wool, and lard, and tallow, and hides, &c., was four times as much as the gross earnings of all the railroad companies in the United States. The animal industry is not only great in itself, but it is great in the assistance which it renders to other productive industries, Take the greatest crop produced in this country-the corn crop-and 72 per cent. of that is dependent upon our animal industry for a market. Take the great hay crop, and there is no other way to utilize it; and the oat crop, which mostly goes for animal food. The value of these three crops, which are marketed as animal food, of itself reaches a thousand millions of dollars a year. Now, what is the effect of a contagious disease which destroys a considerable portion of the animals depended on to market these crops, and, consequently, makes the production of meat more difficult? Evidently it will have a double effect. It will increase the price of meat or other animal products without benefiting any one, because it will be more expensive to produce it. It will also reduce the value of these enormous crops I have mentioned, because they cannot be fed to the same advantage; that is, such a disease injuriously affects the feeder of the meat-producing animal, the grower of the hay and grain crops, and the consumer of the meat or other product, and in one or the other of these classes every person in the country is included.(Address of Hon. Norman J. Colman before the Third National Convention of Stockmen, 1885, pp. 3, 4, 5.) RELATION OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASES TO COMMERCE. I will also take the liberty of quoting the reference which was made in the address at the Third Annual Convention of Stockmen by the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry in regard to the relation of contagious diseases to commerce, and a condensed statement showing the magnitude of the interests involved. It was said: It is by this commerce that such diseases are carried. In olden times the chief agents for the dissemination of contagion were the contending armies which marched and countermarched through nearly all the countries of Europe, gathering the seeds of these dreaded plagues in the most obscure districts, multiplying them by providing susceptible subjects among the animals driven along to furnish supplies, and scattering them broadcast along the line of march. To-day, from the wonderful revolution in transportation facilities which has resulted from the application of steam power, contagious diseases may be distributed more rapidly through the ordinary channels of commerce than was formerly possible during the most extensive wars. The mighty steamships,that plow their way across the Atlantic in a few days bring animals which may have been exposed to contagion in Europe, and yet will show no sign of disease for days or weeks after they are landed on our shores. And once a disease has gained a lodgment here, how silently and rapidly may it be carried from the East to the West, from the North to the South, by the swift-rolling cars of a thousand trains. This distribution of diseases by commerce, as it is at present conducted, and the direct losses from their ravages, are but a part of the losses which our country is called upon to bear. The restrictions upon our foreign commerce, which are a consequence of the existence of communicable diseases in this country, have become familiar to all, but the intolerable nuisance of State and Territorial restrictions is just beginning to make itself felt, and it may be safely asserted that when forty different States and Territories have forty different sets of laws and regulations governing the movement of live stock, the losses from these restrictions on commerce will be forty times worse than the most vivid imagination can portray them at this time. Try for a moment to realize the amount of legal lore and the diplomacy that would be required to successfully carry a calf from New York to San Francisco under such circumstances. But woe to the man who tried to accomplish this feat without first securing a proper history of the animal, duly certified to by sworn evidence. For him ten quarantine stations would stand ready with open gates to take him in for three months each, or in the aggregate two years and a half. MAGNITUDE OF THE INDUSTRIES AFFECTED. The national importance of the two chief industries involved may be seen by a condensed statement, as follows: Cattle industry, 45,000,000... Annual production, 7,000,000 head Become a part of inter-State commerce, 5,000,000 head $1,200, 000, 000 350, 000, 000 250,000,000 Veals, 3,000,000 Export trade, the greater part of which is under restrictions, 182,000 Total exports of cattle and cattle prodnets.. The swine industry, annual product, 29,000,000 head $15,000,000 13, 000, 000 50,867,000 340,000,000 243, 000, 000 / 92,000,000 Upon figures like these it is unnecessary to comment. If industries and a commerce of such dimensions are not worthy of protection and encouragement, then there surely must be few subjects left of sufficient importance to engage the legislative mind. I have lately secured some figures which demonstrate very conclusively the effect of restrictions upon our export trade. In 1879 the same restrictions were placed upon the sheep and pigs, which we export alive to Great Britain that were placed upon our cattle, viz., it was ordered that they should all be slaughtered at the place of landing. The effect on the sheep trade was as follows: In 1879 we exported 108,000; in 1880, 80,000; in 1881, 60,000; in 1882, 46,000; in 1884, 32,000. The effect on the hog trade was equally disastrous. In 1879 we exported 25,000; in 1880, 10,000; in 1882, 1,000; in 1884, 4 solitary animals. The cattle industry is one of our greatest industries, and upon its prosperity depends indirectly to a considerable extent the welfare of all the different varieties of business carried on in this country, and it cannot meet with loss and disaster without affecting the millionaire in his palace and the mendicant who stands at the street corner and solicits alms. There is neither a State nor an important city in the Union where there are not people who have their savings invested in the cattle which roam over the Western ranges. The business of banks and railroads and telegraph companies is greatly augmented by the traffic in cattle and cattle products, while the agriculturist depends upon the cattle industry to furnish a market for much of his hay and grain. A serious check to the cattle-raiser means immediate loss of business to railroads and banks, lower prices for hay and grain, and, sooner or later, depression in all kinds of business. The traffic in animals between the various parts of the country is enormous. The breeders of thoroughbred cattle-i. e., of Jerseys, and Guernseys, and Shorthorns, and Holsteins, and Ayrshires, and Angus, &c.