legislation.  According to the disingenuous custom of American lawmakers the Act of 1902 was passed through Congress as a “revenue measure,” although it meant a loss to the Government of more than three million dollars a year over what might be produced by a straight two cents a pound tax.  A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer.  The federal law put a tax of ten cents a pound on yellow oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a pound on the uncolored.  But people—­doubtless from pure prejudice—­prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the economical housewife has to work over her oleomargarin with the annatto which is given to her when she buys a package or, if the law prohibits this, which she is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer’s counter.  A plausible pretext for such legislation is afforded by the fact that the butter substitutes are so much like butter that they cannot be easily distinguished from it unless the use of annatto is permitted to butter and prohibited to its competitors.  Fradulent sales of substitutes of any kind ought to be prevented, but the recent pure food legislation in America has shown that it is possible to secure truthful labeling without resorting to such drastic measures.  In Europe the laws against substitution were very strict, but not devised to restrict the industry.  Consequently the margarin output of Germany doubled in the five years preceding the war and the output of England tripled.  In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from 8.8 pounds per capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912.  Yet the butter business, Denmark’s pride, was not injured, and Germany and England imported more butter than ever before.  Now that the price of butter in America has gone over the seventy-five cent mark Congress may conclude that it no longer needs to be protected against competition.

The “compound lards” or “lard compounds,” consisting usually of cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, although the latter may now be replaced by hardened oil, met with the same popular prejudice and attempted legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in coming into common use under such names as “Cottosuet,” “Kream Krisp,” “Kuxit,” “Korno,” “Cottolene” and “Crisco.”

Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to margarin, originated, like many other inventions, in military necessity.  The French Government in 1869 offered a prize for a butter substitute for the army that should be cheaper and better than butter in that it did not spoil so easily.  The prize was won by a French chemist, Mege-Mouries, who found that by chilling beef fat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil (oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk and hence in butter.  Neutral lard acts the same.