The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-01-29

One of the Supreme Needs of the Ag- ricuIturai seuth.
 The cotton growers of the South have waged great fight for better prices of cotton, and the victory is theirs They have shown that the old saying I that farmers will not stand together | is no longer true. Enough Of them have stood together to exercise most salutary influence to exercise most keting of our greatest staple, and in maintaining a fair price for tt. The Southern Cotton Association has al- ready done the South an incalculable
 service. although the work that yet remains to be done Is greater than that already accomplished
 We should let the beneficient results accruing from the united stand of the cotton growers give us courage to at- tempt yet other tasks that must be
 done before Southern agriculture can
 attain the highest permanent prosper ity. The next purely agricultural work that should receive the prompt, hearty
 and united support of Southern farm
 CTS and business men in the eradication of the cattle tick To have proposed this five years ago would have been quixotic, but today, thanks to the in vestigations of the experiment stations and of the National Department of Ag- riculture, the weak points in the life cycle of the cattle tick have been re- vealed and the extermination of this Curse of cattle raising in the South is practicable, prudent afd wise.
 Before alluding briefly to the means by which this enemy of the Southern farmer may be banished 1t may he well to inquire whether it is worth while. It would perhaps be tedious recital to quote statistics showing what the cattle tick annually costs the Southern States. The annual direct loss is many, many millions of dollars. The indirect losses are even greater. Let us consider briefly the nature of the principal losses. which De sum marized as follows:
 1. The cattle tick exacts a tribute or blood and thrift from practically all the cattle in a region stretching from Vir- ginia to Mexico and more extensive than the cotton growing area of the United States. Who can estimate the cost of the unthrifty condition and slower growth of these millions of na- tive cattle infested with ticks.
 2. Even among native cattle the
 deaths due to tick fever, in nature fcon-
 veyed exclusively by the tick), are es-
 timated as equaIing or exceeding the deaths of cattle due to all other dis
 eases combined. Think of the hun dreds of thousands of cattle that die each year In the GOutnefn CIAtSS 1toIi a score of diseases, including the dreaded scourges anthrox, tubercuio- sis, blackIeg, etc., and then think of
 an equal number dying from tick fever under some of it's various names Of
 murrain, erd water. impaction, Texas fever, etc. Put an estimate on the
 value of the half of the cattle that an-
 nually die in the South from disease,
 and the total amounts high up into the
 millions
 5. Up to the last decade the tick killed about half of the high priced registered Jerseys, Shorthorns. Devons and other pedigreed bovines, brought 1 from Northern or European herds to l improve the cattle of the cotton belt The discovery of a means of artificially inducing a mild form of tick fever through protective innoculation has in the last few yearS reduced this loss, but only part of the> valuable ani- mals now brought in are inoculated, and of those inoculated from to l5 l per cent usually suceumb to tick fever ! in spite of this precantion. The ami mals of this class are intrinsically val
 uabIe and S1O0 piece for the several l thousand pedigreed breeding cattle thus lost soon after being brought | aggregates the greater part of mill lion dollars.
 l 4. fourth class loss due to the | presence of the cattle tick occurs when | load of cattle arrives at Chicago, | St. Louis or other important cattle mar ket Unless they arrive during cer- tain brief period in winter they are assigned to a certain section of the stockyards known as the quarantine pens. They are not allowed to enter | the same quarter as other cattle.
 They cannot be bought by a feeder,
 fed for few months, and then again | brought into the same market to better ] advantage. No matter though a few months of additional feeding might add | SO per cent to their value, or a suf- ! ficient price to justify the man who | foeds in giving a fair price for North | ern feeders in corresponding degree | of thinness, Southern cattle must be killed promptly without any opportu- | nity for the finishing that would so | greatly augment their price. This fact and that element of human nature that
 makes a purchaser take advantage of
 a sellers necessity, results in a price 1 of about half a cent less per pound being paid for cattle from the tick infested region that is paid the same
 day for corresponding grade of cat
 tie from north of the quarantine
 line. On a thousand pound steer this
 is loss of five dollars, or say 1o per
 cent of the selling price. If the South ern cattle industry has been able to
 make some progress In spite of this
 handicap of several dollars on each ani-
 nal marketed in the great markets, it
 Is obvious that cattle raising in the
 South would make rapid strides if the
 tick were destroyed.
 5. Another direct loss to which the
 cattle tick exposes cattle raisers in
 the western part of the Southern coun-
 try, is in serving as a point of en-
 trance for the serewworm. In hand
 ling cattle in Texas I found to my an-
 noyanee and multiplied work that the