There is no butter to be had in that market worth taking out for less
than 30 cents a pound. How are you going to prevent the sale of it?
Will not the hotels still use it in preference to butter at 26 cents when
they have got to pay 30 cents for poor butter ?

Mr. HEWES. I suppose they will.

Senator HEITFELD. Then, where are you benefited?

Mr. HEWES. If the hotel uses that oleomargarine it will not put it
before you for butter.

Senator HEITFELD. Why should it not ?

Mr. HEWES. Because the hotel people will simply say to you, prob-
ably, "Do you want oleomargarine or do you want butter?"

Mr. MEDAIRY. I would like to say this, Senator: You are adding 8
cents additional to the profits of the retailer. That is where you are in
error. The additional tax is put on the manufacturer's price. The
retailer now gets 18 cents a pound for the product, but if you put the
8 cents additional tax upon the cost of manufacture, it does not inure
as much profit proportionately to the retailer, and consequently the
consumer gets the benefit of it.

Mr. HEWES. To resume where I left off. In the prosecutions in the
State of Maryland ever since 1878 it has been my privilege

Senator ALLEN. I do not want to interrupt you unnecessarily, and if
it is disagreeable to you I will not do so.

Mr. HEWES. It is not disagreeable at all, Senator.

Senator ALLEN. You said that in Paris and other Eastern cities oleo-
margarine was set up in one restaurant, for instance, and no butter
could be sold there.

Mr. HEWES. Only in France, Senator.

Senator ALLEN. And conversely where butter was sold oleomarga-
rine could not be sold?

Mr. HEWES. That is right.



OLEOMAKGAKINE. 457

Senator ALLEN. But suppose in searching for butter I walk into one
of these oleomargarine stores, not knowing but what oleomargarine is
sold there, and I see an article like this, and I say " I want 10 pounds of
this butter." They will sell it to me, will they not?

Mr. HEWES. If you call it butter?

Senator ALLEN. I do not know. I am in search of butter; I walk
in and see this article.

Mr. HEWES. You see that article, but you walk into the oleomarga-
rine side, you mean ?

Senator ALLEN. But I do not know the oleomargarine side.

Mr. HEWES. But they have got big placards there in 4-inch letters.

Senator HEITFELD. They have that here at this market now.

Senator ALLEN. Suppose I buy a cigar and give the gentleman a $5
bill. He gives me back the change. I do not stop to count it. I do
not know whether he has given me the right change or not. So I walk
into one of these stores and I want some butter. I do not look at pla-
cards or signs. 1 suppose he is a reputable dealer, and I call for butter.
He gives me oleomargarine, and there is an open opportunity to perpe-
trate fraud, is there not 1 ?

Mr. HEWES. No, sir; not over there, because those laws are too
strictly enforced. I will tell you what the restriction is. I say this to
the sorrow of us Americans. I am so American in my composition that
I do not like anybody who is not American; but when it comes to the
enforcement of laws, they beat us on the other side. I am sorry to
admit it. When the law over there requires them to put a label on the
outside of this package, it goes there, Senator; and when you buy that
10 pounds, and you may call it anything you please, you get a label on
the outside " Oleomargarine," or, as they call it, " Margarine."

Mr. ADAMS. Will you permit me to interrupt you a moment, Mr.
Hewes?

Mr. HEWES. Yes, sir.

Mr. ADAMS. I want to get into the record this case on the question
of whether or not the placing of oleomargarine upon a table is construed
as a sale or not by the courts. The case to which I refer here is the
case of Commonwealth v. Worcester, 26 Mass., 256. That is a case where
a man bought a breakfast for 35 cents and found the milk was adul-
terated. An action was brought against the hotel keeper, who was
ignorant of the fact even that the milk was adulterated. It was proved
that it was a sale of adulterated milk, and it was so decided.

Mr. TILLINGHAST. Perhaps there was something in the milk that was
deleterious to health.

Senator ALLEN. That is upon the well understood principle of the
law that a man can not plead his ignorance of the law.

Mr. HEWES. If I understood the Senator right, the suggestion was
that this committee were too good lawyers to need any legal references
or references to cases. Otherwise I would simply strew the table with
cases from Maine to California.

Mr. TILLINGHAST. While I am on this question I will ask you this :
Do you understand that in foreign countries you spoke of France and
Holland and Belgium what oleomargarine is sold is sold as of the same
color as butter?

