570 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



country and wiping out these valuable animals gathered together 

 with such tremendous labor. Now they have rinderpest partly 

 under control and are being confronted by worst diseases, so it is 

 that in South Africa agriculture is not merely stationary but is go- 

 ing backward. The settlers in Australia started out to make their 

 country a great beef-producing land and dairy country. Contagious 

 pleuro-pneumonia came and as a result Australia imported beef. 

 I know there are men present who remember the losses that came to 

 Pennsylvania and the Eastern states during an invasion of con- 

 tagious pleuro-pneumonia twenty or thirty years ago. This dis- 

 ease was imported and spread to Massachusetts, New Jersey, New 

 York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri and 

 sweeping the great cattle sections of the West caused losses conser- 

 vatively estimated at between forty and fifty millions of dollars. 

 Then the Bureau of Animal Industry took the matter in hand and 

 the disease was exterminated root and branch, and for twelve years 

 there was not a single case of contagious pleuro-pneumonia in the 

 United States. This work w^as done at a cost of about a million 

 dollars. This is an illustration of what may be accomplished when 

 the work is thoroughly organized and efficiently conducted. 



Two years ago there was an outbreak of contagious foot and 

 mouth disease in the vicinity of Boston, This outbreak, covering a 

 limited district, caused a loss of a thousand dollars a day for sev- 

 eral months. This was also taken in hand by the Federal Govern- 

 ment and exterminated at a cost of half a million dollars. 



Others will remember the losses so common in Pennsylvania from 

 invasions of Texas fevfer, and some will recall that last year we had 

 an illustration of what may happen from this source. Cattle coming 

 from the South brought the cattle ticks from which new ticks were 

 developed and these attached themselves to the cattle in pastures. 

 In this way the cattle were infected with Texas fever and practically 

 all of our United States cattle died. Last year there was a great 

 load of southern steers brought into the stockj^ards at Lancaster. 

 They were there but forty-eight hours and then were sent to Reading 

 to be killed. Unfortunately, they were not placed in quarantine 

 pens as required b}' the United States Department of Agriculture 

 and other cattle became infected with the tick and in turn com- 

 municated the disease to others, resulting in about 300 deaths. This 

 is a small thing compared to the occurrence of twelve or twenty 

 years ago when in Pennsylvania thousands and thousands of cattle 

 perished. With one exception there has been no Texas fever in 

 Pennsylvania for eight years. 



Aside from these rapidly spreading infectious that always cause 

 a great deal of ala.rm and terror, there are smaller infections which 

 claim less attention, but cause equally great losses. Among these 

 is hog cholera, the loss from which amounted to fifteen million dol- 

 lars in one year in the State of Iowa. It causes a loss yearly of from 

 fifty to sixty million dollars. This, I need hardly say, is a serious 

 drain upon our resources. If the trouble were checked it would 

 add very materially to the progress of the country. 



Then there is tuberculosis. This is a subject so much discussed 

 that it is hardly necessary to go into it in detail. Every man here 

 probably knows of herds that have been weakened and exterminated 

 by tuberculosis. About two weeks ago I was consulted in regard 



