Box Vox

packaging as content

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November 11, 2011

Margarine Penalties

Smugglers

During margarine’s long prohibition, the product was variously outlawed, taxed, prohibited from being colored and required to be colored pink (until “pink” was ruled unconstitutional).

As with alcohol’s prohibition there were “bootleggers.” Some served time.

Above left: the mug shots of Charles Wille, John L. McMonigle and Joseph Wirth who all served time at Leavenworth Prison in the early 1900s.

Center: a photo from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of three Wisconsin women loading a car trunk “with cases of oleomargarine outside an Illinois supermarket near the state border in December 1964.”

On right: an anonymous margarine smuggler from New Brunswick…

Dad and mom smuggled margarine from Maine as it was illegal to have coloured margerine in New Brunswick. I can remember that they took the panels on the car doors off and stuffed the doors full and then put the panels back on.

Kill Everything

NYTimes-1918In 1918 Frank W. Tillinghast, president of the Rhode Island based “Vermont Manufacturing Company” was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for coloring margarine to resemble butter (and therefore: “tax evasion”).

In 1901 Tillinghast had testified on behalf of margarine in hearings for “The Bill to make Olemargarine and Other Imitation Dairy Products Subject to the Laws of The State or Territory Into Which they are Transported, and to Change the Tax on Oleomargarine” (H. R. 3717).

During margarine’s “pink” period:

In 1890, the Vermont legislature prohibited the manufacture of oleomargarine in that state, and specified that it could be sold in Vermont only if colored pink. In 1891 Minnesota, West Virginia, and New Hampshire passed similar laws. Not long afterwards, an alert Minnesota oleomargarine S.W.A.T. team carried out a pantry raid and confiscated a quantity of not-pink oleomargarine that had been imported from Missouri by Armour Packing Co., a New Jersey corporation.

The Pink Oleo Saga
Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy

Wisconsin’s anti-margarine laws have enjoyed a long run:

Yeah, that was in the late ’70s. Up until 1981, it was illegal to sell dyed margarine in Wisconsin. We had these white bricks that looked like lard. It was awful and no one wanted it. So, once a month, I’d drive to Illinois to get dyed margarine, load up the station wagon, and distribute it to the neighbors.

Will Durst

Canada is another country with stingent margarine regulations of surprising longevity:

Agriculture Department inspectors swooped down on four Wal-Mart stores in the Quebec City area yesterday and seized 72 plastic tubs of yellow Becel margarine with an estimated street value of $179.28.

Quebec seizes yellow margarine
Montreal Gazette, November 5, 2005

(More about margarine as contraband, after the fold…)


NY Times, 1896:

NYTimes-1896

NY Times, 1909:
 NYTimes-1909

Spokane Daily Chronical, 1948:

SpokaneDailyChronical-1948

Milwaukee Journal, 1955:

MilwaukeeJournal-1955

Milwaukee Journal, 1957:

MilwaukeeJournal-1957

Wisconsis State Journal, 1966:

WisconsinStateJournal-1966

And speaking of the sixties and the movement to “decriminalize” margarine, there is a recent film called “Margarine Wars” which humorously conflates margarine and marijana:

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

One Response to “Margarine Penalties”

  1. carotte says:
    November 13, 2011 at 3:54 pm

    Whow, up until reading the first part of the article here I had absolutely no idea that such ‘prohibition’ had existed.
    It’s quite impressive how much power the dairy industry had ( and probably still have).
    I don’t know if there was ever any problem like that in France (where I live).
    I haven’t seen a tub of margarine open for quite some time, I do recall it being whiter than butter, but then again our butter is mostly white (no added coloring, at least from the brand I use), be it because of some ‘law’ or the fact that no one cares I couldn’t say.
    But I must say that the packaging they had to invent are quite smart anyway.