1. Regulations of the Secretary of Agriculture issued pursuant
to statute are noticed judicially. P.
271 U. S.
418.
2. Under the Acts governing the subject, it is not essential to
the validity of regulations of the Secretary of Agriculture
respecting livestock diseases that the regulations be certified to,
or accepted by, the state. P.
271 U. S.
422.
3. An indictment for conspiracy to commit the offense, under §
62 of the Penal Code, of interfering with and assaulting agents of
the Bureau of Animal Industry while discharging their duties in
supervising and causing the dipping of cattle to prevent the spread
of a contagious disease, and charging the use of deadly weapons,
need not allege that the cattle dipped were subject matter of
interstate
Page 271 U. S. 415
commerce, that they had come under the supervision or control of
the Secretary of Agriculture, or that the agents were working to
prevent the disease from spreading from one state to another. P.
271 U. S.
423.
4. Congress has power (as in the Animal Industry Act and
subsequent legislation) to provide measures for quarantining and
disinfecting cattle in a state to prevent spread of disease to
other states. P.
271 U. S.
424.
5. The ranging of cattle across a state line is interstate
commerce, as well as driving them across, or transporting them by
rail. P.
271 U. S.
425.
6. Spread of disease from state to state by ranging cattle is a
burden on interstate commerce which Congress may prevent.
Id.
2 F.2d 561 affirmed.
Certiorari to a judgment of the circuit court of appeals
affirming a conviction in the district court for conspiracy to
violate § 62 of the Penal Code.
Page 271 U. S. 417
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case comes here by certiorari from the Circuit Court of
Appeals of the Fifth Circuit, 267 U.S. 589. The judgment is one of
conviction of the petitioners under an indictment found in the
District Court for the Southern District of Georgia charging the
petitioners and 16 others with the crime of conspiracy under § 37
of the Criminal Code to commit the offense against the United
States denounced in § 62 of the same Code. Section 62 punishes
anyone who shall assault or interfere with an employee of the
Bureau of Animal Industry of the Agricultural Department in the
execution of his
Page 271 U. S. 418
duties or on account of his execution of them, and who shall use
a deadly weapon in resisting any such employee in such execution.
The indictment was demurred to, and the demurrer was overruled. The
defendants were tried and found guilty. On writ of error, the
circuit court of appeals affirmed the judgment. 2 F.2d 561.
The first count of the indictment charged that the defendants
conspired to deter and prevent certain employees of the Bureau of
Animal Industry from discharging their duties in supervising the
dipping of, and causing to be dipped, cattle in order to prevent
the spread of splenetic fever among them, and to eradicate the
cattle fever tick, and that, for this purpose, the defendants used
deadly weapons and killed one such employee and wounded others, all
in the county of Echols, Georgia. The second count charged that the
conspiracy was directed not only to the use of force against the
employees themselves, but also to the dynamiting of spray pens and
dipping vats used by such employees in their duties in causing the
dipping of the cattle and the supervision thereof.
Under the Act of May 29, 1884, 23 Stat. 31, c. 60, a Bureau of
Animal Industry was organized in the Department of Agriculture. It
is made the duty of the Bureau by § 1 to investigate and report
upon the condition of the domestic animals, their protection and
use, to inquire into and report the causes of contagious,
infectious and communicable diseases among them, and to collect
information on the subject. By § 2, it is authorized to employ
experts. By § 3, it is made the duty of the Commissioner of
Agriculture to prepare such rules and regulations as may be deemed
necessary for the supervision and effective suppression and
extirpation of such diseases, and to certify such rules and
regulations to the executive authorities of each state and
territory, and invite them to cooperate in the execution and
enforcement of the Act. Whenever the plans and methods are accepted
by any
Page 271 U. S. 419
state or territory in which such diseases are declared to exist,
and the state or territory has adopted plans and methods for the
suppression and extirpation of the diseases, and those plans shall
be accepted by the Commissioner of Agriculture, and whenever a
governor or other properly constituted authority of a state
signifies his readiness to cooperate for the extinction of such
disease in conformity with the Act, the Commissioner is authorized
to expend so much of the money appropriated as may be necessary in
such investigation and in such disinfection and quarantine measures
as may be necessary to prevent the spread of the disease from one
territory or state into another.
By an Act of February 9, 1889, 25 Stat. 659, c. 122, the
Department of Agriculture was made an executive department of the
government under a Secretary of Agriculture, who was vested with
all the authority conferred by the Act of May 29, 1884,
supra, on the Commissioner of Agriculture. By Act of
February 2, 1903, 32 Stat. 791, c. 349, the Secretary of
Agriculture was authorized and directed from time to time to make
regulations concerning the exportation and transportation of
livestock from any place within the United States where he had
reason to believe a contagious cattle disease existed into and
through any other state or territory as he might deem necessary,
and all such rules and regulations were to have the force of law.
