the case of retail sales, that every wrapper shall be marked with the word" oleomargarine." We found, however, that this law was not sufficient to cure the evils existing, and that the oleomargarine interests insisted in palming their goods on the market as dairy goods, by giving it the name of "creamery" or dairy" butterine, etc. So in 1886 we passed a law which prohibited, with a penalty of one hundred dollars, the selling, or exposing for sale any article in the nature of butterine or oleomargarine, marked or labeled with the word dairy" or the word" creamery." Then followed a law requiring the registration of every one who sold oleomargarine, or conveyed it from place to place for the purpose of selling, so that the town and city authorities could know exactly who was selling and conveying.

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Those were all the laws we had for quite a while until 1891, when a law was passed, making it an offense, in the penalty of one hundred dollars, to deliver oleomargarine to any person who called for butter; also a law was passed prohibiting the sale or delivery of it to any one, without being marked; also a law requiring the placard "Oleomargarine sold here." Also a law requiring every restaurant and hotel which used it, to give notice to their customers that it was used. But the climax of all our laws in Massachusetts is the anti-color law.

We in Massachusetts were a little fearful that the law which you have in New Hampshire, requiring it to be colored pink, might not stand the test of the courts, and so a law was passed prohibiting the using of any butter color whatever, and the law is known for short as the anti-color law.

Year after year we were defeated in these efforts to get effective laws on our statute books, until finally the farmers got thoroughly angry and went into politics, determined to support the men who were true to their interests. Perhaps in order to show you how it worked, I will give you the results in the senate. The senate elected for the coming year contains thirty-three Republicans and seven Democrats. The year after the farmers made their farmers' independent move, the senate contained twenty Republicans and twenty Democrats-a tie.

The law has been pronounced by our attorney general and other lawyers to be one of the shrewdest specimens of legisla

tion that they have come across. Our law absolutely prohibits the sale, offering for sale, or exposing for sale, any imitation of yellow butter. Then there was a proviso, attached, which some of the friends of honest butter were afraid would defeat the purpose of the law. The proviso was,-" Provided that nothing in this act shall be construed to prohibit the manufacture or sale of oleomargarine in a separate and distinct form, and in such manner as will advise the consumer of its real character, free from coloration or ingredients that cause it to look like butter." That proviso, however, proved to be our salvation later on.

Now having got this law on the statute books, the farmers thought that the laws were a good deal better in the hands of friends than of persons who knew nothing about it, and so the dairy bureau was created. The governor appoints a bureau of three. I was fortunate enough to be appointed working executive officer, although the secretary of the board of agriculture is officially its executive officer.

When I sat down and studied this law over, I found that we had a very comprehensive law to work under. It was broader than I had any realization of. The law creating the bureau says that it shall be the duty of the bureau to investigate all dairy products and disseminate such information as shall be of service in producing a more uniform article of the highest character in the market, and also to enforce all laws pertaining to dairy products and imitations of dairy products. So we have a twoheaded machine of immense powers for educational work as well as for police duty. Our appropriation, however, was small. We could spend a great deal more money and spend it more profitably and usefully, than now.

Along the line of educational work the principal thing that has been done so far is to address farmers' institutes, and meetings of grangers and of milk producers, showing them the use of the Babcock tester, explaining its use and some of the causes of these variations.

The regular institutes in our state are by law limited to the regularly incorporated agricultural societies, but the dairy bureau is given a somewhat more free range, and we address meetings regardless of whether or not they are in the list of regular incorporated societies.

During the past year I have talked at about forty or fifty different places and have, at nearly every meeting, made a demonstration of the Babcock tester, explaining its uses, etc., to the audience, testing in the neighborhood of four or five hundred specimens of milk, sometimes buttermilk and sometimes skimmed milk, etc.

I have added to my work something which has helped me very much. The Vermont Experiment station has published some results of its investigation on the question of temperature and its effect upon milk, showing that in the summer time, when the temperature reaches So or 90 degrees, the quality of the milk sometimes drops. I have that little engraving in the Vermont report enlarged on a sheet of cloth, perhaps five feet long and two feet wide, and it illustrates to perception of all of the audience that fact that, when the animal is uncomfortable, when the nervous temperament is thrown out of kelter, by excessive heat, not only does the quantity of the milk shrink but the quality shrinks also in an appreciable manner.

