372 
WILLIAMSON BRYDEN. 
the enforcement of the new rule demanding- two feet eight 
inches space on the new ships, instead of two feet six inches 
in the “tween” decks, which had always proved ample. 
This he refused me, but immediately granted the request 
when it was made by the agent of the S. S. Line, and I was 
dismissed. I regarded this as an unkind, unprofessional act. 
Regarding the inland transportation of distillery-fed 
cattle, if the gentlemen of the Bureau of Animal Industry 
who opposed me are ignorant of the circumstances attending 
the shipment of such animals on splendid ships, like the 
“ Georgian ” and the “ Philadelphian,” from the finest port 
in the United States, they ought to be ashamed to admit it, 
for the stockyards were filled on several occasions with dead 
and dying cattle, and so were the cars, both those that carried 
them to the yards, and those that carried them to the ships. 
In spite of their assertions to the contrary, too, disinfection 
of cars and stockyards is still far from being perfect, and 
their condition as I described them still prevails, with the 
possible exception that parts where mudholes were liable to 
be formed in spring have been filled and sometimes paved. 
Shortly after the meeting in Washington, the Hon Mr. 
Rusk issued a report, in which he admitted his inability to 
enforce sanitary measures on the railroads without further 
assistance from Congress, and I still insist that the British 
ships have been discriminated against by the United States. 
They have been treated unfairly, and charged with losses of 
cattle the railroads were entirely responsible for, as the gen¬ 
tlemen ought to have known. 
They took the trouble to remind me of what the law re¬ 
quested me to do, as if 1* did not know, after fifteen years’ ex¬ 
perience, that it had become the duty of the representatives 
of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and not mine, at least with¬ 
in the last three years. The claim, so modestly made by the 
Bureau officials, that in the short period of their rule, some 
three years, they have succeeded in reducing the mortality 
among cattle on the ships from six per cent, to one-half of 
one per cent., is so simple that it is “ childish bounce,” the fact 
being that the rate of insurance has not been more than from 
