STOCK IMPROVEMENT.
By a viva voce vote the House agreed to resume the regular order: Bills on the third reading as called up by members in alphabetical order.
Mr. M'DOWELL called up Mr. Meredith's bill [H. R. 400] to encourage the improvement of live stock, and it was read the third time.
Mr. MEREDITH said: This is an important bill to the stock-raising, farming community. It provides for a license on stallons and jacks in the public service, and gives the person owning the stallion or jack a lien upon the produce, thereby rendering safe any contract that a man may make, and I think it is highly necessary. We all know that there are so few fine horses in the State, and by the passage of such a measure as this it will encourage owners of fine horses to bring them into the State for the purposes indicated. The farming community will reap a vast benefit from such a bill.
Mr. McINTOSH was in favor of the bill, and considered it right and just that a man owning a stallion or jack should have a lien on the offspring, in order to secure him against the losses now so common that way.
Mr. CARR, of White, said he had but little faith in what was said about horses and jacks, or men either. He thought if one-hundredth part said about the blood of horses and jacks of this coun page: 169[View Page 169] try be true, we would have horses that would trot a mile in one-fourth of a minute, and jacks that would make stallions instead of mules.
Mr. GILLMAN was opposed to the bill, because he thought it would work to the detriment of the farming community, and to the profit and benefit of those owning stallions.
Mr. BUSKIRK could see nothing wrong in giving a lien upon the property of a man receiving services in cases of this kind any more than any other. If the claim is a just one, it should be paid, and this merely gives the necessary assurance of its payment.
The bill passed the House--yeas, 56; nays, 25.
