The Portland daily press., 1895-01-21
MAINE CATTLE AND HORSES.
Annual Report of the Cattle Commits
siOners.

An Account of the Years Work-Tubercu-
Iosis is Pretty Well Subdued in Maine,
but There is Plenty of it in Massachu-
setts--Glanders Very Prevalent the
Past Year-The Commission Need More
Money.
The annual report of the Cattle Com
missioners was received by the Governor
on Saturday. The most important por.
tion of the report follows:
A summary of the whole mum ber of
stables and herds of cattle inspected by
our commission in 1894 will be found to
be two hundred and one, as opposed to
one hundred and forty-three in 1893 an
excess of ffty-eight cases. Ninety-two
herds of cattle were inspected, while the
mum ber of sta bles of hcrses examined
for glanders and farcy was one hundred
and eight, which exceeded the number
of last year by forty-s;x, and there is an
apparent cause for these latter iuspec-
rions which will lie given later in the
report
Forty-six head OF cattle were condemned
so, the total amount of appraisals for
the year being S., 17S.
Our quarantine against Massachusetts
is still in force, and the recent public and
private developments in that State under
the workings of their new law will rem
der it entirely unnecessary for us to give
any new or further reasons for Its con-
tinuance, the per centage of diseased cat
tie in that State, given through our
Maine Reports for the past five Years be-
ing no longer denied either publicly or
officially, the cold facts being daily de-
veIoped all going to show the per CEN
tage estimated by us will be largely in
creased rather than diminished. The
chief discussion now going on between
the Massachusetts Board and the "Farm-
ers in Convention," shows that while
there is no longer any dispute as to the
amount of tu berculosis in the State, the
amount of appraisal of animals con-
denned and destroyed is the pivotal
question that will come before their
present legislature for discussion and de-
cision. Up to the present year the Mas
sachusetts law afforded no compensation
whatever for animals destroyed, and
Section 13 of the Massachusetts, law said:
"When the conmi ssiOners, by an examl-
nation of case OF contagious disease
among domestic animals, become salts
fed that it has been contracted by inten-
tion or negligence on. the part of the
owner, or of person in his employ, OF
by his consent, or by the use OF food
material liable to contain the germs of
contagion, they shall cause such animals
to be securely isolated at the expense OF
hal 1, tn
be killed without appraisal or payment:
and in all cases of tuberculosis, farcy
or glanders, the commissioner having
condemned the animal infected there
with, shall cause such animal
to be killed without an
appraisal, but may pay the owner
or any other person an equitable sum
for the killing and burial thereof, and
may also pay reasona ble sum for the
animal destroyed should post mortem
examination prove that said animal was
free from the disease for which it was
condemned"
In their report of 1898 the old board of
cattle commissioners of the Bay state
raised the question of indemnity, and
after Offering various objections against
compensation, say:
"Further very serious objection, and
one that experience has always shown
to be inseparable from any law which
pays indemnity, is that sooner or later
the State treasury goes into the husi-
ness of buying diseased animals that are
collected for the purpose not only from
within It's own borders, but from the
herds of neigh boring States as well; and
one of two things happens-dlther the
amount of money expended ls so large
that the law becomes too much OF bur-
den to the taxpayers, and has to be
abandoned, or else the State maintaining
l,p hcz fn a
against the animals coming in from an
other State or States, according to the
drift of the incoming cattle trade" To
which our board replied in our last re-
port, that after considering all the OBJ
jections of the Massachusetts board, we
are still of the opinion that any law of
non-compensaGion that seeks to govern
or control the contagious diseases of a
State, resolves itself into one of self pre-
seryation among the very class of men
the law seeks to reach. the producers and
dealers in diseased milk and meat; so
that if an owner has animals in his
possession of which he is himself sus-
picious, mis- utmost efforts are directed
towards concealment of the facts and
evasion of the law that affords him no
compensation it his animals are con-
demned."
And we again suggest our belief that
the efficacy of the law requires that the
owners or diseased animals SnOulu DOG
have to run too much counter to their
own interests in submitting to the obli-
cations to report. The only means of
diminishing their resistance is to estab-
lish the principle of fair compensation
in case of slaughter. 1t is to the prInci-
pie of mutuality that recourse must be
had-a principle which should be ap-
piled under the control of the State.
There is one other significant feature
in the failure of the old Bay State, to
successfully cope with tuberculosis (un-
der their law of no indemnity to which
we wish TO call attention, that fortifies
our opinion that if the same law was in
force in this State, and no quarantine
against Massachusetts, we should be
soon over-run with the disease.
Among other objections to our law of
quarantine, the Massachusetts commits
sioners had to say in their report of 1893:
Massachusetts is large distri buting
center for the cattle trade; animals go
from here to all parts of New England
and to Europe, and it's supplies are drawn
from a great variety of sources. We're
the State to quarantine against all the
sources from which animals with tuber-
culosis are known to come to us, this
valuable trade, which now gives profita-
bic employment to so many, would be
ruiDed This ouarantjna for MasSaohu-