The Butter Atheist

Is butter just a high-cost fat? Is margarine equally nutritious and palatable and a much more sensible food for a country at war?

Slim, highbrowed Oswald H. Brownlee, research associate in economics at Iowa State College, thinks the answer to both questions is Yes. He wrote a pamphlet this spring to prove it, and the College published the pamphlet. Before young Mr. Brownlee could say oleomargarine, the dairymen of the Hawkeye State were shrieking that his 35-page pamphlet had jeopardized the nation's entire food program, and had wrought "untold injury" to Iowa's $100,000,000-a-year industry.

Researcher Brownlee had been disturbed: the U.S. would be short of some 20 billion pounds of milk this year. He felt that it was practically sinful to use good whole milk to make butter, the least nutritious of all milk products. He calculated that enough margarine to replace butter completely could be produced from half the crop land and with an eighth the labor. He favored removing Federal and State taxes and other restrictions by which dairy-state Congressmen have long hamstrung the sale of margarine.

Stolid Dr. Charles E. Friley, president of Iowa State College, at first tried to protect his corn-belt Don Quixote from the dairymen's fury, mumbled about academic freedom. But then he himself was summoned to a meeting of 100 angry Iowa milk producers. Orated Francis Johnson, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation : "The farmers are alarmed over this tendency to make Iowa State College a tax-supported Harvard. They're not ashamed of the 'cow college' label."

President Friley bowed before the rhetorical storm, appointed a committee of six faculty members and six dairymen to go over the Brownlee opus and ascertain its accuracy. Last week this committee made its report: Brownlee's contentions must be retracted, his pamphlet revised.

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