COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE 301 



to contract it whenever exposed to the infection. The average 

 loss per head on cattle is about $20 and on the smaller ruminants 

 and swine not less than $1.00, so that the loss from a general 

 infection would count up to $1,500,000,000. Supposing that 62 

 per cent, only of this depreciation occurred, the losses would repre- 

 sent in the neighborhood of $1,000,000,000. In the face of such 

 a tremendous possibility, can any one have the hardihood to claim 

 that the comparatively paltry profits secured by the importer on a 

 very limited amount of material brought from the Old World, 

 or elsewhere, should be conceded a single moment's consideration? 

 If a general infection had to be stamped out the objector must, in 

 addition to the above looses, take into account the almost fabulous 

 expense of expert control all over the country, and the suspension 

 of trade in live stock with the incalculable attendant losses. He 

 must further consider the creat delav necessarily incurred in 

 undertaking such extensive work at so many distant points and 

 the consequent resumption of susceptibility to a new attack of 

 many animals that had already passed through the disease, and 

 no less of the more susceptible calves, lambs, kids and pigs born in 

 the interval, all ready to furnish new cases of the plague, to 

 increase enormously the infecting material, and to contribute to 

 an indefinite duration and extension of the pest. 



I have felt called upon to dwell the longer on this subject be- 

 cause, being a new proposition and requiring legislative action, 

 it will doubtless arouse a bitter and determined opposition. 



MEASURES IN A NEWLY INVADED COUNTRY 



In a country which has hitherto been free from aphthous fever, 

 the arrival of infection by any channel should be the signal for 

 the remorseless extinction of everything that may be reasonably 

 suspected of harboring the germ or of Threatening its dispersion. 



When the importation of an infected animal is the occasion of 

 the pestilence, the quarantine and prompt slaughter of such animal 

 should be followed by similar treatment of all others that have 

 been in contact with it; of all that have been driven over the road 

 which the infected or suspected animal has trodden; of all that 

 have followed the latter in any building, yard, ship, car, or other 

 conveyance, in any chute, loading bank, bridge, or box for loading 



