The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 24, 1918, Page 3

.. - asthere was in starving Paris In the interest of a square deal ) for the farmers J Nonvartigan Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League VOL. 6, NO. 25 e A magazine that dares to print the truth & ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, JUNE 24, 1918 WHOLE NUMBER 144 Packers Are Grabbing at Dairy Butter Diversified Farming Throughout the Nation Is Threatened by Oleo Substitution and the Monopolists’ Power to Dominate the Market BY A. B. GILBERT UTTER produetion means dairying; dairying means diversified farm- ing; diversified farming means balanced, success- ful farming; suc- R cessful farming means a well balanced, national life. Thus there are compelling reasons why not only farmers but all inde- pendent citizens should be awake to the plans laid by certain special in- terests, chiefly the beef trust, to knock the bottom out of the market for butter. The packers have two objects in view which they are pursuing with the utmost secrecy: Artificial stimulation ‘of the market for their butter substitutes of various kinds; and domination of what butter market there is left in the same way that they now dominate the livestock market. More than 4,500,000 of our farmers are now interested in dairying and more are trying to be, especially in the South and the extreme Northwest, where diversification is a vital need. Dairy products nor- mally can constitute about one- fifth of the food supply of the nation. But now there looms on the .horizon a tremendous force aiming not only to pre- vent this progress but to tear . down what has been built up. And so far this force of de- struction has had practically no opposition. The consumers in general do not realize what is going on because the packers dominate the press and because the ef- fects on them are somewhat remote. The dairy farmers as yet are not sufficiently organ- _ized to offer effective resist- ance, but if there ever was a case in which the organized farmer - fought for the whole people as well as for his own interest it is this fight for a free, fair market for butter. THE ORIGIN OF BUTTER SUBSTITUTES From 1870, when a French- man during the siege of Paris invented oleomargarine, to the present time, the manufacture and sale of butter substitutes has grown to tremendous pro- portions both in Europe and America. . In the year 1916, according to the commissioner of internal revenue, the United States produced 162,509,912 pounds of oleomargarine. There is probably a legitimate ~ market for it at all times just when “the invading Germans cut off the food supply of the city, but ‘most of the present market has been worked up by deception and fraud on the - ' consumer. President Cleveland: - “ ' at the.time when some limi- - In 1917 the:United States produced about 263,000,000 pounds of oleomargarine, which is by far the greatest production on record. Oleomargarine now is produced in quantities about one-seventh as great as that of butter. eighth of the “smear” spread on bread in the United States today is oleomargarine. The more we hear about the packers’ methods, the more we fear their competition. There is every reason for thinking that the.,packers have definitely decided to do their best to substitute oleomargarine for a large part of the butter consumed in the United States.—Southland Farmer. tation of this deception was first tried in this coun- try, declared: “I venture to say that hardly a pound ever entered a poor man’s house under its real name and in its true character.” In spite of many years of agitation since Cleve- land’s time we have had comparatively little suc- cess in eliminating deception of the consumer. Qur national law permits the sale of oleomargarine (€ FOR/KS e =SS . _PAGE THREE In other words, one- —Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris Two years ago the farmers of North Dakota hefted the state into the front rank of progress. They are stronger now than ever before, and are ready to lift Lynn_J. Frazier again into the governor’s chair. See the whelps of the plunderbund cowering in fear! These enemies of:the common people are desperate at their own weakness. They are fast becoming anarchists who NS R .~ would stoop to any device to thwart square dealing. a tax of 10 cents a pound. - Oleo- margarine with a butter color worth probably no more than 20 cents a pound, thus has an excellent chance to compete with 35 to 40-cent butter. Contrary to general impression the uncolored substitute bears a tax of only one-fourth of a cent a pound. It can be sold under such names as butterine, Holstein Brand; Jersey Brand, Elgin Brand and River Cream- ery, which imply that it is made from milk. 3 Several European countries have had much better success in regulation than we have, because they have not depended on a tax but have actually prohibited all forms of decep- tion under heavy penalties. Germany, France and Belgium go so far as to require that oleomar- garine be sold in separate stores. Denmark al- lows its sale only when the container has a spe- cially shaped package different from any used for I CARRY NORTH DAKOTA? IT’S A CINCH! I " NORTH butter. None of these coun- tries allow any kind of col- oring. OLEO WITH NATURAL COLOR Not long ago the packers made a discovery of a new method of deception more dangerous than any hereto- fore brought out. They found that the oleo fats of canner cows would give a yellow color to the product; they also buy up all the June butter pos- sible to mix in to add to this color effect. It is now said that they have other natural substances which will produce the desired effect. The dan- ger, however, lies not so much in the coloring, for oleomar- garine has been colored for a long time, but in the fact that it gives the courts a tech- nical excuse for overthrowing the laws of many of our states against the sale of the colored product. The packers resort to the mere quibble that because no artificial coloring matter is added, the state law is not violated; whereas the = only reason for the yellow color of oleo is that butter is yellow. Surprising as it may seem, the packers have been able to get by with this mere tech- nicality in such a dairy state as Minnesota, but even in a dairy state the smokestacks of the packers may count for ment than its many thousands of dairy farmers. In the last year the packers have carried on an ' intensive propaganda to kill the butter - market -in . favor of their camouflage butter. They start- ed a hue and cry to save but- ter because of the war needs: Many persons unfamiliar with . the nature of the dairy busi- colored to imitate butter when it pays ° more with the state govern- ' ness, even some of the men - N R e < A P