No. 4.] CATTLE COMMISSIONERS' REPORT. 443 



Those who favor the full indemnity assert that half measures 

 do but little good ; that, by a system of one-half indemnity, 

 unscrupulous persons are encouraged to so over-value their 

 animals as that they will in effect receive the full indemnity, 

 while the honest and conscientious dairyman would be placed 

 at a disadvantage ; that the theory of paying compensation is 

 based upon the assumption that the owner has invested his 

 money in good faith in the stock destroyed ; that as the State 

 does not make him whole by paying one-half only, and, as the 

 loss from this means may be large to him, it encourages him to 

 secrete his animals, to prevent their being tested and possi- 

 bly destroyed, and to otherwise thwart or hamper the State 

 in its work of stamping out the disease ; whereas, by the pay- 

 ment of full compensation, the owner sufters no loss, he is 

 merely given the opportunity of replacing his unsound animals 

 with sound ones ; that therefore it will be for his benefit to 

 "assist the State in every way in stamping out the disease, that 

 thus everv ao;riculturist throuohout the State will be on the 

 lookout to detect and report the disease ; and, as a result of all 

 this, while the State will pay out a greater or less sum by way 

 of indemnity to the owners for the animals destroyed, it will 

 render the performance of the work very much easier, and thus 

 to a greater or less extent so far reduce the administrative 

 expense that in the end the cost to the State will be but little 

 if any more than would result from the attempt to perform the 

 work without remuneration to the owner, and at the same 

 time will not discourage a business in which so many of its 

 citizens are so largely interested. 



As a part of the proposition of paying indemnity on the 

 health value, those who favor it also approve the adoption of 

 some restriction as to the residence, as was done in the case 

 of the act passed in the State last year, w^hich requires that the 

 animal must have been owned in the State six months prior to 

 its having been killed. Against the adoption of this six- 

 months rule it is argued that it works a hardship in many 

 cases ; and that there is no greater reason why a farmer who 

 buys stock in good faith, believing it to be sound, and pays 

 the full price for the same, after having exercised every 

 precaution, should receive nothing from it when subse- 

 quently found to l)e infected, because it has not actually been 

 within the State six months ; while his neighbor, who has 



