloading of the New York market alone will de- 

 press prices everywhere, as when New York drops every other market 

 must do the same. 



A circular on this 10 cent tax m ovement issued by the officers of the 

 National Dairy Union contains the following: 



"This tax will make the yellow article cost the retailer so much that he 

 will not have such big profits as incentives to sell it to people who want 

 butter in violation of the state laws and, as few people want oleomargarine 

 when they know it, it will probab ly stop the sale of yellow oleomargarine 

 so long as the price of butter remain s below 28 cents at wholesale in New 

 York and Chicago. This will turn into the pockets of the farmers the 

 millions of dollars now going to enrich the unscrupulous retailer and the 

 millionaire maker of oleomargari ne, who sell for butter at butter prices a 

 compound which it costs less than h alf what butter costs the farmer to pro- 

 duce. 



"If butter brings 3 cents per po und more, and this law would surely 

 advance it that much, it is you who will get the increase in price, which 



