THE LOGIC OF RESISTANCE

Resistance to the tuberculin-based eradication effort should not be viewed as a knee-jerk Luddite reaction. The science underlying this innovation was new, controversial, and in many ways counterintuitive. The test-and-slaughter campaign, moreover, had the nature of Rousseau's stag hunt—success required that all parties participate to address spillover effects. The effective use of the new diagnostic technology, as with the construction of railroads and dams and the imposition of vaccination programs, required collective action. This meant that “all-or-nothing” decisions about adoption became public, rather than strictly individual, choices, making organized resistance all but inevitable.⁵

Opposition focused on three sets of issues. The first involved the scientific underpinnings and the efficacy of the new technology. Opponents disputed the validity of the new discoveries motivating the eradication campaign, arguing that the disease organism was misidentified and that the testing process was subjective and inaccurate. Some went further, claiming that injecting tuberculin, a product derived from the disease organism, into healthy animals violated “Nature's order” and endangered both animals and humans. Opponents asserted that the scientific understanding behind the program was “mere theory” with insufficient support to justify the slaughter of valuable animals. Even among those who did accept the underlying science were many skeptics who argued that eradication on a national scale was impossible and that less draconian and less risky alternatives were available. In economic terms, this latter point pertained to efficiency questions—that is, whether the net expected benefits of the eradication effort were positive and greater than the alternatives.⁶

The second set of issues concerned the distribution of the costs and benefits. The benefits of the new test-and-slaughter policy were spread across a large and dispersed population, including consumers, meatpackers, and many farmers. The costs were concentrated among a few. Owners of valuable cattle threatened with immediate destruction risked financial ruin. While arguments about Pareto improvements often discuss hypothetical transfers, designing institutional mechanisms that work in practice is tricky. The tuberculin testing controversy represents an interesting case where the technology's proponents actually devised the means to partially compensate the losers.⁷

The third set of objections involved the implementation of the program and issues of due process. Many farmers were alarmed that outsiders claiming expert status were meddling in their day-to-day operations; opponents also bitterly complained that they had few avenues for appeal if their animals were condemned. These concerns often carried an individualistic or libertarian theme deriding the heavy-handed actions of government bureaucrats who threatened individual liberty, property, and (if the science was wrong) even lives. The objections to the test-and-slaughter program were often tied to other, broader grievances. Indeed, the most vigorous resistance occurred when existing organizations and communities took up the “anti” campaign as part of their broader causes. Mokyr has noted that innovation often encounters “many powerful enemies with a vested interest in the status quo or an aversion to change continuously threatening it.”⁸

However most leading opponents of testing were not adverse to all change, and many even favored radical change, albeit along a different path. These “antis” found a ready audience among farmers who stood to suffer significant losses from an increasingly compulsory campaign to employ an untried technology to eradicate a disease which, at least initially, was poorly understood. As the program progressed, the emphases of the protesters shifted from disputing its underlying scientific merits to challenging the program's implementation and distribution of the costs.

BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS, TUBERCULIN TESTING, AND THE SCIENTIFIC DEBATE

Bovine tuberculosis was an especially dangerous disease because it could take years for infected and contagious animals to manifest visible symptoms. It was not until the advanced stages that cows lost weight and their milk production dropped by up to 25 percent. Eventually the cattle might show external lesions, have coughing attacks, and die prematurely. M. bovis spread among cattle (and other animals) by contact with infected animals or with contaminated materials. Rates of infection were higher among closely confined cattle than in free-range animals. As a result, BTB was far more common in dairy herds. Public health officials and farmers were shocked when over one-half of the animals in some prized herds reacted to early tuberculin tests. Circa 1917, the best estimate is that 5 percent of U.S. cattle were infected, including 10 percent of dairy animals and 1–2 percent of range cattle. This represented a roughly 50 percent increase from the infection rates prevailing a decade earlier. Without vigorous countermeasures, infection rates would likely have reached those found in many northern European regions where well over one-half of milk cows were diseased.⁹

As we have noted, humans also contracted M. bovis, primarily through contaminated milk. Circa 1900 nearly 15,000 Americans, mostly children, died each year from BTB and many more suffered pain and disfigurement.¹⁰

The scientific understanding of tuberculosis was rapidly advancing by the end of the nineteenth century. The most notable contribution was Robert Koch's discovery of the tubercle bacillus, M. tuberculosis, in 1882. But with progress came controversy. In 1898 Theobald Smith identified small differences in cultures drawn from bovine and human sources. At first Koch maintained that the human and bovine forms of the bacteria were identical. At the 1901 International Congress on Tuberculosis held in London, Koch did an about-face, proclaiming that M. bovis was indeed a distinct organism, but that it posed little threat to humans. He noted that “if such a susceptibility really exists, the infection of human beings is but a very rare occurrence. I should estimate the extent of infection by the milk and flesh of tubercular cattle … as hardly greater than that of hereditary transmission, and I therefore do not deem it advisable to take any measures against it.”¹¹

Koch further dismayed his scientific opponents by speculating that it might be desirable to expose children to M. bovis in the hope of imparting immunity against M. tuberculosis.¹²

Koch's declarations helped galvanize the opposition to BTB eradication efforts. A 1901 editorial in Breeder's Gazette offers a sense of the rage:

The controversy remained front-page news around the world and raged in academic circles. In his December 1905 Nobel laureate address, Koch asserted that “Bovine tuberculosis is not transmissible to man.”¹⁴ Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Koch was slow to recant, thereby lending expert support to dairy interests opposed to the wholesale elimination of suspect cattle. Even decades after Koch's position was proven wrong, his early views continued to sway public policy debates.

