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Act of Parliament. As an illustration of the difficulties, I may
mention that one Saturday afternoon a gentleman well known
locally went out to purchase some butter for his tea. He called at
a certain "dairy" and asked for a stated quantity of "best butter."
To his great surprise he was closely scrutinised, and after an embarrassing
period he was informed in a very confused sort of manner,
"Very sorry, sir, but we have no butter; we have some very nice
margarine." He left the shop, and on calling at several others a
similar thing occurred. The truth is that he was suspected of being
the agent of an inspector, and each of these purveyors of "best
dairy goods" were "off" as far as butter was concerned. Another
thing which has covered an enormous amount of this fraudulent
trading, as well as rendered nugatory some of the very wholesome
provisions of the Margarine Act regulating the exposure of this
article as butter, is a judgment given in the High Court in the case
of "Crane v. Lawrence," and where it was, in effect, held that an
article exposed for sale in the legal sense must be exposed to the
view of the customer standing in the ordinary position of the
customers frequenting the shop. The result of this has been that
the " Margarine " or mixture, when on sale, is placed inside a large
marble slab on the counter, the back of which is towards the public
who enter the shop, and as the customers cannot see through the
slab (even with the strongest glasses) there never is any exposure
for sale within the meaning of the above judgment, and consequently
no need to label the mixture "Margarine." Having got
this legal protection for what ordinary people would consider a
direct negative to the provisions of the Margarine Acts, they proceed
further with this misapplied ingenuity and sell margarine
mixture at butter prices in a paper or wrapper with the word
"Margarine" printed on it. This word is so cunningly placed on
the paper as to permit the mixture being wrapped up in such a
manner as to make it invisible to the ordinary customer, and when
the inspector's agent (for whose benefit all these tricks are invented)
makes a purchase, the vendor, with innocence worthy of a better
cause, proceeds to inform the officer taking the sample that the
wrapper has the word ''Margarine" on it, and that it is a
"Notice" as required by the "Sale of Food and Drugs Act."
These are samples of the difficulties to be met with, amongst others,
and afford an illustration of how these Acts can be evaded and the
public cheated from day to day. In spite of all this we can claim
that for another year a fair proportion have found that with all their