Mr. HEWES. Oftentimes, yes. That is a good general question and
a good general answer. In foreign countries oleomargarine is sold of
the same color as butter.

Mr. TILLINGHAST. And they are able to enforce their laws without
having an anticolor law ?.



458 OLEOMARGARINE.

Mr. HEWES. But the correlative also follows that is, that the trend
of taste over there oftentimes is toward uncolored butter, and in France
particularly.

Mr. TILLINGHAST. Where you have uncolored butter you have
uncolored oleomargarine?

Mr. HEWES. Oftentimes.

Mr. TILLINGHAST. And where you have colored butter you have
colored oleomargarine?

Mr. HEWES. That is the case oftentimes, but that is neither here
nor there.

Mr. JELKE. Mr. Hewes appears to be familiar with the laws of
foreign countries. In which country in Europe is there a tax on
oleomargarine?

Mr. HEWES. None that I know of. I do not think even in Germany
there is a tax.

Mr. KNIGHT. May I interpose here, and say that those countries
have stations and are enabled to handle this matter from a central
point without the use of a tax ?

Mr. HEWES. If you are going to introduce these international ques-
tions, 1 would like the privilege of reading to this committee right now
the report of the speed of Von Buelow yesterday. I do not know
whether you have read it or not, but it is very apropos, and I think
it ought to govern our Congress as well as theirs :

VON BUELOW FAVORS THE CANAL BILL HIS ARGUMENT IN THE LOWER HOUSE OF
THE DIET FOR THE MEASURE.

[By cable to the American.]

BERLIN, January 9.

The imperial chancellor (Count von Buelow), in the lower house of the Diet,
to-day strongly supported the claims for the protection of agriculture. He said:

"I consider it the foremost duty of the Government to effect a reconciliation in the
existing economic difficulties and the adjustment of the varying interests supporting
those who are unable to help themselves through their own strength. 1 shall abide
by the opinion that when one member of a social body suifers all the others suffer,
and especially that as long as such an important member as agriculture is unhealth-
ful the entire organism must be undermined. I am convinced that it is the duty of
the Government to afford trade, industry, and agriculture an equal measure of pro-
tection, but that one of them, agriculture, absolutely needs strong protection. It is
in pursuance of this principle of even-handed justice that the bill for the comple-
tion and improvement of the canals has been drawn up. If the measure favored
industry at the expense of agriculture, or the west monarchy to the detriment of
the east, I would not have supported it.

"With the view to solidify the agriculture of the east and the industry of the
west, a series of further schemes had been bound up in the Rhine-Elbe Canal project,
of some interest to navigation, but chiefly for the benefit of the tillers of the soil,
by the establishment of a continuous network of waterways, advantageous to all
parts of the empire, opening the industrial territory of the west to the agricultural
products of the east.

"It is my deliberate conviction," said the chancellor, "that the agricultural
products of the east, with these cheap means of transit, aided by an assured protective
tariff', for which we must provide and for which we will provide, will be enabled to
hold their own in the west, which in turn will secure facilities for the distribution
of the products of the factories."

Yon Buelow's idea here is that you must protect agriculture. Why I
Because the wealth of the nation lies in the laud, and the strength of
the land is in agriculture. That is an economic principle that has been
established from the foundation of this Government, and Von Buelow
only echoes that. It is one of the agrarian maxims of foreign govern-
ments that if you do not protect agriculture your country must decay,
and that is the reason why he is in favor of it.



OLEOMARGARINE. 459

Senator ALLEN. As one member of the committee, I entirely agree
with you upon that proposition.

Mr. MILLER. Does he not refer to the tax upon agriculture from
imported goods, not the section from home industries?

Mr. HEWES. Suppose he does. He does not want colored oleomar-
garine to come in there and interfere with agriculture in that country.

This is our bill. This is the bill of the dairy interests of this coun-
try. This is the bill to amend the biJl we originally brought here. We
ask for its consideration. We do not ask you not to listen to these
antagonistic interests on the other side. We are liberal people. We
presume they have to come here and speak for their pockets; but is it
not asking too much to ask you to make secondary the great industry
of the country that these few, these seventeen or twenty-seven manu-
facturers of oleomargarine, may thrive upon the fraudulent article they
are producing? I say it is prsposterous and yet we are willing to sit
and listen to them; to listen to whatever they have to say; to listen to
their legal representatives, and have you listen to them.