The irony is that the whole testing program rested on one of Koch's many contributions. Control of BTB was impossible without early detection in animals not exhibiting visible symptoms. In 1890 Koch solved this problem with the development of tuberculin. The early tuberculin test involved injecting an animal with the substance and then repeatedly checking for signs of a fever or swelling.¹⁵

The tuberculin technology was based on the germ theory of disease which, as noted, was new, controversial and, for many, counterintuitive. There were four principal underlying scientific claims: apparently healthy cows could be diseased; this disease of cattle could pass to humans; a serum (which was originally derived from disease organisms harvested from infected guinea pigs and mixed into a broth containing ox bile) would produce a fever or swelling in an infected animal when injected; and the same serum would cause no reaction and do no harm to a healthy animal or to its milk or meat. Disbelieving farmers held that tuberculin was “filth” that would infect healthy animals with tuberculosis or activate the disease in animals with latent cases. Critics further asserted that the injections induced abortion, reduced milk output, and had other deleterious effects. In addition, opponents charged that the test was capricious because veterinarians could make any cow “react,” and that reactors often showed no visible lesions in postmortem inspections. Fears about the test's reliability and its dangers inspired resistance, which was further inflamed by the schisms within the scientific community. As Mokyr observes, “[r]eliance on technical expertise … is weakened by disagreements among experts and even disagreements over who is an expert….”¹⁶

Once injected, tuberculin provided animals with extended immunity against further reactions. As a result, the introduction of tuberculin widened the information asymmetries inherent in the livestock market by providing unscrupulous sellers with knowledge about the health of their animals that buyers could not easily discover. Using privately administered tests, livestock owners could detect the disease in their cattle and then sell the reactors to buyers who could not accurately retest the animals for two to three months. By this time just one sick animal could have infected an entire herd. In many instances, owners of diseased cattle first “plugged,” that is injected their animals with tuberculin, and then submitted them to unwitting state officials for testing and certification. Thus, the invention of tuberculin represented a double-edged sword—it was necessary to bring the contagion under control, but it was also misused, spreading the disease and creating collective action problems.¹⁷

GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL EFFORTS

The public response to the growing knowledge about BTB represents a prime example of what Jonathan R. T. Hughes has called the “Governmental Habit.”¹⁸

Within a few years of the introduction of tuberculin to the United States, many states and large municipalities had enacted regulatory measures to slow the spread of the deadly disease. Indeed, visionaries saw the possibility of eradicating BTB by eliminating its carriers. The most vigorous early campaign began in Massachusetts. In 1894, the state enacted a strict program with quarantines and compulsory testing. The use of coercion and the provision of only partial compensation for reactors provoked loud protests from farmers. In 1895 the state responded by fully compensating owners, generating moral hazard problems as farmers jumped at the “opportunity to get rid of sick or unproductive cows at public expense.”¹⁹ Due to the resulting high expenses and continued opposition, the state shifted in 1898 to a voluntary program employing visual inspection instead of tuberculin testing. In the meantime, Pennsylvania adopted a voluntary plan (with free tuberculin testing) in 1896. Visibly ill animals were destroyed with the owner receiving the salvage value and a partial indemnity. This approach proved far more popular with dairymen than the 1894 Massachusetts program.²⁰

By 1900 many other states had initiated programs. In Wisconsin, the state and the university designed programs to encourage widespread testing and remove reactors. Illinois provided voluntary testing of herds but no compensation for reactors. In New Jersey, the State Tuberculosis Commission offered testing of individual animals (rather than herds) and paid full compensation for reactors slaughtered. The State Board of Health bore the responsibility for TB control in New York, providing partial compensation for condemned reactors. In Michigan, reactors were either slaughtered without state compensation or kept isolated. Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont also enacted legislation falling within this range of policy options.²¹

Everywhere these efforts met with some farmer resistance and in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Wisconsin the programs were scaled back due to complaints. At the municipal level, Chicago and Milwaukee led the way with ordinances in 1907/08 requiring testing of cows supplying milk to their citizens. These varied experiments taught public health officials that they needed widespread farmer support to succeed.

In 1906 the federal government began a voluntary testing campaign in Washington, D.C., and in 1909, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) made tuberculin testing mandatory in the District. The government also experimented with relatively generous compensation schemes. These efforts led to a rapid decline in the prevalence of the disease. The fraction of local animals reacting to tuberculin fell from about 18 percent in 1906 to less than 1 percent in 1919. This experience, along with those of several states, convinced USDA officials that a more ambitious national program might work.²²

The cooperative state-federal anti-BTB campaign began in 1917 when Congress initiated a voluntary national program and authorized the payment of indemnities. As the program evolved the federal government matched state indemnities, up to one-third of the difference between the animal's appraised value and salvage value, with a cap on the federal payments initially set at $50 per head for registered purebreds and $25 per head for grade cattle.²³

The voluntary program with indemnities proved popular with many dairy owners. By 1922, 42 states were participating, about two million tests had been administered, and 65,000 farmers with 500,000 cattle, were on waiting lists.²⁴

The mechanics of the program differed across states. In general, the program began locally (typically encompassing a county) when a set fraction (at least a majority) of dairymen in the area agreed to participate. The tests were then compulsory for all cattle operators in that area and the slaughter of reactors was mandatory. Owners generally could not appeal the test results, but they could contest the reactor's appraised value, and thus the amount of the indemnity. To spur the lagging localities, states often made testing compulsory later in the process. By 1940 government agents had administered roughly 323 million tests and condemned 3.8 million animals. The national infection rate had fallen from about 5 percent of all cattle in 1917 to below 0.5 percent in the late 1930s.²⁵

A fuller sense of the geographical patterns of adoption of the eradication program can be gained from Figure 1, which reproduces BAI county-level maps surveying the extent of the disease in March 1922, July 1931, and November 1937. In 1922 the disease was widespread in the dairy regions of the Northeast and Lake States; it was far less common in the South. Significant progress toward eradication was made by 1931. Entire states, including North Carolina (1928), Maine (1929), and Michigan (1930), had achieved the status of “modified accredited areas,” but in much of California as well as parts of the East, the contagion had worsened.²⁶

By late 1937 California and South Dakota remained the only “hot spots.”

