Joseph McKenna

“ The advantages are in a sense made a snare, and the testimony means no more than that the packer has built up a trade on a system of gross weight which enables it to practice a kind of deception on the purchaser that he is getting 3 pounds of lard when he is only getting 2 pounds, 6 ounces, and enables the packer to pay for the container. The evil of the transaction is not in the latter, but in the former,-that is, in the deception. ”

“ The practice has its advantages, no doubt, but it is the observation of the officers of the state that it conceals from buyers their exact purchases,-there is confusion as to what the price paid compensates, whether lard or tin container.
The Armour Company contests this conclusion and contends that the label upon the package, put on in observance of a law of the state passed in 1907, [2] shows the net weight of the lard, and protects the consumer from imposition while it preserves to the company a useful method of packing and a necessary freedom of business with the public. ”

“ We said but a few days ago that if a belief of evils is not arbitrary, we cannot measure their extent against the estimate of the legislature, and there is no impeachment of such estimate in differences of opinion, however strongly sustained. ”