FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 641 



Harlan, and from Harlan back to Boone, and was disinfected with other 

 cars in Boone; but there hadn't been a thing in it; it was hauled empty 

 all the time, and good luck for us that it was. 



You saw by the paper this morning that they are trying to make a 

 new mixture down at Washington, and I can tell you right now it won't 

 mix. You can't mix politics and sanitation, and you can't compromise 

 with an infection like foot and mouth disease. If you slip one cog, you 

 will go right out and find that it has spread on you. I even proposed 

 to the governor that he call out the state militia and stand them as 

 pickets on the roads in the neighborhoods of these outbreaks, when it 

 was getting away from us; that was before we knew of all the ex- 

 posures. We found out afterwards that we were not so much to blame 

 as we thought we were; that the exposure took place before we knew it. 

 There has not been a case where a herd of cattle or hogs came together 

 at the line fence, but all had the disease. I had just as soon undertake 

 to control Bubonic plague or Asiatic cholera, as to successfully control 

 foot and mouth disease; and you have a better show to control disease 

 with the human family than we have with the animals. To show you 

 how strict we have been, the moment we found the disease, we served a 

 written quarantine notice upon the owner, upon his wife, upon every 

 child in the house, upon his hired help, and absolutely forbade every- 

 one to leave the premises. Not a child has gone to school from a 

 farm where this disease has existed. We have forbidden all persons 

 to go onto those premises. In one case, an auctioneer went on a 

 farm to see the disease. My assistant followed him to his home, and 

 socked him and all of his family into quarantine immediately. I think 

 I am honest in this; I think I am doing my best. I know I am caus- 

 ing hardship, but it is better to have this stamped out and have Iowa 

 clean again at the earliest possible moment. We are going to do this 

 right to the best of our ability. Who in all this state stood by me the 

 best President Pearson, at Ames. Why? He knows foot and mouth dis- 

 ease. He was commissioner of agriculture in New York when they had it 

 there to deal with. I told him about the troubles we had. A banker came 

 in, a nice young man, who said that this quarantine stopped $200,000 com- 

 ing across his way, and the condition of your banks is always an index of 

 the condition of your country. President Pearson said: "That is too bad, 

 but you tend to your knitting," and he is the one man, knowing what I 

 was dealing with better than any other man in Iowa, that has told me 

 to stand firm and to do what was necessary to control this outbreak at 

 the earliest possible moment. 



I don't know for sure when the next release will come. I will outline 

 what I think will come soon: An entire release of the seventy-eight 

 counties; a release of the thirteen that have been so wounded to go to 

 market without inspection, and the inspection work gathered into the six 

 counties, and the fifteen-mile radius reduced. 



Mitchell and Greene counties are in a class by themselves. We have 

 the serum exposure there. We have the No. 44 serum and the No. 41 

 virus used in Greene county and Mitchell county, the same as we believe 



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