THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 157 



going to undertake to tabulate some facts or figures from these answers. 

 Probably 300 letters went out. 



There is a dispute about "where the serum laboratory shall be located, 

 and with that little campaign there has been some misrepresentation. 

 Some say they are all ready to make it at Ames. I know every foot 

 of the ground at Ames, and I don't think they are. Then, too, after 

 having taken care of the kid for four years, when there was not pro- 

 vided half ration for it, I object to having it taken away from me now 

 that it is going to be strong and able to stand and go some. You 

 gentlemen can line yourselves up on either side you please. 



There is one question as to whether every Tom, Dick and Harry 

 should be permitted to sell serum to the people in Iowa. I say that 

 every plant should be investigated, and first see if they are equipped to 

 make serum, and then that they understand that there is some authority 

 in the state who is liable to test their serum any day, the same as the 

 milk inspectors in Des Moines and other cities walk up to a milkman 

 on any corner and say: "Give me a bottle of milk." There was one bill 

 written by the committee that said they might require the manufacturer 

 to send a bottle of serum for a test. I think that is a joke. That was 

 not in any bill that I had anything to do with, however. 



There is one other phase of the hog business that I wanted to give 

 you gentlemen. I got some figures from Doctor Melvin, chief of the 

 Bureau of Animal Industry, in regard to tuberculosis in hogs that were 

 killed in our Iowa abattoirs. I believe it is true that more of our Iowa 

 hogs are killed without the state than within, and my figures probably 

 cover approximately half of our production of hogs. Doctor Melvin says 

 (I got this in November) : "During the last year there were killed at the 

 Iowa abattoirs 2,555,576 hogs. Of these, 167,676 were tubercular. And, 

 by the way, that figures 6l^ per cent of them. Those 6% per cent, 

 figured at 250 pounds live weight, $7 a hundred, amount to $2,934,347.50 — 

 nearly three million dollars' worth. So if that only represents half of 

 the work, we have this to take home with us: that we have produced in 

 Iowa in the last year $6,000,000 worth of tubercular pork. One tuber- 

 cular steer in your feed yard may infect all the hogs that run in the 

 yard, even if there are several carloads of cattle in the yard. They 

 made one experiment in Ames on transmitting tuberculosis to the hogs 

 with the milk of a bad cow, and in twenty days every hog had tuber- 

 culosis. Now, as an economic question, I believe we could afford to do 

 something to curtail this $6,000,000 worth of tubercular pork, but it is 

 a pretty difficult thing to get an appropriation to do things with. If 

 a man is going to feed three or four cars of cattle and put the right 

 number of hogs behind them, might it not pay him to test those steers 

 and know when he starts the bunch on feed whether there is a case of 

 tuberculosis in the yard or not? I say to every bunch of stockmen that 

 I have a chance to address: "You can't afford to feed carcasses of dead 

 animals to your hogs, because you never know but the carcass will 

 cost you more money than it is worth from the point of feeding value. 

 A feed of fresh meat to a bunch of hogs when they are not used to it 

 physics them and throws them back two or three days, and there is no 



