14 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ask for legislation for the management of this danger which 

 threatens the country ; also, that the Secretary of this Board 

 communicate to our members of Congress their view of the 

 necessity of immediate congressional action ; and the third 

 resolution looks to sustaining the Bureau of Animal Industry 

 in opposition to the Chicago idea of the appointment of a 

 cattle commission. 



Mr. Cheever. That is not in the resolution. 



The Chairman. But it is to assist the Bureau, now op- 

 posed by the Chicago interest. 



When we adopt these resolutions we simply give our 

 advice and our assistance in this matter. If wo quarantine 

 the State of Massachusetts against these cattle, we notify 

 people of those infected districts to make themselves clean. 

 The people of the West ask the general government to exer- 

 cise powers that have never been granted to it in the Consti- 

 tution. That is where the serious difficulty is going to be 

 in this matter. The government of the United States can 

 appropriate money through Congress for the purchase of 

 cattle, and for their destruction ; but it cannot go into any 

 State and take any man's cattle, destroy them and pay him 

 for them. That right does not exist ; and that is the rock 

 upon which this matter is going to split at the very outset. 

 If we quarantine the State of Massachusetts against the 

 cattle of Chicago, we thereby notify the people of Illinois 

 that they must purge their State of this disease, as this 

 State did years ago, — in 1861, '62 and '63, — at an enormous 

 expense, without asking aid of the general government. 

 We were poor then, comparatively : those people at the 

 West are rich to-day, yet they are doing nothing for them- 

 selves ; they are calling upon the government to exercise 

 powers which must be granted before they can be exercised. 



Mr. Ware. A quarantine to protect the State from im- 

 portations from all directions seems to me impracticable. It 

 strikes me that there is no other way of controlling this 

 matter throughout the country except by the general govern- 

 ment. If the general government has not the power to do 

 it, perhaps by agitating this sul^ject that power will be con- 

 ceded. It certainly seems to me that that is the only thing 

 that can be done. Illinois is unwilling as a State to take 