-in the East and in the Mississippi Valley, are continually purchas ing, selling, and exchanging animals with each other, and depend largely for a market for their surplus upon the sections still further west. The number and value of the bulls alone which are annually sent from the five States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois to the range country, would certainly be astonishing if the accurate figures could be obtained. The importance of this branch of commerce has been felt in Missouri and Kentucky since the outbreaks of pleuro-pneumonia have so nearly destroyed their markets. Not only has the commerce of these States with other sections of the Union been 'interrupted for the time being, but the value of the animals which are owned there has greatly depreciated. The following extract from an editorial in a leading stock journal serves to illustrate this statement: The sale of the Jackson County Shorthorns here last week was the greatest sacrifice ever made of thoroughbred cattle in this section. The offerings were the best made here by the association, and an average of $125 to $130 would have been considered low. But just think of only an average of $83! While this is most discouraging, it was not altogether unexpected. The excitement and scare over pleuro-pneumonia in Missouri had blighted the cattle interest, and breeders feared disaster, but hoped for better things. Taking the above decline in price, as compared with last spring's sales, and the losses made in Central Missouri at recent sales there, as a basis of calculation, our cattle have depreciated in value fully 25 per cent., which, on the 2,009,647 cattle in the State, assessed at $50,000,000, represents a shrinkage of $12,271,843.-(Kansas City Live-Stock Record, May 21, 1885.) A prominent Kentucky cattle-raiser contributed the following letter to the columns of the National Live-Stock Journal in June last, which shows that an equally bad condition of affairs existed in that State from the same cause: To the editor of the Journal: With the desire to throw a legal quarantine around the Cynthiana herd of Jerseys, in hopes it might be the means of inducing the States that have quarantined against Kentucky cattle to raise the same, a meeting of the representative cattlemen of this State was held in Frankfort on the 3d instant. Competent committees were appointed to look into the matter thoroughly, with power to act, to secure the co-operation of our governor, and to confer with the owners of the infected herd. It was thought at one time that 10 or 12 cattle, owned by a man whose premises lay between the barn and pasture of the infected herd, had caught the disease, but this is now denied. Therefore, the market and sale of the entire breeding and feeding stock of Kentucky cattle is totally paralyzed on account of one herd of cattle, half of whose number has been shipped to Texas and Tennessee, because we have no legal quarantine of the same. The interest in grade cattle aloue in Kentucky amounts to more than all the Shorthorns, Jerseys, Holsteins, and other breeds of pure-bred cattle together; yet with Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, to say nothing of other Western States, in quarantine they are entirely cut off from all market except the butcher's block. The cheape classes of all the pure breeds are in the same condition. Are not the grade cattle of Illinois and Ohio similarly affected? When we consider that these grade calves are usually worth from $30 to $35 per head at weaning time, and now on account of the different State quarantines, are not worth over from $15 to $20 per head, and then add a depreciation of 50 cents on the deliar for the pure breeds, we will have some idea of the immense loss in dollars and cents for the want of a thorough and efficient national law governing the whole matter of pleuro-pneumonia, instead of each State acting separately in the same matter. The sanitary laws of Kentucky as applied to people are almost unlimited, and I am very much in hopes before two weeks expire that some way will be found to quarantine and thoroughly isolate the Cynthiana herd, so that the cattle business of Kentucky may assume its ordinary relations with all the States; for the way the matter stands now Kentucky grade calves even have depreciated enough in price to have paid for every suspected case of pleuropneumonia west of the Alleghanies. T C. ANDERSON. While this loss of trade and depreciation of property was partly the result of the general suspicion felt by buyers in regard to the cattle of these States, it was also largely due to the quarantine restrictions and other regulations of trade which many States considered necessary in the absence of a national law by which the outbreaks of disease could be extirpated or even safely quarantined. Such local regulations were made by Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and other States. Other sections of the country, such as Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, have had their commerce restricted, and in some cases their cattle entirely prohibited from entering other States because of the real or suspected existence of pleuro-pneumonia within their borders. Such numerous laws and regulations of commerce are not only op pressive, but they are becomming intolerable in a country bound together with such numerous transportation lines, and where these, combined with telegraph and postal facilities, have annihilated space to such an extent that the most distant sections of the nation can now exchange commodities with greater facility than was formerly possible between the different parts of our smallest States. The trade in cattle and cattle products