THE "FERTILIZER LAW." 9 



During the delay and the hesitation incident to protracted 

 hearings, the insidious disease was rapidly spreading from 

 herd to herd ; and every day, every hour, increased the diffi- 

 culty and the expense of checking it. It was through the 

 efforts of the Board that a cattle commission was created, 

 and clothed with power to control contagious diseases among 

 stock. 



No intelligent or fair-minded man will deny, that, if it had 

 not been for the persistent and determined efforts of the 

 State Board, we should have had the most dangerous and 

 the most terrible of all the contagious diseases among stock 

 permanently fixed upon our herds. The cost to the State 

 treasury of all the efforts for its extirpation, extending over 

 several years, was about seventy thousand dollars; and it 

 was by far the best investment the State ever made, since it 

 saved the loss of millions of dollars to the State and the 

 country. "No man of ordinary intelligence now doubts the 

 contagious character of the disease. It must be regarded as 

 more dangerous and more to be dreaded than the rinderpest, 

 or cattle-plague of Europe, on account of its long period 

 of incubation, during which it is utterly impossible to detect 

 its presence, thus giving the owner of cattle that have been 

 in contact with it an opportunity to spread it far and near, 

 with little risk of exposure, in his anxiety to save himself 

 from certain loss. The value of the service which the Board 

 thus rendered to the State far surpassed all the cost incident 

 to its organization, from the date of its existence to the 

 present time. 



The Act of the Legislature commonly known as the " Fer- 

 tilizer Law," designed to regulate the manufacture and sale 

 of commercial fertilizers, originated in the Board : and, 

 though it met with determined opposition from the first, it 

 has come to be regarded as one of the most useful laws ever 

 passed ; and has commended itself not only to farmers, for 

 whose protection it was originally designed, but to the manu- 

 facturers themselves, from the fact that the public confi- 

 dence in the general honesty of the manufacture of such 

 articles has increased their use by farmers to an amazing 

 extent. The regulation of this trade has indeed worked an 

 entire revolution in the Avhole business of commercial fertil- 

 izers, and placed it upon a far higher standard than it ever 



