SPECIAL MEETING. 21 



the view of confining the disease where it was. He gave 

 me an account of the regulations that had been made ; stated 

 that they had put officers there, that they had had the 

 experts of the Bureau of Animal Industry there and they 

 had securely enclosed it. The letter was dated the 25th of 

 October, I think, and he said we need have no fear at that 

 time that the disease, as they knew it there, would get into 

 Massachusetts. The gi-eat trouble with them was to know 

 what to do with it where it was. He said those cattle must 

 all be slaughtered ; those distillery buildings must be burned 

 down : there was no question about it. They had shut the 

 disease in on this farm that he spoke of; they had got it 

 quarantined in the stables so that it could not get away; 

 officers were on guard all the time, day and night ; but the 

 question was, "How are we going to stamp it out? We 

 have no law in Illinois and no money." He advised that 

 they commence to slaughter. He inspected the cattle care- 

 fully, and he said those cattle in the distillery stables were 

 fat, in good condition for beef, very few of them infected 

 with the disease. He made an inspection of them himself, 

 and decided that probably nine-tenths of those cattle were 

 good beef, perfectly healthy, and they ought to be killed 

 and used for food ; and he recommended, as the head of the 

 Health Department, that those cattle be slaughtered and put 

 upon the Chicago market as beef. But the packers then 

 appeared on the scene, and another question arose, which 

 was a question of sanitary importance, — the killing and 

 eating of those cattle ; and just as quick as the packers 

 found that that was the proposition of the Health Depart- 

 ment of Chicago, they said, " That won't do ; it is going to 

 affect our commercial interests. If it is known that those 

 cattle in the distillery stables, several thousand of them, are 

 to be killed and going into the market as food, it will ruin 

 our packing business ; there won't be anybody who will eat 

 our dressed beef or our canned beef." The only thing wo 

 can do, he says, is to destroy those cattle, and the packers 

 must raise a sum of money suflScicnt to pay for them. The 

 matter hangs about there to-day between them. The pack- 

 ers do not raise the money ; the State of Illinois has not 



