Word: congressmen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Bull Butter." Farm-area Congressmen had long sneered at margarine as "bull butter," had taxed it, regulated and abused it for more than half a century. Women had hardly murmured. For one thing, early margarine was not very tasty. A French chemist had stewed up the first batch from animal fats in 1869 because Napoleon III had offered a prize for a butter substitute. The result was a lardlike, greasy substance. Improved margarine, made from coconut oil, caught the public fancy during World War I. But it was not until the butter-rationed days of World War II that millions...
...Congressmen from the big cities had fought the tax without success. But they got potent allies when oleo manufacturers began making their product from the oils of cottonseed and soybeans-raised in the southern and midwestern states. By the time South Carolina's Congressman L. Mendel Rivers introduced his bill for tax repeal, margarine had become as politically explosive as plutonium...
...House Agriculture Committee, a farm-bloc group, tried to avert its imminent detonation by shelving it. But 218 Congressmen signed a petition to bring it to the floor. Last week, when the House thrashed it out, the galleries were jammed tighter than during the debate...
...Saps." Farm-bloc Congressmen fought for U.S. cows as though the margarine-makers were going to throw them all into giant hamburger machines; they predicted balefully that herds would be so depleted that little babies would be denied milk. They cried that oleo was full of worms and that its natural color was tattletale grey. Oleo's partisans replied that butter had been found to contain "insects, hair, moth scales and something with a Latin name...
...public interest or of a privileged nature." And individual officers were to decide what was of public interest. Newsmen promptly howled that this meant news would be suppressed. At week's end General Clay said the directive had been misinterpreted: only private correspondence such as letters from Congressmen would be withheld. But even as he spoke, the Air Force threw a curtain of secrecy around its European operations. Correspondents were left to wonder: Who threw the mud in the goldfish bowl...