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Show I Smi't ral Tain of fcf-rk The hardest fight made against the Crout bill iD congress was made by j I the packing houses in the name of tha cattle raisers of the United SJates. They insisted that the forbidding of the coloring of oleomargarine to resemble re-semble butter would kill the businesi md thereby destroy a market for beef fat which would cause a depreciation of from $2 to $4 per hjead on cattla marketed in this country. These o'.ea-n-argarise people never quoted statistics statis-tics cr other authorities to prove this. (They simply asserted it and let it ga at that. Now let us look into this matter. According to the report of the Agricultural Department of tho United States there were slaughtered It forty-five points under government inspection' 4,CCO,000 head cf cattle j nuric iwj. linougn were s.augausicu at outstde uninspected points to brins the total up to 5,000,000 head as a low estimate. The st?tement of Secretary Gage of the' treasury department shows that there were used in ths oleomargarine oleomar-garine produced in this .country last year 24,491,769 pounds olco oil, which Is made from beef f ;t. Thi3 means a fraction less than five pounds of fat from each animal, or to be specific, 4.99 rounds. At its value the past year this fat would be worth 9 cents p;r pound, or 45 cent3. As tallow it is worth 6 cents per pound, or 30 cents. J Sell the fat for soap (for which there Is always unlimited demand) instead of for bogus butter, and it would only mean a difference of 15 cents a head for steers so small an amount as not to be appreciable, when it is considered consid-ered that it costs 1 or 2 cents a pound to produce the oleo oil which does not go to the farmer. This country last lyear produced 106,000.003 pound3 ol oleo oil, of which 142.000.0C0 were exported. ex-ported. If the oleomargarine busines3 were dead in this country the export trade would easily take the entire amount produced. It will be seen, therefore, that the manufacture of. oleomargarine in this country is of no practical value whatever to the livestock live-stock interests. |