NATIONAL CONTEOL OF INSECT PESTS. 101 



inefficiency, fail to control disease, so that it threatens neighboring 

 States. This has actually taken place in several instances. 



At the present time the Southern States are petitioning Congress 

 for the National Government to take entire control of maritime and 

 interstate quarantines, owing to the proven efficiency of the Govern- 

 ment service in handling the yellow-fever outbreak during the past 

 season. Surely there can be no better proof of the desirability of 

 Federal control of quarantines than the present attitude of the 

 Southern States, for no section of the country has had their experi- 

 ence with quarantines and no section has been more opposed to 

 Federal quarantines in the past.^ 



By the Lacey Act c Congress has conferred upon the Secretary of 

 Agriculture the power to make and enforce regulations to prevent the 

 importation of noxious animals, and this act has now been enforced 

 for five years. In essence, the law proposed by the convention of 

 1897 would coA^er the same ground for the prevention of the importa- 

 tion of insect pests. 



But more stringent, sweeping, and effectual than either of these 

 laws are those establishing and defining the duties and powers of the 

 Bureau of Animal Industry of the Department of Agriculture.* 



These laws and regulations empower the Bureau of Animal Indus- 

 try to inspect all import and export domestic animals and all sub- 

 ject to interstate commerce for dangerous diseases. They empower 

 it to proceed to stamp out such diseases as are deemed dangerous, and 

 to purchase diseased animals at a fair appraisal when necessary to 

 stamp out a disease. In this work the Bureau may and has repeat- 

 edly quarantined different States and sections of States. At the 

 present time the regulations of the Bureau prohibit the movement of 

 cattle from counties south of the Texas- fever line to other counties 



a For a full discussion of Federal quarantine measures, see an article by 

 James Wilford Garner, of the University of Illinois, in the Yale Review for 

 August, 1905, pp. 181 to 205. 



& See the Congressional Record of March, 1893, vol. 24, H. R. 9757, second 

 session, Fifty-second Congress, debate, House, 717, 750, 793 ; Senate, 1037, 1243, 

 1337, for the lengthy debates in the House and Senate upon the present national 

 quarantine law, which was admittedly a compromise measure. 



c See Circular 29, Biol. Surv., U. S. Dept. Agric. 



d See Regulations of the Secretary of Agriculture governing the Inspection, 

 Disinfection, Certification, Treatment, Handling, and Method and Manner of 

 Delivery and Shipment of Live Stock which is the Subject of Interstate Com- 

 merce, 1905. Issued under authority conferred on the Secretary of Agriculture 

 by the acts of Congress approved May 29, 1884, Feb. 2, 1903, and Mar. 3, 1905, 

 which acts are printed in it. Also see Administrative Work of the Federal Gov- 

 ernment in Relation to the Animal Industry, by G. F. Thompson, 16th Annual 

 Report Bureau of Animal Industry, 1899, pp. 102-125, and Federal Inspections 

 of Foreign and Interstate Shipments of Live Stock, by D. E. Salmon, D. V. M., 

 18th Ann. Rept. Bur. Anim. Ind., 1901, pp. 237-249. 



