STATE SUPPRESSION OF TUBERCULOSIS UNWARRANTABLE IF NOT THOROUGH. 825 
records and the matter dropped, as the commissioner has no 
authority to go farther. The Commissioner of Agriculture is 
next applied to, records the application, sends an inspector who, 
in due time, reports that the disease is not one with which he 
has to do, and he in turn records this report and drops the case, 
having reached the limit of his authority. Finally the stock- 
owner appeals to the State Board of Health, provided he has 
the virtue of persistency and that his cases continue in life. 
The Board, in their turn, send an inspector, and at last, perhaps, 
the goal has been reached, the disease really being glanders. 
But three bureaus have been successively engaged on the one 
case ; three separate sets of inspectors have been sent to exam¬ 
ine and investigate, and three sets of clerks in as many divisions 
of the government have recorded in three sets of books what 
only belongs to one of them. The unnecessary outlay of time 
and money is bad enough, but this is not all. The uncalled-for 
delay has cost the stock owner time and money for the seclusion of 
the animals, or it has furnished an opportunity for the exten¬ 
sion of the infection to new members of his own herd, or to 
other herds. Now all this would be saved by concentrating 
this work under one head. It should be in the hands of some 
one who is an expert on farm live-stock and their diseases, and 
the inspector sent out should be an accomplished veterinarian, 
ready to recognize and deal with any malady of domestic ani¬ 
mals. There would thus be no need for the duplication and 
triplication of the direction, inspection and records, and 
any dangerous contagion would be checked promptly before it 
had an opportunity to to make further extension. 
Better Inspectors .—By having our set of inspectors in State 
pay a better class of such officials can be secured than if an 
inspector were employed by each of the three departments 
when wanted and sent out to deal with strictly one disease. 
The knowledge of the conditions and causation of disease in a 
district is of the greatest value in any such investigation, and if 
all the sanitary work for animals were devolved upon one class 
of inspectors, they would soon gain a knowledge of such local 