By analyzing the county-level data displayed in the entire set of BAI maps together with information on the characteristics of the farming communities and on the operation of the program, we can more fully explore the determinants of the program's adoption. Tables 1 and 2 present summary statistics and regression results describing the extent of the disease in 3,024 counties over the 1922 to 1935 period. The dependent variable was measured in six categories—infection rates over 15 percent, between 7 and 15 percent, between 3 and 7 percent, between 1 and 3 percent, under 1 percent, and the under 0.5 percent of the “modified accredited area.” For simplicity, the rate of infection is coded as the midpoint—i.e., the 3 to 7 percent range is entered as 5 percent. The explanatory variables include transforms of the past level of infection; the average previous level of infection in neighboring counties; variables reflecting the state-level ratio of the average losses borne by farmers (the reactor's appraised value minus indemnities and salvage value as a share of appraised value); the county-level value of farm land per acre as reported in the 1920 Census of Agriculture; the distribution of acreage as measured by the mean size and Gini coefficient of inequality; the average number of dairy animals per farm and value per head; the 1920 fraction of farmers who were nonwhite or foreign-born whites; and finally, whether the county was in the vicinity of a federally inspected meatpacking plant operating in the late 1910s. The regressions also include time dummies (not displayed) to control for the intervals between the surveys. Because data on the state-level farmer loss ratios are available only through 1935, we limit our analysis to the first 15 surveys. A coefficient may be interpreted as follows: a negative sign means that the variable is associated with more rapid progress at the county level in reducing the prevalence of the disease from its previous level.

Table 2 displays the estimates using OLS with robust standard errors. It also shows results using a two-stage fixed-effects approach.²⁷

The OLS estimates largely conform to expectations. The past level of infection has a large effect (about 0.78) on the current level. The level of infection in neighboring counties has a smaller, yet still sizable and statistically significant effect. This is consistent with geographical spillovers in the process of contagion. Farmers' losses, modeled in a cubic form, have a U-shaped effect in the OLS regression.²⁸ A high loss ratio is associated with slow progress, indicating that incentives mattered. Where farmers stood to lose everything, the eradication effort made the least progress. But note: a very low loss ratio (approaching full compensation) was associated with slower progress than a loss ratio in the 0.25–0.33 range. This makes sense because overcompensating farmers reduced their incentives to take precautions against the disease. One implication is that providing full insurance was not efficient.

The results also indicate that, as one might expect, wealthier counties (those with more valuable land in 1920) made more rapid progress. But those counties with more dairy animals per farm and more valuable dairy animals made slower progress. The latter effects might appear surprising at first, but make sense given that the disease was more prevalent and tended to spread more rapidly in the advanced areas where dense populations of high-quality animals (including purebreds) were kept in close confinement. The OLS regression also shows that counties in the vicinity of federally inspected meat plants made more rapid progress. Meatpackers were among the leading advocates of the campaign and often encouraged the effort by paying premiums for cattle and swine from clean areas.²⁹

All of these effects are statistically significant at conventional levels.

An important branch of the political economy literature examines how community-level heterogeneity affects economic performance and specifically the provision of public goods. Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara argue that ethnically “fragmented societies are often more prone to poor policy management … than homogenous ones….” Gary Libecap suggests that collective action problems are harder to resolve when the assets of economic agents are more unequal.³⁰

Our results bear on both economic and ethnic homogeneity. In line with Libecap's observations, counties with more unequal land distribution as measured by the Gini coefficient (controlling for average farm size) made slower progress. Counties with a higher share of nonwhite farmers in 1920 and (in the fixed effects model) with more foreign-born farmers also lagged. On the whole, these county-level regression results reinforce our earlier analysis based on state-level data.³¹ Progress of the eradication campaign depended on the compensation farmers received, on the size and value of dairy herds, and on the degree of community heterogeneity.

EARLY OPPOSITION TO THE ERADICATION PROGRAM

The campaigns to eradicate BTB generally had support from the veterinary community, meatpackers, university agricultural colleges, and an assortment of public health officials. But the enthusiasm among farmers was far from universal, in part due to earlier mistakes. According to D. E. Salmon, chief of the U.S. Bureau of Animal Industry: “the first attempts to control this disease … were so radical and harsh that they aroused the antagonism of the cattle owners, the men who above all others should have been aided and benefited….”³²

As an example, in 1908 Chicago passed an ordinance requiring pasteurization of all milk sold in the city as well as tuberculin testing of the cows that produced it. This ignited a maelstrom of protest among dairy operators and milk dealers that lasted for years. During these early and often violent conflicts between the metropolitan interests and dairies, farmers repeatedly blockaded milk shipments. In this hostile environment, dairymen saw the health regulations as unilateral mandates that raised production costs without providing adequate compensation. Breeder's Gazette (16 June 1909) sided with the opponents: “Strange as it may seem there is still suggestion of the ‘kill all’ policy—to kill all reacting cows. It would be a sad day if any legislature should so far forego sanity as to enact such a statute. It would mean a shot-gun reception to the pole-tax [sic] inspectors—a state of real anarchy. There must be more of fact and less of hypothesis before such a policy can be adopted in the name of public health.”³³

In response to the Chicago ordinance, dairy organizations rallied the downstate representatives in the Illinois legislature to join the fight. The Speaker of the House, Edward Shurteff, convened a special investigating committee, which assembled a 2,000 page report largely opposing tuberculin testing and pasteurization. Repeating the heresies of Koch, this 1911 document became a mainstay for the opposition for many years. The legislature also overturned existing municipal pure milk ordinances and prohibited Illinois cities from enacting future testing and pasteurization regulations. This rollback remained in effect until a new governor, Chicago-based reformer Edward Dunne, took office in 1913.³⁴

The legislative reversal of the Chicago ordinance was one of many nullifications that farmers obtained, but in almost all cases, the courts eventually ruled on behalf of the advocates of public health legislation. Cases concerning the testing and destruction of tuberculous cattle reached the Supreme Courts of Minnesota (1925), Iowa (1926, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1932), Nebraska (1927, 1928, 1930, 1931), Michigan (1929), Ohio (1929, 1930, 1931), Washington State (1932), Illinois (1934), California (1937), and the Court of Appeals of New York (1928). In every case the laws, apart from minor technicalities, were upheld. The underlying reasoning was that the laws protected against disease and, under the common law, cattle infected with contagious diseases were public nuisances and could be summarily destroyed by public officials without compensation to their owners. The courts held that the killing of diseased cattle was not a taking of private property for public use, but an abatement of a public nuisance.³⁵

The country's farm journals and agricultural organizations split on the issue of the BTB eradication campaign. Hoard's Dairyman was an early advocate whereas Breeder's Gazette and the Rural New Yorker adopted hostile stances. The Farm Bureau and the National Grange endorsed the program while the American Farmers' Union and the American Medical Liberty League (AMLL) mounted stiff opposition that retarded acceptance in several states. Whereas officials of the American Meat Packing Institute, headed by Oscar Meyer, lobbied Congress for the program, the Farmers' Protective Association of Pennsylvania leveled sharp criticism in the 1928 USDA appropriation hearings. One apparent consequence was that Congress, at the behest of President Coolidge, increased the indemnity limits in 1929.³⁶

This represents one of many instances when opponents succeeded in gaining concessions as proponents adjusted the program to garner support.

