Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. THURSDAY, JULY 23, 1908. MARGARINE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43353, 23 July 1908, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

THURSDAY, JULY 23, 1908. MARGARINE.

This above all—to thine oym self be true, And it must follow *as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

In a recent issue of “ Tile World’s Work” there is a very instructive article given to the subject of the above named butter substitute. There is also another article giving an account of Lord' Ikerrin’s cleverly devised scheme for entrapping the food • fakers ’ and bringing them to justice. It appears.that the amount of ‘faking’ which has been accomplished in the retail trade, at the expense of the unwary consumer has been simply shocking, the working classes in Lancashire have been, especially victimised. Lord Ikerrin as the representative of the Dublin Department has been on the lookout, disguised as a loafer, assisted by Mr Whyte, also disguised, as a railway porter. These two gentlemen have had the good fortune to bring to light some of the notorious frauds have been practised in the butter and egg trade. Some of these frauds are startling in the extreme. For instance, we are told that perhaps on of the most of the prosecutions instituted in order to protect the reputation of Irish eggs was that at Liverpool. Lord Ikerrin went into a shop and bought six eggs from a basket ticketed “ Irish Fggs,” four of these eggs actually* bore the stamp of a Danish exporter. On another date eggs which also bore Danish stamps vere exposed for sale labelled ‘‘ Genuine Irish Eggs.” We are told that out of seven thousand million eggs sold last year in the United Kingdom as Irish, practically only one thousand million -were really Irish. In the matter of the substitution of margarine for butter some of the disclosures accomplished by these two vigilant detectives were equally startling. At “ The Shamrock | Butter Market” in Wigan It was Lfound that while the invoices for ibutter in the shop represented only [£7 10s there were invoices for margarine to the amount of £167 and this for the period between December the third and March the eleventh. As the margarine had been sold as “ Our noted Butter at lhd per, pound,” the perpetrators of the fraud went to .prison. But it is in connection v. ith the ' open and aboveboard sale of good

m; r 4aline, which is certainly gaining favour at home, that we as butter exporters are chiefly concerned. The article is being introduced by the leading firms there in substitution for the unsavoury “ pastry butter ” which has had such a vogue in the past “ the butter what isn’t fit to eat” as the little girl said. That of course will not affect the demand for our pure and delicately flavoured butter. But margarine as a substitute for good butter when the price of the latter has risen beyond the purchasing power of the consumer is a factor with which we may have to reckon.

More especially is this so in view of the fact that the consumption of margarine is sanctioned by , the verdict of analyst and physician alike, arid its high nutritive value is indisputably proved. Already it has been found to act upon the butter market as silver is found to react upon gold whefe a bi - metallic system of currency prevails. For we are told that when the butter rose beyond the purchasing power of the consumer the consumer confined himself to the purchase of margarine with the result that the demand for butter being thus decreased, the price fell also. This does not of course apply t to the wealthy classes who can have butter regardless of price. But it does apply to the million, and the extent to which the increasing sale of margarine may react upon the butter market remains to be seon.