In 1877, New York became the first U.S. state to attempt legal restriction of the sale of oleomargarine through compulsory labeling. The law, "to prevent deception in sales of butter," required retailers to provide customers with a slip of paper that identified the "imitation" product as margarine. This law proved ineffective, as it would have required an army of inspectors and chemists to enforce it. By the mid-1880s, the U.S. federal government had introduced a tax of two cents per pound, and manufacturers needed an expensive license to make or sell the product. The simple expedient of requiring oleo manufacturers to color their product distinctively was, however, left out of early federal legislation. But individual states began to require the clear labeling of margarine. The color bans, drafted by the butter lobby, began in the dairy states of New York and New Jersey. In several states, legislatures enacted laws to require margarine manufacturers to add pink colorings to make the product look unpalatable, despite the objections of the oleo manufacturers that butter dairies themselves added annatto to their product to imitate the yellow of mid-summer butter.