The AMLL, a small but vocal group established in Chicago in 1918, remained a committed foe.³⁷

Opposing the tuberculin testing of cattle was part of the league's broader agenda to “refuse and resist” compulsory vaccination and to confront organized medicine, especially the AMA. The AMLL generally rejected the germ theory of disease, characterizing vaccines, serums, and other biological products as poisons. And there were some legitimate reasons for concern: the dosage level of vaccine that left the normal person protected might infect others with the disease, and the risk that injected substances might be contaminated was relatively high in this age. One of the worst livestock epizootics in U.S. history—the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 1914—was traced to the use of impure hog cholera serums. Even more sensational was the 1930 tragedy in Lübeck, Germany where over 200 infants died from tainted TB vaccine.³⁸

The League's anti-TB testing efforts were spearheaded by the organization's Secretary, Lora C. Little of Chicago, by Joseph W. Sharts of Dayton, Ohio, and by Dr. Eugene Underhill of Philadelphia. In the early 1920s the League raised the hackles of animal health authorities by flooding Midwestern counties likely to mandate testing with anti-tuberculin pamphlets. This literature generated “a great deal of dissention and ill feeling among the farmers” to testing.³⁹

By the mid-1920s the organization was assisting the newly formed Farmers' Protective Associations to rally farmers against compulsory testing and to mount legal challenges.⁴⁰

The most prominent critic of the national eradication program was Virginia Senator Carter Glass. In January 1922 a veterinarian representing the Commonwealth of Virginia tested Glass's prized herd of Jerseys and condemned two heifers that reacted. By Glass's account he immediately quarantined the two suspect animals and then asked for a retest.⁴¹

When the Virginia State Veterinarian, Dr. James Ferneyhough, refused, the senator embarked on a personal crusade against the program. In a 16-page tirade published in 1922, Glass recounted how Virginia officials revoked the license of his private veterinarian for retesting his animals and charged that the state had killed perfectly fit animals. To bolster this claim he noted that one of the condemned heifers was given a postmortem examination that revealed no signs of tuberculosis. In 1928 Glass used his office to issue “Tale of Two Heifers” as a 31-page U.S. Senate document. A few of the headings offer a hint of the Senator's fury: “Unprofessional Conduct Charged,” “Menace to Property Rights,” “Wanton Official Obstinacy,” “The Bunglers Revealed,” “The Conspiracy Broadens,” “Arbitrary Bureaucracy Rebuked,” “An End to Official Terrorism,” and “Deception and Despotism.”⁴²

Glass clearly hit a nerve. Farmers from across the country requested copies while registering their own complaints of arrogance and abuse by officials.⁴³

His Senate office became a clearinghouse for the “anti” forces that distributed the “Tale of Two Heifers” at supervisor meetings and local elections where the testing program was under consideration. The AMLL's Lora Little observed that the widely-circulated official Senate document “was enough to make [USDA] Secretary Jardine sick.”⁴⁴ Jardine's successors at the USDA would have far greater problems.

THE IOWA COW WAR

The conflict between the pro-testing forces and the “antis” soon unleashed one of the most serious civil disturbances in the history of American agriculture—the Iowa Cow War of 1931. This conflict was first and foremost a response to the BTB campaign. Voluntary tuberculin testing began in the state in 1919. A 1923 law allowed counties to begin compulsory testing if three-quarters of the cattle owners petitioned to implement the program. At this time counties adopting the program had to pay the nonfederal portion of the indemnities. Revisions to the law in 1925 and 1927 shifted the financial burden to the state and lowered the threshold for action. Testing became compulsory if 65 percent of cattle owners in a county signed the petition or if a simple majority voted in favor in a special election. In 1929 the Iowa legislature made testing mandatory across the state. The movement from voluntary to compulsory programs was a general pattern in other states, reflecting the changing self-interest of many farmers. As more herds became TB free, their owners had an incentive to urge their political representatives to force all farmers to participate to prevent the re-infection of clean herds. As the scientific evidence became firmer, health officials, consumers, and pro-testing farmers were emboldened to press for a general cleanup.⁴⁵

In Iowa, opponents of compulsory testing constituted a determined minority. The Cow War erupted in Tipton in eastern Iowa on 8 March 1931 when about 1,000 farmers confronted the state veterinarians and 20 sheriffs sent to test herds on the W. C. Butterbrodt and E. C. Mitchell farms.⁴⁶

On 19 March some 1,500 protesters, egged on by Milo Reno of the Iowa Farmers' Union and Jacob W. Lenker of the recently formed Iowa Farmers' Protective Association, marched on the state capitol in Des Moines. Speakers from the group were allowed into the Iowa House chambers to address members on their demands to end compulsory testing.⁴⁷ Besides criticizing the expense, mismanagement, and coercive nature of the program, speakers recited a litany of complaints challenging its scientific integrity. They asserted the “impossibility of transmitting tuberculosis from cows to humans,” denounced the tuberculin test as “unreliable,” and charged that it caused the “cows to abort, become barren, and give unsaleable milk.”⁴⁸ They denounced public health rhetoric as a mere ruse to cloak the real motives of creating graft opportunities for politicians and health officials as well as cheap sources of meat for large-scale packers. The public health concerns fell on deaf ears, in part because, at this time, USDA-inspected packers were allowed to sell the meat of condemned reactors for human consumption after trimming the obviously diseased parts. Many farmers reasoned that the USDA and the large packers must be in cahoots—if the animals were so dangerous that they had to be condemned, why was any of the flesh approved for consumption?⁴⁹ A bill introduced by Representative Lawrence Davis, to make testing optional failed to gain passage a few weeks after the marchers returned home. Given the rural makeup of the legislature, this failure suggests that many of the state's dairymen opposed the protesters. In other incidents that spring, objectors stampeded their cattle to avoid testing and roughed up officials and reporters.

