ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 189 



have no right to manufacture their product and sell it for ours. 

 That has been our contention from the start. 



As I told you, we succeeded in securing the passage of this 

 law. At first the tax on colored oleomargarine was 2 cents a 

 pound, but we found it wholly inadequate. We afterwards 

 secured an amendment to that law, taxing the colored article 10 

 cents, and reducing the tax on the uncolored to Y\ of a cent per 

 pound. It seems to me that this ought to be known to you and 

 I am simply taking up your valuable time when I dwell upon any 

 details as to how this fight has been carried on or conducted. 

 So far as the result of the law is concerned, one statement would 

 be satisfactory to you, when I tell you that we reduced the out- 

 put of oleomargarine from 126 million pounds to less than fifty 

 million pounds, so the law has been everything we hoped for 

 and even more. 



I had the pleasure of standing before your organization in 

 Southern Illinois a year ago. At that time we had some im- 

 portant cases before the Supreme court of the United States. 

 The decisions were withheld until sometime in July when we 

 got one and the last one, the one effecting us most seriously, was 

 not decided until November, but every decision has been in our 

 favor. There is no longer any question about the constitu- 

 tionality of our law. We have everything on our side, and so 

 far as a question of that kind it has been entirely stricken out, 

 but we are confronted at the present time by another proposition. 



You must understand and realize that the profit in the 

 manufacture of oleomargarine is immense. You can see the 

 incentive, and there is a huge amount of money back of this 

 proposition contributed by the combination that is trying to 

 get control of the dairy product the same as it has control of 

 our beef products today, trying to break clown that law or ge; 

 another. 



I want to say to you that I believe the only industry that 

 the farmers have in this country that is protected is dairying. 

 That may be a broad assertion, it may be something that perhaps 

 I could not sustain in an argument, but I am satisfied in my mind 



