The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-06-30
agricultural.
T. H. HOSklNS, m. D., Editor,
Newport, Vermont.
The OleO Question.

10 our request 1Or tne views OF garry
men on this important subject. But
this is good one, and will, we hope,
stimulate others to write. 1t is ques-
ton that will bear a good deal of dis
cussion:
"To your question, Does the sale of
oleo affect the sale of good butter? we
reply, Yes. We have never known of
anything being manufactured, however
good and honestly it may be done, but
what an imitation hurt it. Take sugar.
We once could sell our sugar for ten
cents for the western market. Now we
get six. 1t goes West mixed with glucose
and is sold under cover as pure maple
sugar, and thousands of people know
not what pure article is. Again, would
not an excess of No. 2 wheat affect the
price of No. 1? Does not an excess of
an inferior article bring down the price
of the good? In our market reports
l notice that good and poor butter hold
a relative position and in the rise and
fall that position remains about the
same. If the good goes up, so also
does the poor. If the poor goes down,
the good goes down also; and yet the
relative position remains about the
same. If good butter goes above GER
tain price, the next grade is taken, and
thus we find the price of the good and
the poor are interviewer together. No,
we must disagree with you that if the
'dairymen will make good butter the oleo
will not hurt them We were not only
surprised, but sorry, to find you taking
the ground you did in regard to cleo.
That article you wrote some weeks
since cut to the quick, and the anony-
nous writer in the Mirror and Farmer,
whom we know not, and whom you
give the appellation of Mutton-Head,
expresses our mind as we read it. The
article is gone from us. We wish you
would repeat it in full, that we dairy
men might revise your judgment and
know who is mutton-headed.'
L. w. PITKIN, Marshfeld."
REMARKs.-It would hardly pay to
reprint the article, friend Pitkin, as we
are frequently repeating the substance
of it, /. e., that the farmers are not
fools, and because they are not fools
they want practical legislation that will
stand the test of courts, and can be en-
forced so as to give relief. Also that
while they do feel the competition of
this new product, they are too honest
and manly, as class, to ask or encour-
age any one to tell anything against it
that is not true. We never knew any
thing to be gainedin that way, and GER
tainly no self-respect. We believe
(although we wish it had never been
invented) that any one has perfect
right to make wholesome substitute
to be used in the place of butter by
those who want it. But we would
fight, " tooth and toe-nail," against it's
fraudulent sale as butter. No law has
been effective against it, so far, and we
do not believe that the proposed United
States law will work. BY trying for too
much we get little or nothing. Another
thing we are in favor of, and that is
government inspection of all food
products, so that nothing unwholesome
shall be allowed to be sold for food.
Our friend Pitkin says our article
cut to the quick" This Except the
article in the Mirror and Farmer is
the first indication that any of our read
ers were displeased at it. We have
been writing for, and talking to, the
farmers of Vermont for nearly twenty
years, and our name among them ought
to be established for good or evil by this
time. If there is anything that we are
devoted to, heart and soul, it is the
prosperity of agriculture and of those
who follow it, especially in our native
New England. People do not always
agree as to methods, and it may well
be that our views on this subject are
not so correct as some others. We
leave that for time to decide.
Our experience in Vermont has been
quite interesting. Shortly before we
came here we were talking with Bos-
ton merchant, who was Vermonter,
about it, and he tried to discourage us
by saying that unless man were a re-
publican and Congregationalist there
was not much chance for him here.
He did not phrase it just that way.
What he really said was he might as
well be in hell without claws" But he
didn't daunt us mite. We had read
the history of Vermont, and never saw
any indications of such intolerance;
while her whole record is one of glori-
Gus devotion to free thought and free
principles. Bismarck (who has also
read Vermont's history says of her
that she is I" the most perfect sample of
a democratic state that has ever existed
on earth" We have been citizen of
this democracy twenty years, and have
i