A second series of conflicts broke out when testing resumed in Cedar County during September 1931. On the twenty-first of that month, several dozen state agents descended on Lenker's farm in a high-profile effort to enforce the testing mandate. Several hundred farmers confronted the veterinarians and their phalanx of sheriff's deputies, violently driving the outsiders away. In response, Governor Daniel Turner imposed martial law in the area, calling out 1,700 national guardsmen to protect the testers. Two protest leaders, Jacob Lenker and Paul Moore, were arrested and charged with conspiring to interfere with the testing.⁵⁰

During October and November, hostilities spilled over into Des Moines, Henry, Jefferson, Lee, and Muscatine counties. The troops occupied southeast Iowa for two months (at a fiscal cost of over $100,000). The situation began to quiet down in late 1931 after the state assured farmers that they could use their own accredited veterinarians to administer the tests.⁵¹

Historians often treat the Cow War as the opening salvo in Milo Reno's Farmers' Holiday Movement. During a series of violent strikes in August 1932, Midwestern farmers blocked roads to prevent the shipment of dairy products. They also halted farm foreclosures and intimidated court officials, going so far as to kidnap Judge C. Bradley in April 1933.⁵²

The literature stresses that the agricultural distress was a major cause of the 1931 Cow War. The Iowa Stater argues “Farmers, hard pressed by the Great Depression, found the testing and subsequent condemnation of their cattle increasingly alarming.” Historian John Stover observed that “compulsory tuberculin testing was salt that stung the wound of economic discontent.”⁵³ Farmers faced with falling crop prices, bank failures, and increasing foreclosure rates could not stand the losses resulting from the condemnation of reactors. But this argument is problematic. First, it differs from the testimony of those directly involved.⁵⁴ Second, this argument relies on information about subsequent developments that was not available in early 1931 when the anti-testing protests began. The farm economy was bad in March 1931 but not nearly as bad as it would become over the next two years. Based on weekly corn prices reported in Wallace's Farmer, the opening shots of the Cow War occurred before Iowa farmers had suffered even one-half of the fall in prices (from 1929 levels) they would experience by 1933.

More importantly, this argument ignores the generosity of the eradication program in the early 1930s. Table 3 provides data for Iowa on the average current-dollar values of appraisals, salvage, and payments with the average current-dollar price per head of all cattle and dairy cows for the 1922–1935 period. It includes statistics on the national average and median state loss ratios. As these numbers indicate, the proportional losses borne by Iowa farmers in 1931 were less than those in the typical state. And the losses compared favorably with those in nearby states such as Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas that did not experience such disturbances. The loss ratio in Iowa in 1931 was the fifth lowest out of the 16 years for which we have state data and well below that prevailing in the 1920–1922 economic downturn. Taking a broader perspective, the 1931 ratio for Iowa ranked well below the median of all of the 784 annual state loss ratios we were able to calculate. Though less generous than in the immediate past, the Iowa program in 1931 was more generous than those in most other times and places. Moreover, losses remained relatively small because few animals were condemned. In Iowa, over the 1927–1931 period, less than 1.7 percent of tested animals reacted. In fiscal year (FY) 1931, for example, out of 1.5 million tests, only 23,200 Iowa cattle reacted.⁵⁵

Assuming losses of $25.50 per head as indicated in Table 3, the total amounted to about $585,000. This was less than 60 cents per person in the Iowa farm population and only about 0.012 percent of the total value of farm property reported in the 1930 Census. Clearly, the average losses facing Iowa farmers were not so oppressive to forewarn of the impending civil unrest.

Iowa farmers' losses in FY 1931 were surely less, and probably a lot less, than the loss ratios presented in Table 3 suggest because of the appraising practices. There are hints that the appraised values in most years were above market value because appraisers were sympathetic to beleaguered dairymen. Unlike the buyers for meatpackers, government appraisers had no self-interest in driving a hard bargain. But more than this, the downward adjustment of appraised values to reflect falling prices was very sluggish in the early 1930s. Column 11 of Table 3 shows the ratio of appraised values of condemned stock in Iowa to the average value of all dairy cattle in the state. In FYs 1925 and 1926 the appraised values were 28 percent above average values. In 1927 through 1930 the premium climbed to 44 percent, and in 1931 it jumped to 75 percent. It appears that losses incurred by Iowa farmers on average were much less than reported, and many dairymen received more than their cattle were worth in the open market. To be specific, the $77.80 of compensation that the owners of condemned animals in Iowa received per head in FY 1931 was well above the state's prevailing average price of dairy cattle ($59) and even above the value derived based on the 1925–1926 appraisal premiums. And as events unfolded, dairymen who had their cows condemned in 1931 were better off than those who held onto their animals into 1932 and 1933 and watched the value of their animals plummet.

Iowa was not alone in its largesse. At the national level, the generosity of the program was never greater than in FY 1931, because the average payments remained high while prices per head were falling.⁵⁶

Many historians have maintained that as farm conditions became increasingly depressed in the early 1930s, farmers were less willing and able to absorb even small losses. Yet for many, the prospect of gaining cash indemnities from the government became attractive. For example, the Chief of BAI wrote to his agents on 23 March 1933: “During a period such as the present when the value of cattle are low, there seems to be more of a tendency on the part of unscrupulous persons to get possession of cattle, usually of a low grade, at very low prices, and then present them for the tuberculin test with the idea that State and Federal indemnity will be obtained.”⁵⁷ Several Pennsylvania farmers in the early 1930s purportedly went so far as to tamper with the test by applying irritants to create a swelling at the injection site, thereby simulating a reaction in healthy animals. Similar allegations arose in California, New Jersey, and Vermont.⁵⁸ Paradoxically, the very eradication program that led to riots embodied many of the policies advocated by the farm protesters—the government paid above market compensation rates to remove less efficient resources from production, and thus reduce milk output and raise prices. Most of the state's farmers almost surely subscribed to the state-federal anti-BTB campaign. At the time of the protests in eastern Iowa, over one-half of the state's counties had already been certified and the program was progressing in many other counties without serious objection. Even in Cedar County 75 percent of the cattle had already been tested.⁵⁹