Whenever any inspector or assistant inspector of the Bureau of
Animal Industry issued a certificate showing that the officer had
inspected any cattle or other livestock to be transported from one
locality to another and had found them free from Texas or splenetic
fever infection or other disease, it was provided that the cattle
might be shipped, driven, or transported from one state or
territory to another without further inspection, but that such
animals should at all times be under the control and supervision of
the Bureau for the purposes of
Page 271 U. S. 420
such inspection, and that the Secretary might make regulations
to prevent the introduction or dissemination of contagion from one
state to another.
By Act of March 3, 1905, 33 Stat. 1264, c. 1496, the Secretary
is authorized and directed to quarantine any state or territory, or
any portion of any state or territory when he shall determine the
fact that cattle or other livestock therein are affected with any
communicable disease. Section 2 of that act prohibits the
transportation, delivery for transportation, or driving on foot
from any quarantined state or territory into any other state or
territory, cattle or livestock except as provided in the Act.
Sections 3 and 4 give the Secretary authority to make rules and
regulations for the inspection, disinfection, certification,
treatment, handling and method and manner of delivery and shipment
of cattle or other livestock from a quarantined state into any
other state when the public safety will permit, but prohibits such
movement in manner or method or under conditions other than those
prescribed by the Secretary.
Under date of June 15, 1916, various regulations were issued by
the Secretary of Agriculture. They are not printed in the record,
but they are matters of which we may take judicial notice.
Caha
v. United States, 152 U. S. 211.
Under the regulations, when the Secretary determines that cattle in
any state or territory are affected with a contagious disease, and
he thinks a quarantine should be established, a rule is to be
issued giving notice of the fact, to forbid the interstate movement
of livestock from the quarantined area to be prescribed. Regulation
2 provides that cattle of the quarantined area exposed to or
infected with ticks which have been properly dipped twice with a
certain solution and in the proper way under the supervision of an
inspector of the Bureau, may be moved interstate for any purpose
when the inspector certifies them to be free of infection from
Page 271 U. S. 421
splenetic fever, provided that the conditions are such that the
cattle may be moved to the free area without exposure to infection.
The cattle are to be accompanied by a statement of dipping by the
inspector supervising the same at the point of origin, and showing
the ownership of the cattle, etc., and that cattle located in areas
where tick eradication is being conducted in cooperation with the
state authorities, and which are on premises known by the Bureau of
Inspection to be free from ticks, may upon inspection and
certification at a suitable season by a Bureau inspector be moved
interstate for any purpose without dipping. One rule issued by the
Secretary of Agriculture shows a description of the areas
quarantined, which included Echols County, Georgia.
The evidence for the government at the trial showed that Echols
County, where this conspiracy was formed and the overt acts took
place, was on the line between Georgia and Florida; that cattle
ranged between one state and the other in that region; that the
Department of Agriculture had quarantined in interstate
transportation the cattle coming from Echols County because of the
presence of the cattle tick among them; that, under the Act, an
agreement had been made between the Secretary of Agriculture and
the Georgia authorities acting under a Georgia statute by which the
regulations of the Secretary had been accepted as guidance for the
state employees engaged in attempting to suppress the disease by
requiring tick-infested cattle to be dipped; that spray pens and
dipping vats had been erected in Echols County at the expense of
the United States, to carry out the duties of the Bureau of Animal
Industry; that the state law authorized and directed the county and
state to enforce the dipping of cattle in the county which were
tick-infested by process served in the name of the state, and that
the state officers served such processes upon cattle owners in the
county; that the cattle which were
Page 271 U. S. 422
thoroughly dipped were marked with indelible paint; that United
States inspectors were not always present at the dipping, but
usually supervised what was done to gain a knowledge of what the
state officers were doing in enforcing the state law, so that, if
successful, the quarantine against cattle for shipment out of
Georgia against Echols County could be discontinued; that this was
only one instance of the investigations required under the Act of
1884 by the Bureau of Animal Industry employees to help cattle
movements from the southern states to the north in promotion of
interstate commerce; that it was while these activities of the
employees of the Federal Bureau were progressing that the
defendants and others, residents of Echols County, owners of
cattle, and neighbors, resenting the necessity for dipping,
dynamited the spray pens and the dipping vats and assaulted the
United States employees of the Bureau, wounded several and killed
one by gunshot.
