Commissioner of Agriculture 337 



confines of both New York and New England. A fortunate chap- 

 ter of accidents had saved us from that calamity. 



1. The railways had not been called into service to carry stock 

 from the infected pens to any point beyond the 5 unfortunate 

 counties. Of the known shipments of infected cattle which had 

 left the East Buffalo yards during the danger period, the Blake 

 herd alone traveled by rail and that only to Bergen, Genesee 

 County, where the animals composing it were driven by road into 

 the adjacent counties of Monroe and Orleans. Had all of the 

 infected cattle been shipped by rail, over long distances, we would 

 have had a very different outcome and an infected center at each 

 separate destination. 



2. The almost unprecedented drought of 1908 had dried up the 

 pastures which are usually relied on to keep the purchased winter 

 feeders for a time until they can be put on the winter diet of 

 corn and hay, ensilage, or other provender. The farmers were in 

 less than the usual hurry to buy and in the delay they found 

 material protection in that they escaped the infection which would 

 have been more likely to overtake them in ordinary years in the 

 absence of the disastrous rainless season. 



3. The high price of corn in 1908 militated against stocking 

 up with cattle, etc., for winter feeding. Thus in July, 1907, New 

 York corn was quoted at 61% cents; in July, 1908, it was 87i/> 

 cents ; and in August and September, 89% cents. Under these 

 circumstances, the farmer Avho raised the corn naturally preferred 

 to sell his crop and put the money in the bank, rather than to buy 

 cattle and incur all the labor and trouble of feeding, with the 

 attendant risk of disease and accident. And in this case no one 

 can doubt that this " bird in the hand " policy saved many from 

 a serious calamity. 



4. But no such fortuitous conditions, separately or combined, 

 could have saved New York from a general infection had the 

 measures of sanitary police been much longer delayed or had they 

 been perfunctory or in any way lacking in stringency. And here 

 is where the previous invasions mentioned differed radically from 

 that of 1908. In 1870 the infected English cattle Avere shipped 

 from Great Britain in August and the disease had spread widely 

 in Canada before it reached Oriskany, Oneida County, New York, 



