A "CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION,"
A "CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION" How the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station Rid the State of Bovine Tuberculosis. by Instructing the Farmers By GEORGE B. HILL WE HEAR, frequently enough, of...
...the phrase, in its undue popularity, having been forced into service to cover everything from Mr...
...As Dr...
...When he has seen with his own eyes the effects of the disease, he can hardly remain indifferent to its cause...
...About the close of the demonstration he is likely to have an illuminating vision of the possible state of his own herd...
...The experiment station had two choices...
...When a farmer sees the tuberculin test applied to the condemnation of an apparently salable animal, and later is shown that the animal is, in scriptural language, a whited sepulchre, he is unresistingly convinced of the utility of the test...
...Years back, her legislators adopted an admirable law, modeled on that of Denmark, under which there was indicated an excellent method of eliminating the disease, based on the voluntary adoption of the tuberculin test...
...At that, it is the most advanced legislation of the kind in the statutes of any state...
...They could firstly, have applied to the legislature for an act giving them compul-sory power to clean up...
...Especially so is that of New York's experience with the same disease...
...The farmers being, quite naturally, unappreciative, made a rancorous resistance, and ended by denying the necessity for the campaign and the validity of the test...
...the losses of the process the bulletins brought home by precept, picture, and example...
...Results...
...Opening the "Whited Sepulchers" IN 1906 Dr...
...The difficulty in New York was not with the conditions, or the men, but with the way they were approached...
...Within the year the station was called on to make 5,000 odd tests, more than the total for the five years previous...
...They started a state-wide series of postmortem demonstrations in tuberculous ani-mals...
...Russell puts it: "We eliminated all the complications and carried conviction by direct appeal to the eye...
...Russell, now director of the experiment station, and dean of the college of agriculture...
...H. L. Russell, bacteriologist of the state experiment station, took notice of the growing seriousness of bovine tuberculosis among the dairy herds...
...The station, however, took the second alternative, cf applying for action to the people direct...
...by Instructing the Farmers By GEORGE B. HILL WE HEAR, frequently enough, of "campaigns of education...
...Some ten years ago, Dr...
...The bulletins, having no room for subtleties, kept the loud pedal down on the economic side of the question...
...This was the more aggravating in view of the ambition the experiment station cherished of helping to make Wisconsin the great breeding center of the west for dairy animals...
...From neighborhood herd, in which the tuberculin test has shown well-established infection, there are brought two or three "reacting" animals, often, to outward appearance, healthy enough...
...in such a scheme there was of course no room for a tuberculous output...
...The Wisconsin bovine tuberculosis campaign is worth remembering as a fine example of educational method in accomplishing this...
...Before a bulletin could get results, it had to overcome not only a resistant skepticism but a good deal of strong delusion as to the nature of the disease, that had come down from the days when tuberculosis was vague-y supposed to be the joint result of hered-ty and a cold draft...
...Wisconsin can show a curiosity in the way of a righteous educational crusade—a crusade in which public officers, moving against a public menace, abandoned compulsion and took to instruction as the means to their end...
...There came returns in the shape of an increasing number of voluntary tests...
...In three years, practically, there has been gained the popular enactment of the most effective body of regulation any state can show...
...It provided that, after December 1, 1910, no dairy or breeding animal may be sold without an accompanying clean bill of health, based on a tuberculin test recorded with the state live stock sanitary board...
...Every year the "Long" and "Short" courses sent out a hundred or more graduates, inspired with a knowledge and dislike of bovine tuberculosis, and trained in the use of the indispensable "tuberculin test" These young men returned missionary-wise to their home communities, to spread the knowledge of the disease and the use of the test...
...Where such postmortems have been held it has been possible to secure several thousand tests without much difficulty," writes Dr...
...and in the west, Illinois and other neighbor commonwealths had at least quarantined themselves against its importation...
...The experiment station force followed up their literature in person, making an opening for instruction out of every opportunity to address an institute, a fair crowd, or a breeder's convention...
...There are practically two means of bovine infection—from another animal, and from the milk of another animal, the more etiolated human form of the disease not being transmissible to bovine kind...
...In 1907 the number mounted to 11,000, in 1908 to nearly 30,000, and last winter was estimated at 43,000...
...Even where the printed page carried conviction, it was ardly a gripping enough form of appeal o rouse a man to enlist in an active sani-ary campaign...
...The general farm public were, however, quite unenlightened as to the wisdom of the act and did not take to the test...
...The experiment stations are now moving against the second means of infection by agitating the pasteurization of the mixed skim-milk returned by creameries to their patrons...
...There was need for a new departure in the educational line...
...Instructing the Farmers with Bulletins DR...