The first objection to the conviction is based on the indictment
in that it contains no allegation that the regulations of the
Secretary of Agriculture for the suppression and extirpation of the
disease among livestock have been certified to the executive
authority of the State of Georgia and accepted. The legality and
validity of the Action of the Secretary of Agriculture and the
Bureau of Animal Industry in preventing the spread of disease from
one state to another do not depend upon the consent of the state
authorities. In the broad provisions of the legislation we have
quoted, the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture to direct the
employees of the Bureau of Animal Industry to engage in quarantine
measures and the inspection of animals suspected of or known to
have communicable diseases is not limited to cases in which there
is cooperation between the United States and the state authorities
in the suppression of the spread of disease among cattle, the one
as between states and the other as
Page 271 U. S. 423
within a state. In order to make the Action of both more
effective, they may cooperate so that their respective purposes may
be more effectively carried out, but the power of each to act in
its field does not depend upon the consent of the other. Therefore
it is that such an averment as that suggested by the defendants'
objection would be superfluous for the indictment of the federal
crime, although it would be quite relevant in evidence as one of
the circumstances to explain what happened.
It is next objected that there were no allegations in the
indictment that the cattle being dipped were the subject matter of
interstate commerce or had in any way under the law become subject
to the supervision or control of the Secretary of Agriculture, or
that what the employees were doing was to prevent the spread of
communicable disease among the cattle from one state to another.
The charge is of a conspiracy to commit the offense of an assault
upon employees of the Bureau of Animal Industry to prevent the
execution of their duties as such, and does not charge the
substantive offense itself. The rules of criminal pleading do not
require the same degree of detail in an indictment for conspiracy,
in stating the object of the conspiracy, as if it were one charging
the substantive offense.
Williamson v. United States,
207 U. S. 425,
207 U. S. 447;
Wolf v. United States, 283 F. 885;
Foster v. United
States 256 F. 207.
Compare Ledbetter v. United
States, 170 U. S. 606,
170 U. S. 612;
Connors v. United States, 158 U.
S. 408,
158 U. S. 411;
Armour Packing Co. v. United States, 209 U. S.
56,
209 U. S.
84.
The assaults upon the employees of the Bureau of Animal Industry
and the interference with their duties were described in the
indictment as having to do with the inspection of suspected cattle
and the supervision of their dipping. As their duties in connection
with suspected and diseased cattle were described in the statute as
imposed for the purpose of preventing the spread of contagious
Page 271 U. S. 424
cattle disease from one state to another, it is sufficient
certainty to a common intent to describe generally that they were
performing their duties under the statute in the supervision and
dipping of cattle, without further definition.
It is finally urged against this conviction that the statute of
1884,
supra, is unconstitutional in that Congress had no
power to make it a duty of a federal employee to dip cattle and
suppress disease among cattle within a state; that such power is
vested in the legislature of the state under the reservations of
the Tenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, and that such
legislation by Congress cannot be sustained as a regulation of
interstate commerce, because it is not confined to interstate
commerce, and the cattle treated were not in interstate
commerce.
It is very evident from the Act of 1884 and the subsequent
legislation and the regulations issued under them that everything
authorized to be done was expressly intended to prevent the spread
of disease from one state to another by contagion, which, of
course, means by the passage of diseased cattle from one state to
another. This is interstate commerce. The quarantine provided for
was to stop and regulate such interstate commerce until it could be
safely carried on. Not until suitable inspection by the federal
authorities and treatment prescribed for dipping of the cattle
could the cattle be certainly rid of the ticks and splenetic fever
and prevented from being a dangerous source of contagion in the
state into which they were going. The duties of the employees of
the Bureau of Animal Industry here interfered with were all part of
the measure of quarantine reasonably adapted to prevent the spread
of contagion in and by interstate commerce.
The requirement of dipping was a reasonable condition of
allowing cattle from a suspected district to pass
Page 271 U. S. 425
into another state, and the provision of dipping vats and other
means of complying with this requirement in a border county by the
United States, and the supervision of such dipping by federal
employees, and indeed the dipping itself by them, were conveniences
promoting interstate commerce where quarantine was necessary. There
is no evidence that federal employees took part in enforcing
dipping of all cattle of the county. That was done by state
officers under the state law.
But it is said that these cattle do not appear to have been
intended to be transported by rail or boat from one state to
another, and this only is interstate commerce in cattle under the
Constitution. They were on the line between the two states. To
drive them across the line would be interstate commerce, and the
Act of 1905 expressly prohibits driving them on foot when carrying
contagion. It is argued, however, that, when the cattle only range
across the line between the states, and are not transported or
driven, their passage is not interstate commerce. We do not think
that such passage by ranging can be differentiated from interstate
commerce. It is intercourse between states, made possible by the
failure of owners to restrict their ranging, and is due therefore
to the will of their owners.
More than this, it is established by
United States v.
Ferger, 250 U. S. 199,
that the authority of Congress over interstate commerce extends to
dealing with and preventing burdens to that commerce and the spread
of disease from one state to another by such cattle ranging would
clearly be such a burden, if it were not to be regarded as commerce
itself and is therefore properly within the congressional
inhibition.
Stafford v. Wallace, 258 U.
S. 495.
Judgment affirmed.