ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 191 



eastern cities, where raw material could be had in large quan- 

 tities and practically became a monopoly. The amount on 

 sale the first year after the law went into effect was reduced 

 more than three-fourths from what it had been the year pre- 

 vious, according to the very best estimates made as to the 

 amount manufactured and sold. Dairymen began to believe 

 that at last a means had been found to check the fraudulent 

 sale of the imitation article, but they found that a large 

 amount was being sold, and the law was not complied with 

 by the retail dealers excepting so far as to take out a license. 

 The retailer would take out a license, buy the goods from 

 the manufacturer, properly marked and stamped and sell it 

 as butter at whatever price he could obtain ; sometimes almost 

 as much as the best creamery butter. The States then took 

 up this question, and in many of them stringent laws were 

 passed and in some of them prohibitory laws went into effect. 



Then came the fight in the courts and the celebrated 

 original package decision, which, by some peculiar construc- 

 tion of the Inter-State Commerce clause, enabled the manu- 

 facturer to sell it in the original package and prevented the 

 States by any laws of their adoption from interfering with 

 that sale. To prevent this, what is known as the Grout bill 

 was introduced into Congress, and the fight along that line 

 continued until the preseut time, and the bill has just passed 

 the present House and is now in the hands of the Senate, 

 where it seems likely to remain a dead letter until the end 

 of this present Congress. 



Massachusetts, with the wisdom that is supposed to pre- 

 vail among the Yankees of that State, took up the question, 

 and passed a law prohibiting the sale of the article colored to 

 imitate butter. Any shade of yellow that would imitate the 

 original article was prohibited. This, of course, was a body 

 blow, and the matter was fought in the courts of the State 

 and finally came to the Supreme Court of the United States, 

 and Chief Justice Harlan's famous decision was that no one 

 had the right under the law to commit a fraud upon the con- 

 sumer. Since that time the legislation in the various States 

 has been along that line, and where the dairymen and others 

 interested in the manufacture and sale and consumption of 