Senator ALLEN. We must do that.

Mr. HEWES. You must do that. You can not help it. But we do say
this: Admitting, or, as we say at law, demurring to their evidence, then
what have we? We have 60,000,000 people in the United States who
say, u Pass the Grout bill." They have, to give them the most liberal
construction, about 14,000,000 people who are oleomargarine people, or
their friends are people who want oleomargarine, and they say. "Do
not pass it." What is this committee here for? What is this Congress
here for? To listen to the will of the people, to be governed by the will
of the people; and when sixty million appear against ten, what is your
duty? Your duty is to listen to the sixty million.

Senator ALLEN. Suppose the 60,000,000 people, in the judgment of a
Senator, were wrong, would you insist that he should follow out their
wishes?

Mr. HEWES. Is the Senator to sit in judgment against 60,000,000
people?

Senator ALLEN. He must sit in judgment. His final judgment upon
the correctness of a thing after he hears it must be his sole guide.

Mr. HEWES. Then he must do as his heart prompts him.

Senator ALLEN. Very well. That is what he should do.

Mr. HEWES. If the Senator says that 60,000,000 people are wrong

Senator ALLEN. Suppose my people instructed me to vote for this
bill or against it.

Mr. HEWES. You would not heed them.

Senator ALLEN. Suppose my conviction was contrary to their will?

Mr. HEWES. You would be guided by your conviction.

Senator ALLEN. Would it not be my duty as an officer to follow out
my best judgment?

Mr. HEWES. I would, and I would tell my constituents if they did
not like my action they could ask for my withdrawal, and I would
resign.

Senator DOLLIVER. Or would you seek some method by which to
compromise the thing?

Mr. HEWES. 1 would not. There is no compromise possible.

Let me get back now where I started.

Mr. MILLER. Referring to the enforcement of these laws in foreign
countries, is it not a fact that the word " margarine" is printed on the
manufacturers' original package and that the retail dealer does not
brand the package at all when he sells it?



460 OLEOMARGARINE.

Mr. HEWES. No, sir; it is not that way in England. In England he
has to make up his own package and mark it "margarine,' 7 just the
same as we do here; and he must mark it so that the buyer can see
what he is buying.

When we came into this Congress in 1886 we said to you gentlemen,
"We want you to do the policing for this thing. We want you to put
this under your jealous care, so that no man can sell oleomargarine for
butter," because we thought they could do it. We knew how zealous
they were in trying to enforce the law in respect to tobacco. We knew
that no man could possibly work up half an ounce of tobacco unless he
had the Commissioner of Internal Kevenue or his deputy upon his heels
to say what the product was,' and we thought they could enforce this
law. They do not enforce the law. They do not see that people carry
out the nineteen sections of this bill.

Senator DOLLIVER. In the matter of tobacco, do they go further than
to collect the tax?

Mr. HEWES. That is that compromise you were talking about.

Senator DOLLIVER. No; do you mean to say that the tax provisions
of the law of 1886 have not been executed?

Mr. HEWES. I mean to-saj' that whenever they find a person who is
not doing exactly as that law says, they send for him and they make
some settlement with him.

Senator DOLLIVER. Do they do the same with the tobacco people
and the whisky people?

Mr. HEWES. They compromise.

Senator DOLLIVER. They arrest them for violating the law.

Mr. HEWES. But nine times out of ten they send for them to come up
and settle, and they do settle.

With respect to this oleomargarine business. In the State of Mary-
land last year we had 141 cases, and we are now standing before the
bar of our court of appeals with this original package case, with no hope
of winning it. That is the trouble. We have no hope of ever winning
that. Why ? Because Judge Taylor, who is as fair a man as ever sat
upon any court whatever, and who is a friend of the dairy and a friend
of ours, has told me, and he has written in that Fox case, in 89 Mary-
land, that you can not restrict or prohibit the sale of oleomargarine in
its original package unless you prove that it is deleterious to health.

You see how impossible it is for us to do it. It throws the burden of
proof, it is true, upon the traverser to show that it is not deleterious to
health, and what does he do ? He brings in his expert testimony, and
you have listened to it here by the volume. When these chemists tells
you that an article is chemically pure, what do they mean by that ?
They mean simply this, that sulphuric acid is chemically pure, that
nitric acid is chemically pure; but when it comes to a question of pure
food, all the testimony of the chemists falls to the ground. It is not a
question of a chemically pure article. It is' a question of pure food
you are talking about.

