Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1860-07-02
MONDAY, JULY e, 1860.
THE CATTLE PLAGUE PANIC.

The Connecticut cattle commissioners have
reason to be heartily ashamed of themselves.
There NAV be some member of the board who
is not implicated in the folly to which we re-
fer but those members of it who pre-
tended, and even reported to the legislature
that they had found the cattle disease i'll the
herd of Thomas Cowles at Pennington, should
receive leather medals and be Immediately
discharged from office. These officials, with
out visiting Mr.. Cowles or making inquiry OF
him; and without spending more than fifteen
minutes among his cattle, or rather among
portion of them which were i'll pasture IN the
town of Burlington, pronounced them badly
afflicted with contagious pleuro-pneumoma
and delivered them to the selectmen of Bur
isolated, as the law provides and tits SAM
tary isolation would have continued all sum-
mer, we presume, if Mr.. Cowles had not de-
nounced the commissioners in very earnest
appeal to the governor. His cattle are of very
choice breeds, and it was natural he should be
considerably moved in spirit to see them taken
from his care and Stuck in a miserable pas
ture where they could barely subsist"
Gov. Buckingham, who has no lack of good
judgment o. right feeling, Immediately took the
matter in hand. On Thursday, last week, the
isolated animals were visited by the full board
OF commissioners, and by other gentlemen
competent to make the necessary investiga-
ton. The cattle and everything pertaining to
them were examined. The commissioners
had reported to the legislature that Mr. Cowles
had purchased in Brookfald, Mass, pair of
diseased oxen and thus brought the contagion
to Pennington. 1t appeared now that he had
done no such thing, that the cattle in question
came originally from Sufield, Conn, where
they had been previously owned for two years,
and that they had never been diseased The
commissioners had reported that several of
Mr. Cowles' animals had died of pleuro-pneu-
monia. 1t was proved that when this report
was made, he had not lost an animal for two
years. The commissioners had reported that
the contagion was spreading very dangerously
in his herd, and among other cattle in the
neighborhood of their pasture 1t appeared
last Thursday that this representation was
unwarranted, and that Mr.. Cowes' animals
commissioners themselves.
The result of this investigation was that the
twenty Isolated" animals belonging to Mr..
Cowles' fine herd of cattle were restored to
him and driven to his pasture in Pennington.
The allegations made by him to the governor
were found to be strictly true, and the repu-
tation Of the Connecticut cattle commissioners
is very badly damaged. The Hartford Press
says :-"Much censure is inflicted upon the
cattle commissioners who first went there for
hastily looking at the cattle and taking the
gossip of the crowd, instead of going to
Pennington and enquiring of the owner and
his neighbors." After all the talk, and all the
foolish panic, there appears to be not one case
of the cattle plague in Connecticut. There
has not been case in that state; and, with
reasonable amount of caution and common
sense, it is nowise likely that there will be
one. Stupid investigators, aided by pre-
disposition to panic in the community where
they operate, may breed the cattle disease
almost anywhere that is to say, they may
get up frightful cutlery and fill with alarm
the whole region round about them, without a
single sign or circumstance to justify belief
that there is or ever will be case of the dis
ease within thousand miles of that particular
locality. They have tried very hard to have
a case in Connecticut but this Pennington
demonstration ought to satisfy all concerned.
Even here in Massachusetts, where there is
no question about the existence of malignant
pleuro pneumonia, there is not now and never
has been, in our judgment, tenth part and
perhaps not hundredlh part, of such an
amount of it as we have credit for abroad.
Some people outside of the state talk as if all
Massachusetts were, or had been full of it,
while the truth is, it has existed in but few
localities. The disease is here STILL although
it has been quiet lately. The precautionary
measures now used will undoubtedly keep it
from spreading, and, it is to b. hoped, it will
ere long disappear.