436 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



perts in such work and must give them sufficient latitude, so that they 

 can take immediate action when necessity arises. To this has been 

 largely due the efficiency of the federal law in very many matters 

 in which the state laws have been conspicuously inefficient. 



How many of our seaboard or frontier states have at the present 

 time any system of inspection which will enable them to prevent the 

 importation of injurious insect pests, or how many, even, could pro- 

 ceed to eradicate such pest when actually within the borders of their 

 state when over a few hundred dollars were necessary for its eradica- 

 tion? California is probably the only state having any adequate ma- 

 chinery for such work. 



But it is objected that the work of exterminating an insect within 

 a state would be unconstitutional, an interference with the rights of 

 the state, etc. So it would seem and so at first it appeared to the 

 writer, but the present laws of congress concerning the control of 

 cattle and human diseases and the regulation of the importation of 

 noxious animals effectually dispel this objection. 



At the present time the Public Health and Marine Hospital Serv- 

 ice has charge of most of the maritime quarantine stations and may 

 take charge of any others it sees fit when they are inefficient under state 

 or municipal management. It furthermore may enforce interstate 

 quarantines, or may quarantine any portion of a state and take such 

 measures as it sees fit to eradicate disease in any locality when the local 

 or state health officials, either through lack of legislation or inefficiency, 

 fail to control disease so that it threatens neighboring states. This 

 has actually taken place in several instances. For a full discussion of 

 federal quarantine measures see an article by James Wilford Garner, 

 of the University of Illinois, in the Yale Review for August, 1905, pp. 

 181-205. At the present time the southern states are petitioning 

 congress for the national government to take entire control of maritime 

 and interstate quarantines, owing to the proved efficiency of the gov- 

 ernment service in handling the yellow fever outbreak during the past 

 season. Surely there can be no better proof of the desirability of 

 federal control of quarantines than the present attitude of the southern 

 states, for no section of the country has had their experience with 

 quarantines and no section has been more opposed to federal quaran- 

 tines in the past. 1 . 



By the Lacey act 2 congress has conferred upon the secretary of agri- 

 culture the power to make and enforce regulations to prevent the im- 

 portation of noxious animals, and this act has now been enforced for 

 five years. In essence the law proposed by the convention of 1897 



1 See the Congressional Record of March, 1893, for the lengthy debates in 

 the house and senate upon the present national quarantine law, which was ad- 

 mittedly a compromise measure. 



2 See Circular 29, Biological Survey, U. S. Dept. Agr. 



