128 BuKEAu OF Fabmers' Institutes. 



lost through the wanton, needless, insatiable thirst for a big 

 killing bee. What did it matter that a great paying institution 

 employing many hands was wiped out; that the proprietors were 

 financially ruined; that employees were thrown out of work; that 

 great farms were deserted? Slaughter was the war cry. Sal- 

 vation they dreamed not of. If it were proved that our people 

 contracted the disease from the cattle, I would heartily favor 

 such slaughter. Or from the cattle owner's standpoint I would 

 favor it if assured that the undertaking were practical, and that 

 its cost would be too exorbitant, and that the infection could then 

 be kept out of the State. The framers of the laws under which 

 the inspections have been made and the members of the State 

 boards of health seem to have given no thought to the immensity 

 of the task, or the expenditure such a plan entails. If they have, 

 we have not been told how they propose to succeed. The year- 

 book of the Department of Agriculture for 1897, states that the 

 government has made and distributed to State authorities suflB- 

 cient tuberculin to test 57,000 cattle. The census of 1890 gave 

 New York State alone 2,131,392 cattle. How much tuberculin 

 would be needed then to examine the cattle in all the states? 

 The United States government reports for 1897 placed the number 

 of milch cows at 18,113,000; other cattle, 32,647,000. Total valua- 

 tion, $877,169,414. If we could wave over this State a fairy wand 

 and thus instantly banish all bovine tuberculosis, how long would 

 the immunity last, while the remainder of this vast country is 

 full of infection, and the bacilli can retain their vitality for 

 months in a bale of hay, and the winds can blow them over the 

 borders? I know of a stock farm where $100,000 was spent for 

 farms and buildings, and $30,000 for bure-bred cattle, and in 

 about a year these cattle were disposed of at any price, on ac- 

 eount of the methods pursued by the State in which the farm is 

 located. Tuberculosis in man, and such of the lower animals 

 as are susceptible to it, is generally recognized as a specific in- 

 fectious disease due to the tubercle bacillus, and this bacillus 

 in either species is considered as practically the same. We are 

 interested in this paper with tuberculosis in the human and 



