240 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
economy. The losses can be cut short in a 
great many ways, and for the farmer the 
the following are important: Do all the work 
well. Save all the manure and apply it 
properly. Adopt a good rotation of crops. 
Raise no weeds, but instead grow the best 
kinds of grain, fruits, and animals. Keep 
an accurate account of all transactions. 
A Western “Extension” Hay Rack. 
Mr. W. E. King, of Dakota Terr., sends a 
drawing and description of a hay-rack from 
which the engraving is made. He writes : 
“ It is very convenient for those who have to 
draw their hay without any one to help them. 
One man can put a good-sized load upon it, 
and avoid the trouble of tying or binding. It 
is light and cheap ; and is made from an 
ordinary low hay-rack, as follows. Bore a 
f-inch hole through the center of each cross¬ 
piece of the rack ; also one in the middle of 
the end cross-pieces. Procure as many poles 
as there are holes ; they should be of hard¬ 
wood, 5 feet long, and iy 3 inch through at 
the butt. Hew down the butts so that they 
will fit into the holes, leaving a shoulder on 
each pole. An inch hard-wood board, three 
inches wide, of the same length as the rack, 
is placed one on each side, upon the upper 
end of the poles, and shorter pieces in the 
same way for the ends. The rack is now 
ready for the rope, which is the size of the 
common clothes line.”—The rope is put on 
in the manner shown in the engraving, its 
purpose being to stay the frame and keep 
chaff and fine hay in place. The rope passes 
through small holes bored in the ends of the 
poles. Those persons who, having a small 
place, are obliged to do all their own work, 
single-handed, will find this “extension” 
rack convenient for their work in haying. 
Among the Farmers.—No. 65. 
BY ONE or THEM. 
The danger of the spread of contagious 
diseases among domestic animals is one of the 
most important subjects which the farmers 
and stock-breeders of the country can discuss. 
A Murrain 
is a contagious disease among cattle. I do 
not like “ hifalutin ” names, like “ epizootic ” 
—and murrain is good strong old-fashioned 
English, and means just such a terrible plague 
as pleuro-pneumonia —which used to be called 
lung murrain. At the time I write, which is 
the middle of April, while the politicians are 
wrangling over who shall clean the streets of 
New York, a bill which passed the House 
early in the session of the New York Legis¬ 
lature, appropriating money to continue the 
quarantine regulations under which the dis¬ 
ease has almost been “ stamped out ” by Gen¬ 
eral Patrick and his assistants, lies in some 
committee room unheeded. 
Hitherto the State of New York has been 
the great barrier to the spread of this disease 
over New England, as well as other parts of 
the country. With the exhaustion of the ap¬ 
propriation made some two years ago, it has 
been, I suppose, impossible to maintain quite 
so rigid a quarantine as before, and so out¬ 
breaks of the disease are now being reported 
in new localities. In all cases it has been in¬ 
troduced by cattle coming from or through 
New Jersey. 
This State had the disease under very good 
control, and though the Commissioner was 
not allowed to kill, yet, as he could quaran¬ 
tine (a very much more expensive way), the 
disease was not spreading, but was dying out. 
The Legislature, however, in ignorance of a 
danger of which they knew nothing, and be¬ 
lieved to be exaggerated, abolished the Com¬ 
mission a year ago, and so far as I know (and 
I am a New Jersey citizen), there is nothing 
to hinder any one from driving a herd of cat¬ 
tle, far gone with lung murrain, 
from Bergen County to Cape May. 
Fortunately the “drift” of cattle 
is almost all towards the large 
towns and the seaboard, so but 
very few cases get out. Many 
other cases seem to get well to 
all appearance, and these cattle 
are the most dangerous of all, be¬ 
cause, should anything go wrong 
with a beast, and it become thin 
or sick, or have a bad cold, the dis¬ 
ease would almost surely break 
out afresh, and this animal, 
wherever it might be, would 
form the nucleus of a fresh out¬ 
break of the terrible disease. 
About the first of April, or a little before, 
the disease broke out in this way in one of 
the best herds of Jersey cattle in the State of 
New York—it having originated in some cows 
which had come, in apparent good health, 
from Maryland. 
