380 THE MEANS OF PREVEXTION. 



our laws are of such a nature that, while in some cases, as in pleuro- 

 pneumonia, they allow of quite satisfactory action, because of the 

 very limited extension of the disease, in others, as glanders, they are 

 next to useless, because of the great extension which the disease has 

 already acquired among our horses. One of our greatest errors is, 

 that we have made no use of the few competent veterinary practi- 

 tioners in the country. Our laws serve only to make one man very 

 prominent without being of the service to the State that they 

 should be. It is in the interests of the peoj)le that the veterinary 

 profession be made of use, and not that a single veterinary com- 

 missioner, in unison with several citizen members, have the en- 

 tire work to do. It can not be done, as is sufficiently proven in 

 Massachusetts, where we have an old and well-tried veterinarian 

 on the cattle commission. While they did kill out plem'o-pneu- 

 mouia, it has been sufficiently demonstrated that they are next to 

 powerless in fighting glanders single-handed. We seem to think 

 that, having organized a " cattle commission," our work is done ; 

 as if there were no other animal diseases worthy of consideration ! 

 Finally, in some States they attached a section with reference to 

 glanders, and with that we have thus far rested content. Such a 

 system is next to useless. It can never lead to any reliable statis- 

 tics. These laws or regulations in the different States have very 

 little in common. In many States they are simply dead letters, 

 there being no competent authority to see them properly exe- 

 cuted. " What is everybody's business is nobody's." In no one 

 sense is the saying, " In union there is strength," more strictly true 

 than in combating contagious animal diseases. It may be positively 

 asserted that, if we adhere strictly to the principle of State-rights 

 in this regard, all our endeavors to prevent and suppress these dis- 

 eases will be weak and of but httle avail. 



All must admit that the manner of viewing any given subject 

 is not the same even among a few individuals. How much less 

 likely is this to be the case among large bodies jealous of each 

 other ! These great differences of opinion are largely dependent 

 upon a difference in information and education by the individual 

 members ; and, secondly, upon a varying degree of appreciation of 

 the nature of a threatened danger. A large amount of reading and 

 reflection is necessary before men are competent to logically legis- 

 late on any given subject, and on none more so than that we are at 

 present considering. 



Hence it is that in some States we should have more or less 

 suitable laws with a corresponding execution of the same, while in 



