FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE. 383 



business of the stockyards and slaughtering centers is greatly inter- 

 fered with. Sometimes it is necessary to close stockyards for disin- 

 fection. The whole business of marketing, transporting, feeding, and 

 slaughtering is interrupted and deranged. Losses of this character 

 may reach enormous proportions. 



The disease in other countries. — Foot-and-mouth disease has pre- 

 vailed in Europe for a great many years and has occasioned tre- 

 mendous economic losses there. 



In Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Russia the plague has 

 existed so long and has gained such a foothold that it is economically 

 impossible to fight it with the American methods of slaughter and 

 disinfection, for to do so would kill a large percentage of the live 

 stock of those countries. In consequence, little or no progress toward 

 eradication has been made by the authorities, though the severity of 

 the disease in France appears to have abated somewhat in recent 

 months. 



The outbreak which appeared in Germanj^ in 18S8 increased stead- 

 ily until 1892, when it diminished gradually for a few years, but the 

 disease again reached great proportions in 1899. Thereafter it 

 continued to exist to a greater or less extent until in 1911 it attained 

 a virulence unequaled before. In that year 3,366,369 cattle, 1,602,927 

 sheep, 2,555,371 hogs, and 53,674 goats were affected. At that time 

 the total number of cattle, sheep, swine, and goats in Germany was 

 only 51,319,000, while there were in the United States 172,572,000, 

 or between three and four times as many. It can readily be imagined, 

 therefore, what it would mean to the United States if the disease were 

 to gain the foothold here that it had in Germany, where, as these 

 figures show, approximately one out of seven of the animals sus- 

 ceptible to the disease was affected. 



The German Government, of course, has not left the disease to 

 itself. It attempted to control recent outbreaks by the method of 

 slaughter, but the pestilence had gained too much headway and was 

 too firmly established in too many portions of the country for this 

 method to succeed, and the slaughter of the infected herds had to 

 be abandoned. It now appears that there is no hope of getting rid 

 of it until the virus has worn itself out. As soon as the animals' 

 period of acquired immunity is over and favorable conditions present 

 themselves, the contagion breaks out with renewed virulence. It 

 has been impossible to control it by means of quarantines. One 

 scientist has asserted that unless all the infected farms were abso- 

 lutely isolated and the movement, not only of live stock but of per- 

 sons, absolutely prohibited, the disease could not be stamped out. 

 Such a quarantine is, of course, utterly impossible to enforce. In 

 portions of Germany the farmers, realizing that the disease is inevi- 

 table, make haste to be done with it by exposing their stock deliber- 



