528 BOAED OF AGEICULTURE. [Piil>. Doc. 



quarantine line is drawn has a remote bearing upon the cattle 

 traffic in Massachusetts. Prior to 1896 the shipment of cattle 

 from infected areas in Virginia to any point outside was com- 

 paratively easy, both by cars and by driving the cattle across the 

 line on foot, and then shipping them, — each of which was against 

 the law. Since then, however, a more stringent State law, better 

 enforced, has quite stopped such shipments. During the present 

 year, however, quarantine restrictions put in force by the State of 

 Illinois against Tennessee and Arkansas on account of disease 

 transported from those localities show the incomplete enforcement 

 of the quarantine line in those States. This condition of affairs 

 along the line will more or less menace the cattle industry until 

 the States enter into hearty co-operation in enforcing State and 

 federal laws. At any time under such conditions the State of 

 Massachusetts might be invaded, but on account of the nature of 

 traffic at rare intervals. The possibility of infection from such 

 source of some of the eight carloads of cattle bought at Chicago 

 by W. H. Munroe, and stopped en route to Brighton at West 

 Albany, is suggested. 



In thus laying the responsibility for the spread of Texas fever 

 at the door of the Bureau of Animal Industry, I do not intend in 

 any way to exonerate railroad officials, stock yard companies or 

 cattle men who knowingly or unwittingly override the law, but to 

 draw attention to the first source, where the law may be more 

 thoroughly carried out, and thus prevent infractions by others 

 concerned. Those interested in cattle traffic in quarantined ani- 

 mals cannot be blamed too harshly for violations, when officials 

 permit cattle to be released to points under conditions in which the 

 law must be violated. 



The laws of Massachusetts do not seem to have been violated in 

 the recent outbreak by the introduction into the State of any 

 disease-bearing cattle. The diseased cows introduced died. But 

 one recovered animal was found to bear a single tick, and this at 

 so late a date that the young could not possibly hatch out for 

 infection of other cattle. 



An examination of the method of handling cattle at the Brigh- 

 ton yards, the unloading of all quarantine cattle at the Brighton 

 abattoir and the complete absence of data showing infection of 

 these yards indicate that no infection has been in these yards this 

 year. The quarantine imposed by the United States authorities 

 may have been justified so long as suspicion attached to these 

 yards in the course of investigation, but no longer. Unless it can 

 be shown that the United States authorities had reason to suspect 

 that infected cattle had passed through these yards in June, or the 