So we ask you to make a favorable report on this Grout bill, because
of two things. In the first place, it reduces to a minimum the chance
to deceive ultimately. It is a potential fraud that is reprehended and
deprecated in the Plumley Case (155 Mass., 421). That is the trouble.
It is a potential fraud, where this man may deceive in the restaurant,
or where the purchaser may be deceived.

Mr. MILLER. What is the difference between pure food and chemically
pure food ?

Mr. HEWES. Pure food is something that is pure, and chemically



OLEOMARGARINE. 461

pure food is what a chemist says is chemically pure, the same as he
must go to work and analyze all the fats of oleomargarine. He shows
they are chemically pure ; but suppose they come out of cats. Every one
of these fats in oleomargarine can come from dogs and cats and horses.
Some of them come from Shoemaker's place and Horner's place in
Baltimore.

I thank you for your attention.

STATEMENT OF C. Y. KNIGHT, SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL

DAIRY UNION.

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I want to open this
matter by reading a statement which is a copy of a letter which I
received from a retail grocer's clerk in the city of Chicago some time
last year. I am familiar with the gentleman's name, but I have not
put it in here. I will vouch, however, for the condition, and prove it
to you, but I merely read it as an introduction.

During the pa"st twenty-two years I think I have worked in nearly every first-
class grocery in Chicago, and I can truthfully say that eight out of every ten have
been and are still selling butteriue for pure butter. I recently was employed in one
of the largest groceries and markets on one of the most prominent streets of the. city.
During the time I was employed there we never sold one pound of butter, for we
never had it in the house to se'll. We clerks would talk among ourselves about it,
and would often compare notes with other clerks, and to satisfy myself I made
quite a canvass of all the stores in the mile and found only one that did not impose
on its trade.

Gentlemen, from experience I can vouch for the accuracy of that
statement, and I want to give you a little experience and 1 propose to
demonstrate it right here. The evening before I left Chicago 1 took
my stenographer at 4 o'clock and started out on a tour to visit the
so called butter stores. I went, and was gone just one hour, and visited
ten stores; and while I did not think of it at the time, it corresponds
with that statement. Eight of those stores sold me each a package of
goods. At two of them they told me they had no butter. They said
"We do not keep butter at all;" but the other eight sold me what pur-
ported to be butter. Now here is a package of what was bought for
pure butter at 24 cents per pound, and the signature of the girl who
bought it is on it. There is the package [exhibiting a package.] You
may be able to find a mark on that. It was bought as butter for 24
cents a pound.

Mr. JELKE. Do you know now that it is not butter?

Mr. KNIGHT. We will demonstrate that, Mr. Jelke, before we get
through. The store which sold that butter had this sign in front:

Try our best

Elgin creamery butter,

5 pounds $1.00.

Here is a package from the store of Hughes & Schick. I will give
to the gentlemen of the committee a little pamphlet that we got out
some time ago with a photograph of a sign in the front of that place,
"Grass Dairy, 15c. a pound." I openly denounced those people as
swindlers in a publication, 150,000 copies of which I have sent broad-
cast. That is the place where I bought that package.

Here is a place where we bought a pound of so-called butter, at No. 8
Wells street. These are all on one street. We went from one place to
another on the same street within a distance of several blocks. That
we bought at 25 cents a pound.



462 OLEOMARGARINE.

This package was bought at a place which was originally known as
the Ohio Butter Company, but later as the Metropolitan Market, No.
44 Fifth avenue, an illustration of the sign of which you will find on
page 3 of tbis pamphlet, at the bottom the Ohio Butter Company.
Those are all photographs which I made myself.

Here is a package from William Broadwell's place.

Now, I would like, Senator, to have you open that, if you will, and
just look at the package.

(Senator Allen then opened the package.)

Mr. JELKE. Is the price on each package?

Mr. KNIGHT. Yes, sir; every package is plainly marked. Senator
Heitfeld, here is one from the same place, and Senator Dolli ver, here is
another one from the same place.

Senator DOLLIVER. What place is that?

Mr. KNIGHT. William BroadwelPs place.

Senator DOLLIVER. You seem to have patronized him very exten-
sively.

Mr. KNIGHT. Yes, sir; and I will show you why in a minute. Have
you found the mark " Oleomargarine" on it, Senator?

Senator ALLEN. No, I have not.

