Items of Interest July 31, 1915 Issue

Items of Interest

How violators of the oleomargarine law have defrauded the federal government out of at least twenty-seven million dollars, due in stamp and special taxes, is revealed by Secretary McAdoo in a statement based upon a preliminary report on a sweeping investigation conducted by Commissioner Osborne of the internal revenue bureau. Frauds committed as long ago as 1902, immediately after the enactment of the law, have been uncovered by the commissioner. Unpaid taxes, aggregating eight hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars, have been recovered and deposited in the treasury, "with the prospect of further very large collections." Forty-two violators of the law have been convicted since the first of January, and twenty-nine of these have been given prison sentences. Fines aggregating one hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars have been assessed, in addition to the recoveries actually made, and the announcement declares that while fraudulent practices of this sort probably have been checked, the investigation will be continued and "every law-breaker brought to justice."

The announcement shows that since 1902 more than two hundred million pounds of colored oleomargarine have been manufactured, and fraudulently sold as uncolored oleomargarine. The law imposes a tax of ten cents per pound on colored oleomargarine, and one quarter of a cent per pound on the uncolored product. In perpetrating these frauds, the oleomargarine manufacturers have paid only the one quarter cent, when they should have paid ten cents; in the case of butter manufacturers who sold the product as butter, no tax was paid, when the government should have received ten cents per pound.

This is the first season under national control of the Rocky Mountain national park. There are many mountains in the Colorado Rockies that exceed fourteen thousand feet in height, but only one of them is included in the park. On July 1 Secretary Lane took formal possession. The work of building a road by the Fall River canon from Estes park across the range to Grand lake on the west is now actively under way. This road is the state's contribution to the park. Rocky Mountain national park lies about seventy miles northwest of Denver. It contains about three hundred and fifty square miles, not a foot of which is less than eight thousand feet above sea-level. It lies on each side of the continental divide, which at this point runs irregularly north and south. There are more than sixty peaks that rise above twelve thousand feet, and a number between thirteen thousand and fourteen thousand feet, and one that rises above fourteen thousand feet. Between these peaks are nearly two hundred mountain lakes. These vary in size from a few acres up to fifty or sixty acres. The timber line in the Alps is generally about sixty-five hundred feet, but on these mountains it is about eleven thousand five hundred feet and over to timber line. There are more than forty species of plants growing and not less than one thousand varieties of wild flowers.

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