So I think the bureau has done a good work in placing the Babcock tester before the people and in the other work it has done.

Another line in which we have worked is in the studying of questions relative to the sale of milk in the city of Boston and its immediate suburbs, where we have a population of about a half a million of people that have to be supplied with fresh milk every morning. There is sent to the city by one combination of dealers an average of five to six million quarts of milk every month, and we estimate this as being about three fourths or two thirds of all the milk sold in Boston and immediate vicinity. So you see there are quite a number of interesting. questions involved relating to the sale of this milk and kindred. topics growing out of it.

As regards the legal part of our work, and our enforcement of the laws, I desire to say first of all to you with reference to the milk question, that thirteen per cent. of solids is the legal standard in the state of Massachusetts. We have a lot of milk producers in that state that have been breeding for years along the very commendable line which Governor Hoard has argued for so many years, of breeding for a purpose; but, unfortunately,

that purpose has been quantity rather than quality, and the consequence has been a deterioration in the quality of our milk. So there are some in the state that find it exceedingly difficult to keep up to the thirteen per cent. standard, and we are occasionally urged to lower the standard. Last winter there was quite a fight over that, and the house of representatives passed a bill reducing it, but the senate defeated it. They say that our standard is too high. That it is the highest of any of the New England States; that New Hampshire, right across the line that sends milk right down into Boston, has a standard of only twelve and one-half per cent.

I think, in a butter producing state like this, the facts will show that your milk will stand a test of thirteen and a half per cent., so that no injustice would be wrought upon any of your people by raising the standard in this state, and it seems to me that you would help our interests and promote your own, if, at some time, you would see fit to raise your milk standard, so as to correspond with ours. We have a community of interests; we have the same soil; we have the same climate; the same conditions, and, in a measure, the same markets, and if our milk standard could be adopted in this state, it would be a great advantage to us. I believe in increasing the standards of our products rather than decreasing them, and along that line we should all work together.

This anti-color law is the one we have had the most trouble with, because it has been the most disastrous to the oleomargarine people, and they have fought it, tooth and nail, in the lower and higher course of our state. They have brought in butter experts to testify. They brought in one man who was a Vermont farmer, and he swore positively that the natural color of butter was white, and that oleomargarine colored yellow was not an imitation of yellow butter. In our courts they have taken the ground that the color of pure butter is not uniform, as it runs all the way from a practical white to a rich golden color, and they argue that the standard should be something that was fixed, and that a sliding arrangement cannot be a standard and, consequently, our law is not good, because oleomargarine is always a certain prescribed color tinted yellow, and a fixed article cannot be declared an imitation of a variable article.

We have beaten them every time in the lower courts, and they have taken one case to the supreme court. It was argued there very ably on both sides, on the question of original package, and on that question it has gone to the supreme court of the United States.

The case is of particular interest for the whole community, for it not only concerns the question of oleomargarine, but the whole question of state rights.

The attorney general argues that this statute recognizes two kinds of oleomargarine, first, the oleomargarine spoken of in the original laws, and second, the oleomargarine in the proviso, which must be in such distinct form as to appraise the consumer of its character. He claims that our law is constitutional, because we discriminate against none in the original package, as the statute says expressly that it can be sold. So we are not interfering with interstate commerce.

Before the supreme court of the state, the attorney general argued, saying, "Gentlemen, if you say that this law is in violation of the principle of state rights, then you say there is no power in the state to legislate for police purposes the sale of any imitation product; our markets can be flooded with imitation flour, sugar, salt, and imitation this and that clear through the whole category, and there is no power in the commonwealth to stop it." The supreme court decided with the attorney general, and then an appeal was taken to the national supreme court at Washington, on a writ of error, and our attorney general is to argue the case there next month probably.

This same law has been taken to the supreme court at eighteen different points, going upon the general principle, that, if they have a drag net out, they may catch some fish, of some kind, somewhere. They raised eighteen points, so that out of some one of the eighteen, there might be found one which would bite. There is now being nothing done, practically, under this law. Of course the judges in the lower courts will not entertain any cases while the status of the law is in dispute, and so the law we place the most force upon, is practically in-operative at the present time. Still, we are doing what we can to enforce the other laws as to signs, wrappers, etc.