Tuberculosis. 487 



little afEected and which will all come to the slaughter house in 

 two or three years. The source of their infection (a few cases 

 excepted) is in the older cows and bulls of the dairy and breeding 

 herds, and this brings down our total to a little over 17,000,000. 

 The average census price for dairy cows is $29 and, as the con- 

 demned cows are depreciated by their condition, it would be a 

 high average to estimate them at $20. Again, the average in- 

 fected ratio of cows for the entire country would be set high at 2 

 per cent., and on this basis it might well be that the required in- 

 demnity would not aggregate much over $6,000,000. Five or 

 even ten times that amount would be a mere trifle in comparison 

 with the $3,000,000,000 value, constantly encreasing, of our do- 

 mestic animals, with the $99,210,272, representing our yearly 

 product of beef and beef products, with our annual dairy pro- 

 ducts, worth $500,000,000, (Alford), or with our yearly loss of 

 100,000 of our population in the very prime of life when they are 

 of the greatest value to the country, representing a yearly drain 

 of $100,000,000, beside all the suffering and loss entailed by their 

 prolonged and too often helpless idleness. Though this last item 

 is doomed to continue for a length of time after the disease has 

 been extinguished in our herds, it is receiving constant acces- 

 sions from the latter, and can never be entirely done away with 

 until our cattle are above suspicion. 



An even more serious problem is the demand for tuberculin and 

 above all for accomplished, experienced and honorable veteri- 

 narians fitted to conduct the sanitary campaign over the entire 

 country. The tuberculin cannot be produced in a week or a 

 month, yet the problem of its production in any required amount 

 in a few months is merely one of the encrease of existing plants 

 under the management of the same careful hands now engaged 

 upon it. As to veterinarians it would be impossible to secure at 

 once the required staff of men capable of carrying out the work 

 over the whole country. But this is not essential. The work 

 can be begun in the counties supplying the large cities with milk, 

 and in the great butter and cheese producing areas where it is so 

 urgently needed, and it must be made to include all thoroughbred 

 herds, which are so constantly drawn upon to improve the blood 

 elsewhere, and each herd, county and district, as freed from infec- 

 tion must be scheduled and no additions made to it from outside, 



