236 
JAMES LAW. 
one and demands the action of the stock-owner rather than .the 
sanitarian. While the necessary steps to insure the extinction of 
this and allied plagues are sufficiently well known to the veterinary 
profession, and while effectiveness and promptitude are best se¬ 
cured by placing the matter in the hands of one executive head, 
yet it will better command the confidence of the stock-owners 
and indirectly of Congress, if one or two representative stock- 
men are officially connected with the work. 
While on purely professional matters the veterinarian must 
of course decide, and in the execution of the work which is 
essentially professional he should direct, yet in many subjects 
connected with cattle-raising and the peculiarities of the trade in 
different parts of the country the knowledge and experience of 
the stockman will be of inestimable advantage in arriving at safe 
and effective local enactments that will not unnecessarily harrass 
or hamper trade on the one hand, nor be easily evaded on the 
other. A small committee or bureau of this kind, clothed with 
executive authority and with financial means equivalent to the 
end, could make much more effective work than could a com¬ 
mittee of the Board of Health, who could not get together to 
meet every emergency. Again, the first part of this sanitary 
work must be done as speedily as possible because of the great 
and increasing dangers that attend upon delay, and to secure this 
it will be necessary to appropriate a large sum of money to 
enable the executive to carry it on with uninterrupted energy to 
the end, since any suspension for'lack of funds would entail the 
renewed spread of the disease and the loss of all that had been 
already expended. This consideration is a vital one, and of itself 
would decide me in favor of a separate executive, for the exclus¬ 
ively animal plagues, to be furnished with abundant means and 
full administrative power. A supplementary appropriation 
to the Board of Health, which might be largely used up for what 
at the moment and as viewed from a moral standpoint might 
appear as a more urgent demand, would be hurtful to both 
human and veterinary sanitation. If, for example, the work of 
exterminating the cattle lung plague had to be entirely arrested 
for want of means, it would soon again extend over the ground 
