No. 4.] CATTLE COMMISSIONERS. 527 



cattle are received en route and for immediate slaughter, and native 

 cattle received and distributed to adjoining States. They have 

 made no effort, that can be ascertained, to enforce the disinfection 

 of cattle cars used in carrying quarantine cattle when these are 

 unloaded at points where there are no officers. 



The oversight of quarantine cattle until they are put into pens 

 set apart to receive them cannot be relaxed on account of State 

 laws permitting otherwise ; for interstate relations are such that, 

 as in the present case, an outbreak may occur in other States, due 

 to relaxed precautions. 



Suppose, in the present case, quarantine cattle had been un- 

 loaded into either or each of the cattle pens at Watertown, Nor- 

 wood and Herkimer, N. Y., the native cattle would have been 

 exposed in these places in New York State, and have died in 

 Massachusetts and Connecticut. It cannot be said of any cattle 

 pens in the United States that they will not be used for cattle in 

 interstate traffic. They are built for cattle traffic, and cattle are 

 shipped to and fro with no thought of State lines. 



The duties of the federal authorities should be terminated only 

 after they have delivered the cattle into pens set apart en route, or 

 at their destination, and they have overseen the disinfection of the 

 cars. If they cannot attend to this, they should refuse to release 

 quarantine cattle destined to unprotected points. Having fulfilled 

 their obligations in the delivery of quarantine cattle, they should 

 then notify the State authorities that such are delivered, and turn 

 their care over to them. Then they will have freed themselves 

 from the responsibility of having delivered disease-breeding, pro- 

 scribed cattle into an unsuspecting community ; and the State may 

 make suitable regulations for their handling, should they desire to 

 receive them. 



The conditions followed at present would be paralleled if United 

 States authorities should convey with all possible care a carload of 

 yellow-fever patients to some more or less important communities 

 in our States, and quietly infect places whei'e other people would 

 contract the disease. The practice is indefensible and inexcusable. 

 The wording of the United States agricultural regulations, quoted 

 above, shows that they think it is. 



There are other unavoidable conditions in railroad traffic that 

 have heretofore spread Texas fever, and may again. Accidents 

 delay cattle trains ; sometimes cattle cars become broken en route,, 

 and the cattle either released violently or eompulsorily. When 

 such happens, places where this occurs should be quarantined by 

 the State after notification by federal officers. 



Another condition prevailing in other States through which the 