NORMAN BAKER, RADIO STATION KTNT, AND THE DEBATE OVER DISSENT

If the economic forces fail to explain why eastern Iowa erupted, what did account for the disturbances? Local observers and BAI's records point to the crucial role of one southeastern Iowa radio station in catalyzing opposition. According to George Mills, a Tipton newspaperman, a “major” reason for the Cow War

Starting in 1926, testing proponents across the Midwest began complaining to the BAI that KTNT was engaged in a campaign of lies and distortions against BTB testing.⁶¹ Much like the Internet today, the new medium of radio in the 1920s gave critics a powerful tool to reach a vast audience. Such alternative messages no longer needed to pass through the filters of the mainstream media and could instead be disseminated far and wide via the airwaves. Early radio had serious credibility problems and the inability to record the transmissions made radio broadcasts fleeting at best. The difficulties of translating from text to speech and specifically of discerning and documenting the placement of quotation marks, added to the controversies swirling around Baker's message. Federal licensing of radio stations led many listeners to give unwarranted credence to the broadcasts. As one Iowa official complained, Baker's propaganda caused “a lot of misunderstanding” and “some people feel that were these statements not true this man would not be allowed to make them.”⁶² Later in the 1930s, Baker moved his operations to Mexico where his 150,000 watt station could “blanket the entire country.”⁶³ In describing the intrusion of Baker's unwanted messages, the American Medical Association used language similar to modern complaints about foreign spam e-mails.⁶⁴

Baker struck his first blow against the eradication campaign in early September 1926 when his broadcast advanced the AMLL arguments that BTB was harmless to humans and that testing poisoned the animals. He discouraged farmers from signing county petitions to begin testing and boldly offered $1,000 to any doctor who could prove that BTB could be transmitted from cows to humans.⁶⁵

His broadcast of 21 February 1927 grabbed the full attention of BAI officials. According to several Iowa veterinarians and extension agents, Baker stated over the air: “Dr. J. R. Mohler Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry U.S. Dept. of Agriculture says ‘About one sixth of the cattle have been tested and tuberculosis is spreading faster than ever before. This is caused by the tuberculin test.’ He also added ‘You write to Dr. Mohler and see if he did not make this statement.”’⁶⁶ As letters flowed east, Mohler complained to Baker and others that he had been seriously misquoted. Baker replied that he quoted the BAI Chief only for the first part of the passage regarding the number of animals tested and the subsequent passage that “This is caused by the tuberculin test” was outside his quotes. Indeed, this was how the text read in a Farmers Protective Association circular that Baker was purportedly reading on the air. Mohler countered that the listeners obviously heard something different, attributing to him the entire statement.⁶⁷

The KTNT broadcasts induced a vigorous debate over free speech on the public airwaves. On many occasions, local dignitaries wrote to the BAI demanding that Baker be silenced. The BAI officials were more tolerant than their state and local allies, repeatedly championing free speech and stressing that the press generally presented the BAI's efforts in a favorable light.⁶⁸

In July 1931 the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) refused to renew Baker's KTNT license. The official FRC rationale was that Baker had exploited the airwaves to advance his private ventures (including a cancer clinic) and attack his enemies rather than serve the “public interest.” Although the FRC pulled the plug on KTNT in the midst of the Cow War, this decision was the result of a long series of complaints from the AMA, the Iowa Farm Bureau, the Iowa Agricultural Extension Service, local veterinarians, the meatpacking industry, and others. We found no evidence that the BAI played any direct role in the decision.⁶⁹

The eradication troops in the field also advocated muzzling their opponents' use of the mails. In January 1932, J. C. Exline, a chief inspector from Olympia, Washington, asserted that the AMLL was “in violation of the Postal laws” for mailing “scurrilous and defamatory matter.” In a similar fashion, Dr. A. H. Quinn, Jr., President of the Iowa Veterinary Medical Association, wrote Mohler in September 1932, inquiring if Baker's use of the U.S. mail left him vulnerable to prosecution from the Post Office, Interstate Commerce Commission, or some other federal agency. Such complaints elicited patient responses from the BAI in Washington, D.C.: “no prosecution could be successfully maintained for violation of the postal laws” and the best that could be done is to educate the public regarding the disease and the tuberculin test.⁷⁰

H. R. Smith, the livestock industry's point man, went so far as to request that Senator Glass be silenced:

Like his critic Smith, Glass was no champion of free speech. In 1928 Senator George McLean of Connecticut wrote Glass, complaining that proponents of the testing program were traveling his state showing “lantern slides carrying pictures of crippled and emaciated children due to milk from untested cows.” Glass replied that such speakers “ought to be in the penitentiary” for engaging in ignorant fear-mongering and the USDA “should be mercilessly condemned for permitting such an outrage.”⁷²

THE LAST STAND IN CALIFORNIA

When the BAI finally certified California's Merced and Kings counties as BTB-accredited areas in late 1940, the last bastions of the disease in the United States were officially conquered. California's position as a laggard in the national anti-BTB campaign stands in stark contrast to the state's well-cultivated image as a pace-setter.⁷³

The slow progress of its eradication program was due to poor leadership, funding pressures, and constitutional interpretations that delayed the payment of indemnities. The vigorous opposition by Portuguese dairy farmers in the San Joaquin Valley amplified all of these problems.⁷⁴

California's health officials had long recognized the state's BTB problems. In 1899 the State Veterinarian observed: “tuberculosis exists to an alarming degree among the dairy herds of this State, especially in and around the larger cities where … from 50 to 90 per cent [of the dairy cows] … are affected with the disease.”⁷⁵

