No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AG-RICULTURE. 133 



grasses of some districts are believed to be permanently destroyed. 

 lliis system of mining natural resources is very different from the 

 art of the husbandman, who makes restoration, in the form of 

 material or tilage, for all that he removes, and under whose skilful 

 hand nature continues permanently to yield her fruits. 



All permanent civilization depends on the conserving work of the 

 husbandman. This fact is gaining recognition in our youthful 

 country. The barren, hre-swept, flood-breeding, drouth-encouraging 

 mountain sides are gradually being reforested, the depleted lands 

 of the East and South are being restored to fruitfulness under 

 scientific and conservative sj'stems of agriculture that have been 

 worked out in the experiment stations and agricultural schools. 

 The semi-arid cattle ranges of the West are being cut up into farms 

 which will yield bountifully. 



With a41 of this development, is it not strange that our country 

 continues to tolerate a loss of from |200,000,000 to ^50,000,000 each 

 year from diseases of animals that ought to be prevented? Why is 

 this loss permitted to continue? Why is this tremendous leak un- 

 checked? In the first place, there has been in this country such an 

 unparalleled amount of natural wealth that, with all of our wasteful- 

 ness, enough has remained to meet the requirements of our popula- 

 tion, and so a continuing loss great enough to seriously incommode, 

 if not to distress, one of the great powers of Europe, has been per- 

 mitted to go on vear after vear without hindrance. In the second 

 place, the loss has been so scattered that it has not often fallen with 

 crushing force upon a single locality, although great numbers of in- 

 dividuals have been sadly injured. Thirdly, the veterinary profes- 

 sion has not been sufficiently insistent on the importance and advan- 

 tages of its w'ork, and so the public has not been strongly enough 

 impressed by the importance of veterinary work to furnish, or to 

 demand from the public treasury, adequate funds for its proper 

 support and development. 



Another reason for the tardiness of our development as a profes- 

 sion, and of our institutions, is that on account of our distant posi- 

 tion with relation to the old centres of civilization, we have a 

 natural barrier against infections from abroad that has protected 

 us to a large extent from some of the more prominent and striking, 

 the explosive, animal plagues of the old w^orld. Indeed, cattle 

 owners have generally failed to recognize the gravity of the dangers 

 that have actually confronted them until the blow has fallen, as, 

 for example, when contagious pleuro-pneumonia and foot-and-mouth 

 disease have prevailed in this country. Livestock owners were so 

 inclined to accept losses from diseases of animals as a matter of 

 course that they did not organize and demand relief from this source 

 of injury. After contagious pleuro-pneumonia had prevailed in this 

 country for ten years, had been rather extensively distributed, 

 threatening the cattle industry of the United States with the direst 

 calamity', even with partial extermination, as had so recently before 

 occurred in Australia, where it ruined cattle breeding, transforming 

 cattlemen into shepherds; even then the cattlemen made no strong 

 or organized demands for protection until the disease had extended 

 to the West and had reached Chicago, the greatest of our cattle 

 markets. Still the recommendations by veterinarians of the meas- 



