Small dairy farms help local families survive Great Depression
During the Great Depression, many families in the Fremont area became small dairy operations to help them survive the difficult times.
I am told that increased regulations made this more difficult and led to some people selling dairy products "for pets" to keep regulators off their backs.
That's a story I've written about before and undoubtedly will again, but with the election approaching, I thought it would be interesting to pass along another tale related to another dairy controversy.
In 1949, voters in Fremont, Ohio and a few other states faced a decision about allowing "colored margarine."
Local voters joined the movement to drop longtime restrictions on colored margarine and after the vote, The Fremont News-Messenger proclaimed, "Colored oleo is back in Ohio after 62 years as an outcast." And the story said, "The votes in yesterday's election lifted a ban imposed by a legislature dominated by rural butter interest more than six decades ago."
This was definitely a business issue and one that was far reaching beyond Fremont.
In 1886, Congress had passed a law that capped a movement to regulate the cheaper spread, first introduced in 1874. Supporters of the law and of earlier state laws regulating the packaging and sale of margarine, argued they were preventing unscrupulous wholesalers and retailers from masking margarine as real dairy butter and duping customers.
Ohio, New York, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all had banned both the manufacture and the distribution of "artificial butter."
Margarine producers, of course, thought there was much more to it than "protection" of the consumer and the fight was on and continued for more than six decades.
The years that followed included claims that margarine caused insanity and contained germs of cancer.
With the courts involved, the fight quickly turned to the issue of color with judges ruling that it was easy to discern uncolored margarine from butter so there was no "attempt to defraud" as long as margarine wasn't yellow.
That fight raged for decades with some twists and turns, including a time when companies sold packets of coloring with their uncolored margarine.
When producers began to process domestic corn, soybean and other oils into margarine, farm groups and labor unions began to support repeal of regulations.
The federal government repealed a tax on colored margarine and in 1949 voters in Ohio approved the sale of colored margarine as was already permitted in 31 states.
By 1955, every state but Minnesota and Wisconsin had repealed its anti-margarine color laws, with Minnesota holding out until 1963 and Wisconsin—"the Dairy State"—not relenting until 1967.
Next time you buy margarine, remember that it wasn't always so easy.
Roy Wilhelm started a 40-year career at The News-Messenger in 1965, as a reporter. Now retired, he is writing about the history of some Sandusky County businesses.