No. 845.
Mr. Bayard to Mr. Romero.

Sir: Referring to a correspondence lately had with you in respect to the quarantine of ninety days declared by the authorities of the Territory of Arizona against the importation of cattle from Mexico, and especially to my note of the 7th ultimo, informing you that the order in question had been suspended owing to questions affecting its constitutionality, I have now the honor to communicate to you, for your information, copy of an extract from a report made to the governor of Arizona Territory by the chairman of the Territorial Live-Stock Sanitary Commission, and transmitted hither with a letter from the Acting Secretary of the Interior, dated the 4th instant. This report has been laid before the Department to illustrate the condition existing in Mexico which seemed to require the adoption of measures to prevent the introduction of contagious disease through the unrestricted importation of cattle from that country.

You will observe that the measure originated in the absence of all sanitary preventives of the importation of diseased cattle from other countries to Mexico, whence they or cattle contaminated by contact with them might readily come to the United States, and that at the same time a like quarantine was declared against the State of Missouri, where the preventive sanitary regulations were deemed to be defective and insufficient to insure complete protection. This fact seems to abundantly show that no discrimination against Mexico, such as your correspondence suggested, could have been intended.

When, as now, great disquietude exists among cattle-growers throughout the United States, owing to the prevalence of deadly contagious diseases of live-stock in many countries which maintain frequent and rapid [Page 1260] steam communication with the countries of the American continent, requiring the importation of contagion to be guarded against in every way, even to the extent of impeding the free relations of exchange between the several States by the adoption of constitutional sanitary measures, it would be reassuring to know that Mexico, a coterminous country, had adopted and enforced adequate steps to prevent the importation of diseased cattle from abroad, and to discover and eradicate contagion where it may exist in Mexico.

Accept, etc.,

T. F. Bayard.
[Inclosure.]

Mr. Bruce to Mr. Zulick.

[Extract.]

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 9th instant, requesting me to state to you, owing to complaints made by the Mexican Government to the Secretary of State, at Washington, the conditions which existed in Mexico that compelled the commission at its last meeting to require you to issue a proclamation placing in quarantine for ninety days all cattle that were being imported into Arizona from that country. The conditions, which I shall gladly explain to you, are these: At a conference of the commission, in August last, the veterinary surgeon of the Territory submitted to it a verbal report of the ravages of pleuro-pneumonia among cattle on the continent of Europe, in the Dominion of Canada, and in the United States. After a proper consideration of this report, it was decided by the commission that it was not only necessary to enforce stringent regulations in regard to importations of cattle into Arizona from States and countries where pleuro-pneumonia among cattle was declared to exist, but also from those States and Territories and countries which were exporting cattle to Arizona and had provided no sanitary regulations for the protection of their live-stock interests against this dread disease. Among the latter class it was discovered that the State of Missouri had insufficient sanitary regulations, and the Republic of Mexico, from all information received, possessed none at all. You were therefore requested by the commission to quarantine the Territory, not only against the State of Missouri, but also against the Republic of Mexico. In making complaint is it possible that the latter country expects that the Territory, to avoid a scourge that would annihilate one-third of its taxable values, would discriminate against the State of Missouri, that had only partially failed to adopt proper sanitary measures, and place no restrictions on importations of cattle from a foreign nation which has no live-stock sanitary regulations whatever? Without such restrictions, what is to keep cattle from being imported into Mexico from even the State of Missouri, and then brought back and turned loose at the will of the owner, within the borders of Arizona! What is to prevent, under such conditions, pleuro-pneumonia from being introduced into Mexico from some infected district on this continent or the continent of Europe, and thence being conveyed through the channels of its exports into Arizona f Finally, for what purpose are restrictions exercised at all in one direction, where they are needed, when cattle can be imported without surveillance in another direction, where health restrictions are still more needed? Such were the questions that arose for the consideration of the commission, and thus Mexico was quarantined, not because we had positive knowledge that contagious disease now actually exists there, but because it is liable to become infested with it at any time from lack of sanitary regulations to be imported thence into Arizona at will, and be duly transmitted to the herds of the Territory to their destruction.

It is the purpose of the Commission, although this quarantine has been temporarily suspended because the section of the act of the legislature under which it was authorized has been declared in conflict with certain Federal statutes, and is therefore unconstitutional, to lay the extreme peril which now threatens Arizona cattle interests in the direction of Mexico before the Federal Government and to claim relief at its hands.

The Commission at its present meeting will ask you to co-operate with it, to achieve the protection that is needed, and lope we may have your official aid.

With expressions of personal and official regard,

I am, etc.,

C. M. Bruce,
Chairman.