Even if these estimates were exaggerated, the disease unquestionably was a growing threat. The State Legislature was slow to act. In 1915 it enacted a “Pure Milk law” prohibiting the sale of raw milk from cows that had not passed the tuberculin test. In 1921 legislation allowed state cooperation with the federal effort, but given constitutional qualms, provided no state indemnities. California courts had ruled that paying indemnities to encourage compliance constituted an illegal “gift” of public money. Without state indemnities there could be no federal matching funds. Absent any compensation scheme, relatively few cattle owners volunteered for the test-and-slaughter program. By the late 1920s, BTB infection rates were falling outside the state but rising locally as California became a dumping ground for diseased animals.⁷⁶ The BAI surveys began to highlight the enormous gap between California and the rest of the nation. In 1929 California passed its first BTB law allowing state payments. The intent of this law was to lay the legal grounds for a “friendly” case before the state Supreme Court. On 21 April 1930 the court ruled that state indemnities were constitutional. As a further sign of change, in November 1930 voters passed “by the greatest majority of any question” a constitutional amendment explicitly allowing indemnities. There was no doubt where most Californians stood on the issue.⁷⁷

That year, a new governor, James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Jr. took office. The popular Republican ex-mayor of San Francisco packed his administration with spoilsmen. As one part of this transition, Rolph replaced the long-standing and highly respected director of the Division of Animal Industry with a crony, Joseph J. King. In 1931 the legislature appropriated $450,000 for indemnities, making California the forty-sixth state to join the national program. But depressed economic conditions undercut state revenues. Charges of mismanagement and graft added to the problems. By late 1932, Rolph's appointees at the Agriculture Department had alienated the State Grange, the Farm Bureau, and the Pacific Rural Press, giving momentum to a drive to recall “Sunny Jim.”⁷⁸

Highly publicized complaints about the mismanagement of the BTB program fueled the anti-Rolph movement. When King proposed a $1 tax on all dairy animals to finance the program, opposition intensified. (The “Jo King” proposal included centralizing dairy inspection at the state level and fully compensating owners for reactors.) At the same time, the press reported that program officials were conspiring with private veterinarians and dairymen in an illegal indemnity scheme.⁷⁹

Matters came to a head in 1933. In early February the Grange started a recall drive against Rolph and later that month, a State Senate committee began investigating charges of indemnity fraud in Marin County. The case grew out of the activities of Eugene Biggio and Antilio Lertora, who, with the backing of Frank J. de Benedetti, assembled hundreds of cows at a dairy north of San Francisco in June 1932. All of these animals were suspect and had recently been purchased at rock bottom prices of about $15 per head in anticipation of a change in state policies. In December 1932 testing in Marin County revealed that the Biggio-Lertora herd was rotten—over 80 percent of the 640 animals reacted. After some wrangling, Harold Gardner, the chief state appraiser, and J. M. Holzer, his federal counterpart, placed values ranging from $40 to $120 per head, making the indemnity bill $15,000. These were exceptionally generous valuations because the average price of a dairy cow in the state at this time was about $38.⁸⁰

Federal and state authorities refused to pay. The federal grand jury investigation of the “Cow Racket” in October 1933 grabbed front-page headlines for weeks in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. King, Gardner, Holzer, Biggio, Lertora, and de Benedetti were all indicted, and the case went to trial in April 1934. The judge threw out the charges against the public officials, and the jury reached a hung verdict on Biggio, Lertora, and de Benedetti.⁸¹

Although no one was found guilty in the “Cow Racket” case, the damage to the program was done. To head off the recall movement in early 1933, Governor Rolph sacked the leadership of the State Department of Agriculture and gutted the tuberculosis control bureau, thereby undermining the entire eradication program.⁸² The state fiscal crisis also threatened the program. Funding for the 1933–1935 biennium was slashed to less than one-half of the previous level. In light of the budget cuts, officials focused all resources on existing “cooperative control” counties.

In 1934 President Roosevelt signed the Jones-Connally act, which for the first time allowed federal payments without state matching funds. At the behest of the Farm Bureau and many dairymen, the Boards of Supervisors in several counties without state money imposed compulsory testing.⁸³

Unlike their neighbors in counties operating under the “regular” cooperative program, owners of reactors in these new “voluntary tuberculosis control areas” were only eligible for federal indemnities. These were low, only about $12 per head. One impetus to participate in the Jones-Connally program without state aid was that markets were beginning to close for livestock products from “dirty” areas. Most California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, were prohibiting dairy products from untested cows, and eastern cattle shippers were starting to reject animals from nonaccredited areas. Nearly everyone agreed that all “California dairymen will eventually be forced to clean up their herds.” The only questions were when and at whose expense.⁸⁴

Beginning in mid-1934, an “organized group of dairymen in certain counties resorted to injunctions and court actions in an endeavor to obstruct and hinder tuberculin testing progress.”⁸⁵

“The organized group” consisted largely of farmers of Portuguese descent. Many immigrants from Portugal, principally from the Azores, had moved into California's dairy industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. IPUMS-USA data for the 1920 Census reveal that roughly six-tenths of the dairymen in the San Joaquin Valley and about one-third in the entire state reported that their parents spoke Portuguese as their mother tongue. Portuguese dairymen in California were known for keeping large herds, which, given the contagious nature of the disease, would have yielded higher infection rates. They tended to specialize in the production of milk for manufactured purposes (cheese, butter, and processed products) rather than for the fresh market. They were concentrated in the counties under the “voluntary” control program—that is, in areas eligible only for federal payments. In addition, the Portuguese in California were known for forming tight-knit communities, which facilitated organization.⁸⁶

Among the leaders of the Portuguese resistance were Fresno attorneys Louis Coehlo and Thomas Lopez, who helped organize the Western Cooperative Dairymen's Union. This group assessed members one dollar per cow to pursue its court challenges to testing. The spokesmen asserted that testing program enforcement would discriminate against political outsiders such as the Portuguese and that high reaction rates (which resisters reckoned would average over 20 percent) would drive many dairymen to bankruptcy. In 1934/35 farm conditions improved as the prices for milk and livestock rose and a local drought eased. In this relatively favorable setting, Coehlo urged delaying the implementation of the program, so San Joaquin Valley farmers “have a chance to recoup some losses of the last few years.”⁸⁷

In Iowa hard times were the wrong moment to pursue eradication; in California good times were the wrong moment.

