Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-02-14

tivity and inactivity was beginning
to make itself felt at last.
In the midst of these disclosures I
caught one of the slaughterer's agents
in the act of selling four hindquarters
of tubercular meat. The circum-
stances surrounding his offense were
so discriminating that he decided the
best way to escape the consequences
of his act would be to tell all he
knew.
He confessed that a graTt fund ex-
listed in the slaughtering establish
ments for the payment of Health De-
partment officials. He said he had
! frequently seen the drivers of the
slaughterers stamp the carcasses of
diseased COWS with the Health De-
partment seal given to them for that
purpose by Health Department offic-
ials.
! Confessing that he had been mixed
up in the distribution of hundreds of
diseased carcasses, he described how
the forequarters were boned out and
put away in cold storage to be dis
posed of under favorable market con-
ditions, to bologna and frankfurter
| manufacturers.
THE Health Department" he said,
keeps the slaughterers informed of
the movements of out-of-town in
Spectors, so that when a threatened
survey becomes imminent the killing
plants can be closed down for sew
eral days until all danger is passed.
AS four more diseased carcasses
bearing the United State Bureau of
Animal Industry inspected and pass
ed" stamp, were discovered in New
York shops by the agents of Director
Brown, thus proving that the federal
governments inspection system also
contained loop holes. I escorted the
author of the confession recorded
above to Commissioner OF Accounts
| Wallstein, who learned that on the last
twelve killing days of January, 1916,
1864 cows were slaughtered in the
establishments operating under the
Jurisdiction of the New York City
Health Department.
During this time 1,847 udders, so
badly diseased that they were too
unsightly for sale, were condemned.
These condemnations indicated the
true character of the COWS that finally
met their death in order to feed New
York City with diseased meat after a
long career in the production of dis
eased milk.
Their physical condition at the
time of slaughter indeXed the quail
ity of milk which up to that hour
they had been producing for the but
ter and cheese factories of the State
Commissioner Wallstein needed no
further stimulation. He began at once
the construction of a trap that would
catch the offenders and establish the
legal evidence of their guilt.
In the mean time the New York
State senators and assemblymen con-
stltuting the agricultural committee
of the Legislature at Albany saw to
1t that all laws aimed at the eradica-
ton of the evils which these discIos-
ures revealed were smothered.
One of the members of the COM
mittee that buried the bovine tuber-
culosis bill. formulated by DR.. Theo-
bald Smith of the Rockefeller Insti-
tute DR.. Veranus A. Moore of Cornell
University, and Seth Low, was Sena-
tor Charles w. Wicks. Wicks was
appointed by the Legislature to act as
chairman of an investigating commits
sion endowed by the representatives
of the people with an appropriation
of $4,000 for it's expenses.
While the devilment which we are
about to describe was being enacted
the Wicks committee entered into a
series of extraordinary adventures
which eliminated, in the latter part
of 1915, in Governor Whitman's ap-
pointment of Senator Wicks to mem