The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-01-15
THE oLEO FRAUD AND THE CIRCUIT BILL

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For a number of years there has
been a serious depression in the
dairy industry. Prices dropped
from twenty to forty per cent. on first
class butter because of the serious
inroads of az imitation. Dairy but
ter has been for generations a stand
ard article of human diet. 1t is close
hard work, requiring long hours and
painstaking attention to the business
three hundred and sixty-fve days in
each year for a farmer to put out a
good uniform article of butter. The
June (May in some localities) prod
uct is the best made during the year,
partly because more COWS are fresh
in milk then, but mainly for the
reason that the grasses r fresh and
young and COWS are at that time en-
joying the highest and best feeding
of the year.
All customers are DESTROYS of hav-
ing the quality of foods kept up to, or
as near to, the standard as possible,
hence in the dairy all feeding and
efforts aim to come as near equalizing
the product for June as possible. In
order to do this it has become a
standard custom, understood by all,
to color this product during part OF
the year and in some cases the whole
year in order to attain the highest
degree of uniformity in color, which
is one of the highest qualities in the
scale for pleasing the tasty house
wife and the aesthetic consumer.
The intruder came in wearing the
mark of genuine color and having
been ''puriied as by fire" in the pro-
cesses of the factory, the source of
most of the constituents of the new
conner vas shrOuded in mystery.
Efforts to resuscitate old and varied
butter may be partly credited with
finding the substitute which, when
properly handled after churning with
real butter milk and having a pOr-
ton of real butter in it for ~leaven,
so to speak, has been hard to detect
from the realexcept by experts.
The makers of this close imitation
found the price for real butter a
bonanza. They have endeavored to
put their product into every market,
and in such forms, and under such
names as to deceive consumers every
where and all the time into buying
the imitation for genuine butter.
This imitation has been made and
pushed forward by a few men who
have amassed immense fortunes, not
by the manufacture, but by the gross
deception practiced on consumers.
At the same time, and as far as they
have been able to invade the butter
market they have been competing
with and crowding out the large
class of small farmers who make
the real butter of commerce.
Attention has been called to this
fraud, and the imitation has been
taxed in the endeavOr to make it pay
the cost of inspection. In other
words, to try to make the producers
sell the product honestly, but en-
forced honestly is a poor article.
They have disobeyed law, and have
defied it in almost every State where
the dairy interests have been most
injured.
By the very magnitude of their
operations under a single leadership
they have Overawed by money force
or bought off, the enforcement Of the
law and kept at the deception 10
their great gain until there has been
a great gathering of forces to check
the evil.
This last effort on the part of hon
est producers and consumers to stop
the fraud being daily perpetrated in
the sale of OleOmargarine has taken
the form of a bill introduced into
Congress which is likely to become
the law of the land. The bill is
known by the name of the Congress
man who introduced and first cham
pioned it. Through the CIRCUIT bill
it is proposed to reduce the tax
hitherto imposed on oleOmargarine
by the Government from two cents
to one-fOurth of one cent per pound
when sold in any color except that
OF yellow butter. All cleo made and
sold IN its natural color will there.