The leading non-Portuguese opponent was J. E. Van Sant, a veterinarian who operated a biologics laboratory in Bakersfield. Van Sant began his career at the Cutter laboratories of Berkeley in the late 1910s. He ventured out on his own in the 1920s, producing and marketing a treatment against Bang's disease (brucellosis). State authorities considered his serum snake oil and banned its sale in 1933. At this point, Van Sant began agitating against the tuberculin testing program. Dedicated to stopping “the insidious encroachment and betrayal by government agencies,” he helped organize and became president of the “Dairy Protective Association.” In 1934 the state clamped down on his veterinary practice because he failed to brand reactors. Van Sant continued to be a thorn in the side of the program.⁸⁸

The opponents relied on an argument often used to justify inaction in Europe. BTB was so prevalent “that California could not do without the products of untested cows because a shortage would be created.” But the progress of the campaign nationally was turning this argument on its head. After Washington, Oregon, and Idaho approached accredited status, testing proponents responded that the clean herds of the Pacific Northwest “are able and willing to supply California with all the dairy products it can use.” And “it will be only a matter of time until all clean states forbid the sale of all kinds of dairy products” from untested or unclean cows.⁸⁹

“[C]ompetition and consumer preference,” an Assembly committee noted in 1933, were placing the eradication problem at the California dairyman's “very doorstep.” They reasoned: “When dairy products imported into the State are labeled as having been obtained from nonreacting tuberculin-tested cows in competition with our own products which may not be so labeled, there can be little doubt as to the consumers' preference in the matter.”⁹⁰ Competitive market forces were having an impact. Moreover, in 1939 C. U. Duckworth, head of the state's renewed eradication effort, warned that the livestock sanitary officials from the other states “talked very seriously a year ago of asking the federal government to quarantine California because we were not showing enough results…. California can not stand this black eye much longer…. [We] should be ahead rather than lagging behind….”⁹¹

The most violent incident in California broke out in May 1937 when an angry mob of over 500 protesters harried officials and prevented testing on a Crows Landing dairy in Stanislaus County. The subsequent crackdown saw five farmers arrested and a warrant was issued for a “Communist organizer” who escaped.⁹²

There were other confrontations, but the California opponents' primary challenge to testing came through the courts, where they repeatedly obtained injunctions to halt, at least temporarily, testing. The legal cases proved so troublesome through the 1930s that the State Attorney General appointed a full-time deputy just to handle BTB matters.⁹³

The anti-testing forces in California emphasized a different message than earlier opponents. Senator Glass and the participants in the Iowa Cow War had objected chiefly to the science of the enterprise, and essentially argued that the net social benefits were negative. Indeed, they viewed the anti-BTB campaign as a conspiracy of self-interested veterinarians, meatpackers seeking cheap stock, and politicians desiring greater opportunities for graft. Up to the early 1930s, the legal cases focused on the nature of the disease and the scientific merits of the tuberculin test. In Loftus v. Department of Agriculture of Iowa (211 Iowa 566, December 1930), for example, opponents argued that the “tuberculin test in fact is not a test” and “the serum injures the cattle, … causes abortion, and stringy and unhealthful milk, and even frequently introduces the disease into the bodies of healthy animals, and sometimes even causes their death.” In a similar fashion, in Panther v. Department of Agriculture of Iowa (211 Iowa 868, January 1931), the plaintiffs charged that the test “actually injures the animal.” By the mid 1930s few, if any, suits challenged the science of BTB testing in California.

Objectors in California emphasized distributional and procedural issues, initially focusing on the lack of indemnities and later on the discrimination faced by dairymen in voluntary control areas. Portuguese farmers who were not U.S. citizens took a novel approach, suing the state in federal courts for violating their rights to due process. By the late 1930s, both the state and federal courts regularly found that legal precedents and scientific evidence supported the eradication initiatives.⁹⁴

Koch's arguments that BTB was relatively benign no longer carried any punch. The 1937 Crows Landing incident highlights the focus on compensation as opposed to scientific issues in California. The protest leaders explicitly “said they are not objecting to the testing as such, what they want is a delay until a bill now in the legislature becomes law, which provides for positive indemnity.”⁹⁵ Thus, the prospect of receiving higher future compensation slowed implementation, as farmers held out for the better deal.

But there were key similarities among the anti-testing campaigns. Opponents everywhere parroted Carter Glass, complaining of high-handed treatment by testing officials who combined the roles of “accusers, prosecutors, judges, and executioners.”⁹⁶

The near impossibility of appeal remained a bone of contention. There were other similarities between the Iowa and California movements. Both were based on existing social networks in their respective farm communities—membership in the Farmers' Union in Iowa and the tightly knit groups of Portuguese dairymen in the San Joaquin Valley.⁹⁷ Both were guided by headstrong individuals who had run afoul of the scientific and medical establishments—Baker and Reno in Iowa and Van Sant in California.

In July 1937 the California legislature redressed past grievances by extending indemnities to all the state's counties and allocating $1.5 million for the payments. But even this legislation did not entirely mollify the opponents. Duckworth noted that it “formerly was the complaint of this group that tuberculosis eradication was not uniform through the state…. [The] new law … apparently has not deterred this organization from continuing attempts to obstruct the work.”⁹⁸

In November 1938 he added that the same faction “which had opposed the county ordinances also opposed the state law and … has been constantly in one court or another” since the uniform program was implemented in September 1937. The 1937 law provided opponents with “a brand new field” to challenge the constitutionality of the tuberculosis eradication campaign, paradoxically dragging out the legal process.⁹⁹

The California opponents had built an organization committed to resisting testing. Rather than accede to the program once one of their demands was met, they were emboldened to press harder. In addition, many opponents continued to resist in the hope of more favorable terms, including clemency for past transgressions. Several leaders, for example, faced criminal trials for obstructing the tests by keeping their cattle out of their barns. Other dairymen had forfeited their claims to indemnities because they had refused to slaughter their reactors in a timely fashion. By 1939 the state legislature conceded by approving special appropriations to pay the contested indemnities.¹⁰⁰

This buyoff effectively ended resistance in California, and thus in the United States.