No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 409 



In our state it cost |625,000 to pay for our troubles, and so far as 

 I know, all just claims liave been paid. You have beard ju-obably 

 that in the 1908 outbreak some of the farmers did not j^et paid for 

 their stock. As far as we know there is not a claim filed that has 

 not been paid unless there is some hitch about the payment of that 

 claim, and it is interesting to contrast the way Pennsylvania does 

 business with the way they do it in some other states. When our 

 Legislature was called to order in Harrisburg in 1915, about the first 

 thing done was to put a bill in their for money to pay the indemnity 

 for the cattle destroyed up to that time, and that appropriation was 

 granted in full and the Governor signed it as quick as he could get 

 hold of it. There was not a word against it in either the House or 

 the Senate. They put the money up as generously as for any purpose 

 you can imagine, and then later we had to ask for fl25,000 more, the 

 first amount was not enough, and that came just as cheerfully, and 

 I don't know how you could ask our Governor or Legislature to have 

 done any better than they did with the appropriation part of it. A 

 good many members of the Legislature felt that it was not right that 

 our law should limit us in the extent of appraisement that we should 

 make on animals that were ordered to be killed for the good of the 

 public. Under the old law we were limited to |40, on non-registered 

 animals and $70. on registered cattle, and our law will not allow 

 us to pay more than $10. for a sheep or more than |10. for a hog, 

 and you know very well that is a pretty small payment for some 

 of our good hogs, and the sheep men and hog men looked upon it as a 

 joke. The Legislature felt that that limit on animals should be re- 

 moved in a case like that of foot and mouth disease and that if the 

 State is going to kill them by force or make the farmers kill their 

 animals for the protection of the public that they should pay full 

 value for them, and that bill was introduced and went through with- 

 out a word against it and was signed promptly by the Governor, so 

 if we have trouble in the future with foot and mouth disease — and I 

 hope we wont — if we come to appraising animals, they will be ap- 

 praised at their full value and the State will pay whatever it agrees 

 to pay. The State did not set aside a certain sum of money to pay 

 indemnities; if we get into new trouble — fortunately the last out- 

 break occurred just as the Legislature convened and we could get 

 our money promptly, but if that had occurred a year later, the farm- 

 ers would have had to wait a year until the Legislature convened and 

 that would have put the farmers in very bad financial condition. Some 

 states have set aside a certain sum of money to meet these emergen- 

 cies; Pennsylvania did not do so, but T feel that we will have very 

 little trouble in the future in convincing our people that if the state 

 makes a promise that it will try to pay for calamities of that kind, 

 it will make good, because it has settled fully for two out-breaks now 

 and I think people generally have a good bit of confidence in what 

 the State will do. 



I don't know that there is anything more to say about foot-an- 

 moutli disease just at present. There are a great many things that 

 could be said about it; there are some other diseases that you are 

 probably as much interested in now as foot and mouth disease — some- 

 thing in reference to tuberculosis. It was necessary for us to use 

 up so much of our money on foot-and-mouth disease, $625,000 — that 



