Letter from the Commissioner of Agriculture to the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture : communicating information on the subject of pleuro-pneumonia among cattle.

  • Le Duc, William Gates, 1823-1917.
Date:
[1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter from the Commissioner of Agriculture to the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture : communicating information on the subject of pleuro-pneumonia among cattle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    and the last contaminated place or thing has heen purified. It matters little whether controlled by State or national government, if vigor and uniformity of action can be secured: but, as such combined and unflagging work is necessary, it conld be best con- trolled by an intelligent central authority. The United States Government is as much called upon to defend her possessions against an enemy like this—so implacable. 80 relentless, and. so certain, if not repelled, to lay us under an incubus which will in- crease with the coming centuries, and dwarf the prosperity to which we are entitled— as against the less insidious one w ho attacks us openly with lire anil sword. Let the national Congress consider this matter well. Let every stock-owner press it upon his Representative as a matter that cannot be safely ignored even for a single day. Let boards of agriculture, farmers'clubs and conventions, granges, and all citizens who value the future well-beiug of the nation, unite in a strong representation on the sub- ject. If the present Congress should neglect it, let citizens make it a test question to every future candidate for their suffrages, and elect only such as are pledged to carry suppressive measures into effect. The danger threatens all classes alike, though the first sufferers w ill he the stock-owners; for every tax upon production necessarily enhances the value of the product; and, as agricultural progress must he seriously retarded, the tax will not fall upon meat alone, hut upon every product of the farm. Nothing can excuse a. continued neglect of this subject, the dangers surrounding which increase from day to day, and the final results of which, it once it reaches our Western and Southern States and Territories, can only be computed by the prospective increase of our population and our herds of cattle. For this is not like an evil preying on our cur- rency, banking, trade, or manufactures, the full extent of which may be, in a great measure, seen from the beginning, and the repair of which may be at anytime inaugu- rated by legislative enactment. The animal plague only increases its devastations as we increase the numbers of our herds, and threatens soon to acquire an extension to which no legislation can oppose a check, and a prevalence in the face of which the most desperate efforts of the nation will prove of no avail. Thus, our cattle are in- creasing at the rate of 13,500,000 every ten years, so that, by the end of this century, they may be exactly doubled, with a prospective loss, if our Western and Southern ranges are infected, of $130,000,000 yearly in deaths alone. The choice is now in our power. So far as we know, our stock-raising States and Territories are still unaffected. We can still successfully meet and expel the invader; next year it may be too late. [From the National Live Stock Journal of November, 1878.] OUR GOVERNMENT AND THE ENGLISH CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACT. By an Associated Press dispatch from Washington we learn that The Secretary of State has been officially notified of the passage of an act by the British Parliament, entitled 'The Contagious Diseases (Animal) Act, 1878,' under which, except in the case of countries specially exempted by the Privy Council, in whole or in part, from the operations of the act, all animals landed from abroad in any part of the United King- dom will, after the 1st of January next, be slaughtered at the port of debarkation. The British Government has also notified Secretary Evarts that, in case the United States desire to be exempted from the operations of the act, the lords will require a Statement of the laws which regulate the importation of animals into this country, and the method adopted to prevent the spreading of any contagious disease when it exists in any part of the United States. Secretary Evarts lias sent a copy of the act of the British Parliament to the Secretary of the Treasury, in order that he may fur- nish the desired information preliminary to any action being taken to have the animals shipped from the United Stales into the United Kingdom exempted. We think it will puzzle the Secretary of the Treasury to find any methods that have been adopted by our general government to prevent the Spreading of any contagious disease when it exists in any part of 1 he United States ; and if he will take the trouble to investigate 1 he matter pretty thoroughly, be will find that all the regulations that, have from time to time been ordered by his department to prevent the introduction of contagious and infectious diseases into the United States from foreign countries are practically worthless. When this fad comes to be reported to the British Govern- ment, it is not unlikely that the exemption which the United States now- enjoys from the operation of the act w ill he revoked, notwithstanding our present comparative freedom from any diseases likely to be transmitted by exportation to England. When this condition of things is brought about, and the business of exporting fat cattle, sheep, and sw ine from this country to England—w hich has, within the past few-years, grown to sm h enormous proportions, and exercised so powerful an influence upon prices in this country—comes to a sudden halt, we shall expect such a pressure to be brought to bear upon Congress as will compel the passage of some such act as that introduced into the House last May, by Hon. J. S. Jones, of Ohio, to which reference was made in these columns in June last. But is it wise in us to await unfavorable action on the part of the British Govern-