The fact that whether or not we shall have 
protection against such a disease, depends 
upon the caprice of professional politicians, 
or upon the whims of parsimonious and ig¬ 
norant farmers, who are sent to the State 
Legislatures, is enough to demonstrate the 
importance of the General Government tak¬ 
ing hold of the matter. It seems wonderful 
that no law is passed, and that the important 
matter is left to the individual States. The 
Hue aud Cry over American Meats 
indicates the extreme sensitiveness of Euro¬ 
pean nations—our valued customers—to any 
suspicion of disease, either in the animals or 
the dead meats which they get from this 
country. Should any wide-spread contagion 
give cause for alarm, and be a real menace 
to the health of their flocks and herds, how 
quickly would the legal guardians of the 
five-stock interests in those countries make 
their power known and felt. The gates of 
commerce would be’ shut against us. This 
traffic, by which so many are getting rich, 
would come to an end, or nearly so. Beef 
and pork would be a drug in the markets of 
this country, and the industry of whole dis¬ 
tricts might be paralyzed. This is not over¬ 
drawn, for the fact that we have always 
been careless, and yet exempt from great 
trouble, is no reason that we shall continue so. 
Murrains, in times past, have swept through 
great regions, traversing thousands of miles 
of farms and grazing grounds, and leaving 
only a small per .centage of the great herds, 
which were the wealth of the farmers. These 
things being matters of history, it is clear 
that those who remember that what has been, 
may be again, will guard against disease 
among cattle, just as our medical men are on 
the alert to defend the country against yel¬ 
low fever and cholera. 
The Apathy of Many Farmers 
in regard to matters of vital importance to 
their own interests, comes from ignorance. 
They regard themselves preyed upon by the 
commercial class, and are suspicious of every 
proposition which does not originate with 
themselves. This feeling opens the door to 
“wolves in sheep’s clothing ”—men who, pre¬ 
tending to be farmers, and to favor the agri¬ 
cultural interests, use the farmers only to 
boost them into places of power and profit, 
while the real interests of the farmers are ut¬ 
terly neglected. Is this the way the mercan¬ 
tile and railroad interests are served? No, 
indeed,—Companies and Associations send 
their representatives to Washington, or to the 
State Legislatures, to see that laws are passed 
or repealed, or modified in the interest of 
their clique. Do the fanners do thus ? I did 
hear that, at its last meeting, the New York 
State Agricultural Society appointed a com¬ 
mittee to go to Washington and urge upon 
Congress the necessity of a Cattle Disease 
law of some kind—and I believe that some 
sort of inefficient action was taken, and that 
was all. The action, certainly, was inefficient 
enough, for nothing was done. The commit¬ 
tee, no doubt, had a good tune, and had the 
wool pulled over their eyes, and thought, at 
the time, that they were great men, and the 
politicians were their “ most humble and obe¬ 
dient servants,” as they signed their letters. 
Our legislators do not object at all to serv¬ 
ing the farmers, but they can not make any¬ 
thing by it. The railroads pay, so do other 
interests. We should remember what the 
“unjust judge” said—“Though I fear not 
God, neither regard man, yet because this 
widow troubleth me, I will avenge her.” We 
must trouble the law-makers until we get 
what we want. We can not very well go 
into the bribe?"?/ business. It is a kind of 
berrying which is not agricultural. 
The Thing that We Must Do 
is, to see and earnestly talk to the members of 
Congress, and of the State Legislatures, when 
they are at home—not general politics, but 
agricultural legislation—just now protection 
against both the importation of foreign mala¬ 
dies and the efficient stop to the exportation 
of our own sick cattle. In this way indi¬ 
vidual convictions will make an impression 
upon the minds of Congressmen. Then, when 
the farmers’ clubs and agricultural societies, 
great and small, have meetings, follow the 
matter up and pass strong resolutions. Cir¬ 
culate petitions also, and forward both—the 
latter as numerously signed as possible. Could 
some such action be general, the results 
would follow speedily. I anticipate nothing 
of the sort. Here, in New Jersey, where we 
have had some remarkable cases of severe 
loss to individual farmers, if not to communi¬ 
ties, and where, it is true, we have had 
wonderful exemption from wide-spread mur¬ 
rains, on account of some peculiarity of the 
weather or other cause, the mass of the farm¬ 
ers do not believe that there is any danger to 
them from pleuro-pneumonia, which exists 