Mr. KNIGHT. That is the puzzle. Find the mark. If you will open
it this way [indicating], and get around there, I think you will find
something of the mark.

Now I want to read from a pamphlet issued by William Moxley, of
the city of Chicago :

Facts about butterine. Compiled and published by William J. Moxley, for the use
of the general public.

He says on page 6 :

Before the Senatorial committee, previously mentioned, a Mr. William Broadwell,
one of the largest dealers in high-grade butterine, spoke of millionaires and men with
silk hats being his most numerous customers, in fact, forming in line to get a pail of
William J. Moxley's butterine. His remarks caused considerable laughter among
the audience, but created consternation in the ranks of producers of creamery butter,
who realized the impossibility of successful contradiction.

I will show you the front of Mr. BroadwelPs store as it was photo-
graphed, in that corner down there where he sells Mr. Moxley's high-
grade butterine one of the largest dealers in the city of Chicago. That
is his sign [indicating]. I photographed that in September myself. It
stood there for two or three years until I photographed it, and when he
found we had used it, that part of the sign was torn down, and these
are the remains.

Mr. ADAMS. Is that the store where the gentlemen in silk hats go to
ask for butterine ?

Mr. KNIGHT. Yes, that is the one.

Mr. JELKE. Have you any photographic views of Siegel, Cooper &
Co.'s, or Kothchild's, or any of the leading merchants of Chicago?

Mr. KNIGHT. I will not answer any questions now, Mr. Jelke; I am
busy. I have got this thing on hand, and I have waited a good while.

Now, I want to read you an extract from the report of the assistant
food commissioners to convince you what kind of business Mr. Broad-
well is doing with Mr. Moxley's butterine:

The other case is No. 27, that of William Broadwell, where the defendant and his
witnesses swore that they sold nothing but oleomargarine, and that they had a sign
behind the counter, " No pure butter sold here; only oleomargarine;" that they always
informed those asking for butter that they had only oleomargarine, and they had no
signs reading " creamery butter;" that the stamp was always on the outside of the
package when handed to customers, and that for seven years they had always wrapped
it in that manner.



And ye

t~.li A sii.rr



OLEOMAKGAKINE. 463



And yet I have 21 packages gotten by 21 different people, all wrapped
the same as that from that party, and William J. Moxley defends him
every time anybody attempts to prosecute him, and one of his men is
here spoken of as a witness in the case where the food commission has
prosecuted that man and endeavored to convict him.

What are the facts in the case? Two inspectors of the food depart-
ment went and purchased samples of that stuff as butter and for butter.
He sold it that way. They went into court and made an affidavit as to
what they had bought it for and where they bought it. He brought
three witnesses to swear that they called for oleomargarine, and that
he gave them oleomargarine, all properly stamped. That is the way
they do business in Chicago.

Now, going back to where we started, I want to give you a little bit
of history of local conditions. There are produced in Chicago 46,500,000
of the 107,000,000 pounds of oleomargarine made in the United States.

Senator DOLLIVER. How do you get at the 107,000,000?

Mr. KNIGHT. Why, from the last report of the Internal Eevenue
Commissioner.

Senator DOLLIVER. The Secretary of Agriculture seemed to state
it at less than that.

Mr. KNIGHT. He was a year behind.

In the State of Illinois, and pretty near all of that is in the northern
district, there are 2,691 of the 9,000 dealers in the United States. Of
the 9,068 retail dealers doing business in the United States for the year
ending July 1 last, 7,073 were violating the various anticolor laws of
the United States and 1,995 were doing business as permitted by the
laws. Of the 107,000,000 pounds of oleomargarine produced in the
United States for the year ending July 1, 1900, 66,820,196 pounds were
produced in States which prohibit the manufacture and sale of colored
oleomargarine, and 40,240,859 pounds were produced in those States
which permit such production.

But to go on with my little story. Here is another package which I
bought at No. 65 Eandolph street, personally. I went in and said to
the man, "I want some creamery butter." He said, u We have no cream-
ery butter; we have dairy." I said, "All right; I will take some dairy.
How much is it? 7 He said, "Nineteen cents." Senator, you will find
a little faint attempt there to make a mark on that. I have found it,
but nobody else would. I said to him, "Look here; this is not dairy
butter."

Senator ALLEN. What does that [indicating] signify?

Mr. KNIGHT. That is the Government stamp. I said, " What is this?