between the different States and Territories of the Union has reached an enormous development. According to recent estimates there were, in 1884, 300,000 head of young cattle, driven from Texas to the Northern ranges, and taken to the same ranges from other States 155,000 head, in all 455,000 animals, valued at nine and a quarter millions of dollars. In the first ten months of 1884 44.445 calves were received at Chicago, and 25,559 were shipped away from there. Many of these were gathered up in Eastern States and were on their way to the different farms and ranches of the West. The cattle trade at the principal markets of the United States for 1883 is shown by the following table, which gives the number of animals received: These figures show the great volume of traffic among the States which largely depends for its continuance and prosperity upon uniform regulations of commerce, and upon the national control of contagious diseases according to methods pointed out in the preceding sections, which, if adopted at once, would place few, if any, restrictions upon the perfect freedom of this inter-State commerce. Such regulations are designed to facilitate commerce, to relieve it from its present restrictions and to protect it from its greatest danger-the contagious animal diseases, and especially pleuro-pneumonia. They are sufficient to accomplish this, but the present State restrictions, while causing extraor dinary hardships and loss, will still prove insufficient, because, while pleuro pneumonia is allowed to remain practically unchecked in comparatively large sections of the country, no regulations short of the entire suspension of inter-State cattle traffic can guard against it. I have endeavored to give above some idea of the effect of the continued existence and spread of pleuro-pneumonia in the United States upon our internal commerce and the extent of the trade which is directly affected by it. If we will now turn to our foreign commerce we will find this detrimental influence equally manifest. Since March 4, 1879, cattle from the United States exported to Great Britain have not been allowed to go into the interior of the country, but have been slaughtered at the port of landing. It is estimated by good authorities who have investigated this subject, that, owing to this restriction upon the introduction of our cattle, each animal brings from $10 to $15 less than it would if it had been shipped from Canada, and for that reason secured free admittance. The number of cattle exported to Great Britain for each year from 1879 to i884, inclusive, is as follows: Estimating the loss on these animals at the minimum of $10 each, and we have an aggregate of $7,685,560, which represents the depreciation in the value of the live cattle exported to Great Britain as a consequence of the restrictions resulting from the presence of pleuro-pneumonia within the territory of the United States. As Great Britain has placed the same restrictions upon the importation of cattle from other countries where this disease prevails, but allows the free entrance of such animals from countries that are not infected, there can be but little doubt that, as soon as we can declare the complete extirpation of the contagion, the restrictions on our trade will be removed. The shipment of store cattle, that is lean stock, to be fattened in Great Britain, is entirely prohibited by a regulation which makes it necessary to slaughter at the port of landing. To what extent the trade might be developed if this burden were removed it is difficult to say; but since Mr. Moreton Frewen has so clearly shown that an animal worth $100 in England could be shipped there from this country and put upon the market at a cost not exceeding $75, it becomes very certain that a large trade might be secured. The replies which have been made to Mr. Frewen's arguments, though they have been given in very positive language, are not satisfactory. It is not sufficient to say that a fattened steer or dressed beef can be sent to England much cheaper than a lean steer and the food to fatten him with can be transported. As Mr. Frewen has shown, grain can be carried much cheaper than dressed beef, which must go in refrigerator compartments and is very liable to damage. Even live cattle do not always arrive in condition to be immediately slaughtered. They may be bruised and feverish, or the market may be such that it would be better to hold them for a few weeks. Again, both dressed beef and live cattle shrink very noticeably in weight from the effects of so long a trip. The great reason, however, in favor of a trade in store cattle is the absolute necessity to English agriculture of feeding cattle upon their farms. The English farmer must have manure, and to obtain it he has been raising and feeding steers when there was no profit in the operation, and he must continue to feed cattle even if the provender must be imported. Admitting this to be the actual condition of affairs, it is easily seen that, if a steer can be reared to the age of two and a half or three years in the United States and then taken to England and sold for $25 or $30 less than he would have cost if reared in England, there would be a profit in feeding American steers when there would be a loss in feeding those bred in England. The question of the breed and form is not to be taken into consideration, because we can and do breed just as good steers as can be produced anywhere in the world, and by proper selection we can supply the demand for any kind of an animal. The benefit of having free trading intercourse with a great consuming nation like England cannot be measured entirely by the volume of the traffic. By relieving our markets of a slight surplus, the tone of the market would be completely changed; we should be saved from the periodical depression of prices which works so much injury and discouragement, and every cattle-raiser in the country would feel the beneficial effects. The present is a remarkably favorable time to inaugurate this new branch of trade. Cattle are selling perhaps lower than they ever will again in this country, and consequently the difference in value between stock here and in England is such as to offer greater inducements to exporters. A trade once established would undoubtedly be continued as |