58 
if you start a crusade in this country against tuberculosis based solely 
upon the tuberculin test. For seven years there have been very few 
days when I have not been so unfortunate as to have tuberculous cows 
under my observation. I have watched them, not from the standpoint 
of the veterinarian nor of the bacteriologist, and not much from the 
point of view of scientific observation, except in so far as close observa- 
tion of any kind, with common-sense deductions therefrom, are entitled 
to come under that head; but I have watched them as an interested 
party, as touching my pocket. . There are a good many things in this 
matter of tuberculosis that the breeder and dairyman must yet be con- 
vinced of before he will be satisfied to be raided on by the scientific 
men. I will not go into detail, but take the matter of heredity. I 
have been reading, observing, and studying and informing myself, as 
an owner of stock subject to this disease, as to all the facts about it. 
I am not convinced yet, by the evidence presented, that good, healthy 
animals, free from the disease, that will stand the tuberculin test, if 
you please, can not be bred from parents one or both of which have 
been tuberculous. I believe this is as true in the bovine as in the 
human race. I have not yet been satisfied that animals treated under 
the best hygienic conditions will easily communicate the disease when 
they are not themselves in an advanced stage of it. I have not yet been 
convinced that the milk the community is using to-day generally is any 
more dangerous than that which generations before us have used. I 
do believe that there are places in the country where there are greater 
percentages of unhealthy milk. I am not yet convinced that milk from 
tuberculous animals, that give no other evidence of their being infected 
than the tuberculin test, is dangerous to man or beast, be the animal 
young or old. In this line I have carefully watched the use of milk, 
which I was not willing to have come into my house, in the feeding of 
pigs, calves, and lambs, all of which have been slaughtered and exam- 
ined as a butcher would examine them, not as a veterinarian or micros- 
copist would. I want to say as a breeder that if there is any such 
thing as defending one's rights of property in this country, you have 
got to go further with your evidence than you have yet to take my 
stock and slaughter it, when the animals are performing all the func- 
tions we demand of healthy stock and show to the closest scrutiny of 
superficial observation that they are not diseased animals. Suppose 
that I have a cow that is a good feeder, a good breeder, a fine dairy 
animal, or in any other particular is a profitable animal in my estima- 
tion; I say that that cow is healthy if she performs all these functions, 
notwithstanding the fact that she may respond to the tuberculin test. 
Animals have been slaughtered as a result of this test which I do not 
believe can properly be called diseased animals. I believe, with the 
gentleman from Canada, that the owner of stock must be carefully pro- 
tected. 
