hat the rights of our
meat-producers be respected under our

COMMERCIAL TREATIES.

Commerce means a mutual exchange, and having performed our
home duty will be in no mood to tolerate a whim or a caprice.
Non-intercourse has been proposed in Congress. That may be a
final resort when a conference, practical discussion, and
even arbitration have failed. A graver subject measured by
dollars may yet engage the statesman diplomat than the Geneva
arbitration, and we shall have no fair status in discussion
or arbitration until our meat and cattle are made healthy by
prevention and the best sanitary laws known to civilized
countries.

THE TIME IS AUSPICIOUS.

Cattle-raising as an attractive and profitable vocation is
now exciting a deep interest. A lull in politics forbids the
wants of our agriculturists, numbering 60 per cent of the
population, being waived out of notice and their voiced
demands drowned by partisan clamor. The treasury has hundreds
of millions in its vaults and a fraction of 1 per cent of our
surplus will only be required, under a just disbursement, to
isolate and destroy the diseases which fetter our commerce
and repress home enterprise.

A full and able convention at Washington is assured by the
responsive letters received. The State of Iowa will make her
requests to Congress by fine-stock meeting and other
associations, as becomes the State with $100,000,000 invested
in domestic animals.

Who can be indifferent in the face of our great perils, and
recounting the losses by foreign restrictions and inhibition?
We are emphatically a Nation of beef-eaters, and by the
extent of our domain and healthful climate are justly
entitled to the honored designation of the first producer
among civilized nations.

It is the question of healthful food for the masses, of
profitable tonnage for the railways, and of deep concern in
cultivating fraternal relations abroad, not less than a
question for the political economist in maintaining a good
trade balance-sheet. If we can impress our Congressional
delegations with the necessity of early and decisive
legislation, we shall have accomplished a noble work and have
earned the warm commendation of millions of citizens whose
interests have been neglected and whose vocation and property
have been impe