Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 85, number 1, autumn 2001

              The "Oleo Wars
Wisconsin's Fight over the Demon Spread
55
By Gerry Strey
F you eat a meal in a Wisconsin restaurant today and want margarine instead of butter, you may have to ask for it—Wisconsin law forbids the substitution of mar¬ garine for butter in a public eating place. If you are a student, patient, or inmate in a state institution, you will be served but¬ ter with your meals unless a doctor says margarine is necessary for your health. When you shop for margarine in a Wis¬ consin supermarket, you must buy a whole pound colored a prescribed shade of yellow and labeled in letters of a specific size. Finally, that margarine must be made of domestic, not import¬ ed, vegetable oils.
These restrictions are part of Wis¬ consin Statute 97.18, "Oleomargarine Regulations," the  last fragments of a once-mighty rampart of law that shield¬ ed Wisconsin citizens from the dangers of butter substitutes. Although Wiscon¬ sin was not alone in the fight, the near-century of law making, the public figures who created those laws, and the private cit¬ izens who either circumvented them or stood in their staunch support tell a distinctly Wisconsin tale.
The story begins in Europe, where food shortages, partic¬ ularly of edible fats, stimulated a search for a cheap and nutri¬ tious butter substitute. By 1869 Hippolyte Mege-Mouries, a French scientist and inventor, developed a complex process that combined heat, pressure, carbonate of potash, and beef fat to produce an oil that, when churned with a small amount of milk, water, and yellow coloring, resulted in a palatable substance that was cheaper and kept better than butter. The
Wisconsinites of all ages and walks of life felt tbe lure of cheap margarine across tbe border in Illinois. These members ofthe Wis¬ consin Federation of Women's Clubs, (left to right) Mrs. Burness Collentine of Lake Geneva, Mrs. Claude Hayward of East Troy, and Mrs. HE. Lowry of Lake Geneva, were visiting an Lllinois supermarket when caught by a Milwaukee Sentinel photographer.
Would YOU Buy "Pearls of Fat"?
To generations of Americans, it was just "oleo," but the name ofthe butter substi¬ tute has a surprisingly complex history. Its inventor, Hippolyte Mege-Mouries, created the term oleomargarine by com¬ bining Latin and Greek words. Oleo came from oleum, the Latin for beef fat, and margarine from margahc acid, a fatty acid that was a major component of the new substance. (Because of the acid's pearly appearance, its discoverer had named it after the Greek word for pearl, margarites.)
process received a U.S. patent in 1873, and the Oleo-Mar- garine Manufacturing Gompany of New York began produc¬ tion the same year. American manufacturers quickly improved the original process, and by 1886 there were thirty- seven plants in the United States manufacturing oleomar¬ garine.
From the start margarine triggered so much suspicion and alarm that it became subject to more regulation than any other foodstuff. Most Euro¬ pean countries were concerned with preventing fraudulent substitution of the new product for butter and with protecting butter producers, but in North America the reaction was far more intense. Emotions and social val¬ ues combined with economic self- interest to create a visceral enmity toward margarine, which evolved into a long-running attempt to suppress it. The agricultural community saw margarine as an intruder, a counterfeit food alien to values based on the moral and phys¬ ical superiority ofthe agrarian life. The artificiality and indus¬ trial origin of margarine inspired fear and suspicion, not unlike public reaction to the genetically engineered foods of today. Governor Lucius Hubbard of Minnesota expressed popular feeling when he exclaimed in 1887, "The public has been victim of various impositions practiced in different departments of its industry, but I think it will be admitted that the ingenuity of depraved human genius has culminated in the production of oleomargarine and its kindred abomina¬ tions."
Gonflict between city and farm was a feature of life in the latter nineteenth century throughout the United States. Iron¬ ically, in spite of rhetoric about the virtues ofthe pastoral life, dairy interests, beginning in New York and moving west to Wisconsin,   were   themselves   developing   an   industrial
Autumn 2001