No. 4.] WORK OF CATTLE COMMISSION. 225 



By chapter 24 of the Acts of the year 1878, glanders was 

 made a contagious disease that should be cared for by the 

 Cattle Commissioners. Now, gentlemen, I hardly know 

 what to say to you about that. From the day that the 

 Cattle Commissioners began their work in trying to eradi- 

 cate glanders, until this very hour, we have not succeeded 

 in doing it. It has increased upon us. The first year that 

 we handled the disease I think we killed but ten, l)ut the 

 number gradually came up to thirty and forty and fifty, and 

 it has continued on the increase in spite of all we can do, 

 until to-day. I suppose that when our annual re})ort of this 

 year comes out it will be found that we have killed more 

 than one hundred this present year. 



Now, you may ask the question, why? And I can only 

 tell you this. There are two reasons for it. In the first 

 place, we have a good many more horses in Massachusetts 

 to-day than we had. In the next place, our people are 

 shipping horses all the time from the West, and we can 

 not well prevent it. Then there is another trick. We 

 have insurance companies in Massachusetts that are insuring 

 animals. There is a set of scalawags in this State who go 

 outside the State and find a o'ood-for-nothino; horse, that is, 

 a horse that has got a little past its time, and has the first 

 symptoms of glanders, and they will buy him for a small 

 sum. They will bring him into Massachusetts and clean 

 him up, and then go to one of the agents of these insurance 

 companies and get the horse insured for a hundred or a 

 hundred and fifty dollars, — and I have known of cases 

 where it went higher than that, — then in a little while word 

 is sent to the Cattle Commissioners of a suspected case of 

 glanders, and when we come and inspect the case, we find 

 it is glanders. The horse is killed, and this fellow pockets 

 the one hundred and fifty dollars from the insurance com- 

 pany for what cost him perhaps fifteen or twenty. 



QuESTiox. You do not pay anything for a glandered 

 horse ? 



Professor Stockbridge. No. There has been a set of 

 men in Worcester who have been doing this kind of business, 

 and we have been killing horse after horse ; after a while the 

 members of the Board cauo;ht onto the trick and notified the 