...of the stock in different counties has been tested, which meant the elimination of disease...
...Pearson of their experiment station opened a campaign of education much like the later, more rapid one in Wisconsin, in consequence of which the disease has been kept under a gratifying two per cent...
...The procedure of one of these demonstrations is somewhat as follows...
...Early in the nineties Dr...
...It takes the whole time of one bacteriologist and two stenographers to handle the correspondence on the subject that comes to the station, each winter testing season...
...At that time, the state occupied a conspicuously tail-end position in the matter of regulating the disease...
...The whole state has a general similar protection againts importations from outside...
...The agricultural graduates were still a small leaven in the dairying population of the state, and the organized breeders that had been reached from the headquarters almost as few...
...Some Instructive Comparisons "COMPARISONS," as the late Mr...
...and if he is a conscientious and clear-headed man, he applies for a test inside the week...
...but the returns, while appreciable, were not satisfying...
...Russell, in alliance with Dr...
...Eastern states, Pennsylvania particularly, by beginning early and working judiciously, had got it under control...
...There is a human side to the question—that of danger through the infection of milk—but the proof of that is a matter of advanced bacteriology...
...So seldom do we run across arc example of a genuine disinterested campaign of enlightenment, and so often do we find the poor phrase illegitimately applied, that we forget what a powerful engine of public good the term, in its best sense stands for...
...He finishes with a brief lecture on tuberculosis, its :ause, and what to do about it...
...The demonstrator points out the most popular remons of bacillar settlement, and, with a little detailed dissection, gives his audience an insight into the nature of tuberculous lesions...
...While the demonstrator is giving a few preliminary remarks, his assistants make a neat, rapid iissection...
...Lawson's literary output to the street-car advertising of rubber heels...
...Pennsylvania, under conditions fairly duplicating New York's, shows opposite results...
...and there remains in the state a sentiment against tuberculin testing and live stock officials that will not be overcome in years...
...Public Sentiment Favorable to Regulation BUT more valuable than even these tangible gains is the en-lightened public sentiment on the question that has been built up...
...Public opinion is axiomatically too strong a force to be worth while working against...
...but better, there has been developed an intelligent popular sentiment on the matter, which, even if it is still not universal, is more than sufficient to keep the state from backsliding...
...Wisconsin was still operating under veterinary regulations passed when tuberculosis was a scientific curiosity...
...it is, however, capable of conversion from a force of resistance to a force of furtherance...
...RUSSELL and his assistants opened with a diffusion of bulletins, concentrated and readable, setting forth briefly tne nature cf tuberculosis, the approved methods of its check, and the certainty of its spread if unchecked...
...For some four years the campaign proceeded thus, along what might be called conventional experiment station lines...
...A year ago the Commissioner of Agriculture, under his power to test suspected herds, began a campaign of compulsion against the disease...
...Of the rest of the farm population it was only possible to reach a fraction, and only possible to convince a fraction of a fraction, through the medium of literature alone...
...Their most fruitful field for conversions was however among the students of the agricultural college, which has a joint life with the experiment station, the same force of professors serving both, and blending instruction naturally with experimentation in the day's work...
...It was in effect, carrying the veterinary-school clinic Tnto the deld...
...Should this go legally into force, the state will have a system of protection which, working in concord with an educated public opinion, should amount to an automatic system for eliminating the disease...
...Roberts of the State Sanitary Board, introduced a novelty into the campaign...
...What had been radical three years before was conservative now...
...It was giving concrete satisfaction to the show-me instinct of the American farmer...
...Worse, there was no popular realization of what the disease amounted to, and no sentiment at all for anything drastic in the way of an attack on it...
...It was only after a legislative fight that the law, modified, stayed on the books...
...A scientific tap on the frontal bone and they are martyrs to the public weal...
...These were introduced at the state air, at county fairs, on occasions of special wings at county agricultural schools, and stly in the college itself before the six to welve hundred practical farmers of the state, who assemble in the winter for the ten lay Farmers' Course...
...From one animal, the infection takes an insidious but inevitable course through the herd, and by sale of animals, into other herds...
...Today from 20 to 40 per cent...
...The new law strikes at the first means by guarding owners of clean herds from innocently "buying it in" with new stock...
...The proper order of events as they saw it was education first, legislation afterwards...
...and meantime, for the last three years, the percentage of affected animals found in the other herds has been falling from seventeen per cent to something under four, till now it is a positive problem to find demonstration material...
...Shakespeare remarked, "are odious," but they are likewise instructive...
...The last legislature gave serious discussion to regulations a long way more drastic than those which, with the recommendation of the experiment station and the state live stock sanitary board, finally went through...
Vol. 1 • September 1909 • No. 35
