In 1906 the federal government started a program to eradicate the cattle tick and the disease it carried from the American South.  Despite apparent benefits, the program met with considerable resistance from many southern farmers.  They believed that financial and political cost of tick eradication was not worth the increased value of disease-free livestock.  Consequently, many cattle owners resisted the program using methods ranging from petitioning officials to dynamiting dipping vats to killing federal inspectors.  Strom’s work will trace the origins of Texas Fever in cattle and the scientific advances that allowed it to be identified and a solution proposed. 

While scientific experts at the time advocated eradication as an ultimate good, the program contributed to the descent into poverty of many southern yeoman farmers.  Thus, this story resonates with current debates about adopting a variety of scientific practices from genetically modified seed to stem cell research.  The story also embodies a fundamental contest over power.  For the program to succeed, federal inspectors had to have access to private lands and private animals and the power to confiscate or quarantine them.  Its success, therefore, was at the cost of a certain degree of individual autonomy and the most profound unintended consequence was the increase of federal authority at the expense of the individual and local government.

About Claire Strom