Charles R. Lowell to Granville Leveson-Gower, April 1, 1881

Mr. Lowell to Lord Granville.

My Lord: I have the honor to acquaint you that I have received this morning an urgent and important dispatch from Mr. Blaine at Washington, instructing me to use the most prompt and effective measures to contradict a report made last December by Mr. Crump, the acting British consul at Philadelphia, to the effect that seven hundred thousand head of swine died in the year 1880, in Illinois alone, from hog cholera. Mr. Crump added that several cases of trichinosis had also occurred in the United States, giving the idea that the two diseases are correlated, and he further announced the possibility of communicating trichina to the human body by adulteration of butter and cheese with fatty products supposed to be taken from places where hogs die of diseases. This report has occasioned widespread alarm among consumers in Great Britain, and has seriously deranged trade therein. So sudden and disastrous, in fact, was the check given to this great and steadily-increasing commerce, that, as a matter of national importance, the Government of the United States was moved to make a searching investigation of the grounds on which Mr. Crump’s publication was based, and correspondence was accordingly had with Her Majesty’s legation in Washington, and with the board of trade of the pork producing, packing, and shipping centers. In response to these inquiries the most positive official assertions have reached the Department of State from all quarters, comprising the extensive swine-growing regions of the west, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, that the mortality, even among very young pigs, has been less in 1879 and 1880 than for preceding years, and that the health of full-grown hogs (which are alone packed as pork) has never been better than during the past years. Her Majesty’s minister at Washington frankly admits that the statements of Mr. Crump, the acting consul, are exaggerated.

The universal and positive denials of these statements have tended to allay the excitement on this subject in the United States, but the allegations in question have taken such hold on popular prejudice in Great Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, that it will be difficult to diminish their injurious effects, and I most earnestly ask your lordship’s assistance in this undertaking. In View of all the facts accessible to the Department of State, it cannot avoid the conviction that the good faith of Mr. Crump has been imposed upon, and that he has unwittingly been made the tool of designing speculators to the great injury of legitimate trade. This conviction is strengthened by an analysis of his statements, as well as by a published report of an interview had on the 7th of March last, by a committee of the New York Produce Exchange, with Captain Clipperton (Her Majesty’s consul) and Mr. Crump (the vice-consul) at Philadelphia. Mr. Crump admitted on this occasion that he was aware, when he wrote his reports, that the mortality among swine in 1880 was not greater than in 1879.

It is proper also to observe the singular phraseology of Mr. Crump’s paper, by which the general reader would be led to infer that the so-called “hog cholera” is communicable to human beings as trichinosis, by eating the products of diseased animals. No scientist needs to be informed that “hog cholera” or “hog fever,” as the disease is indifferently styled, is a contagious catarrhal pneumonia, analogous to pleuro-pneumonia among neat cattle, and entirely distinct from trichinosis, which is due to the development of minute parasites in the muscular tissues, but to the popular mind the distinction is far from evident. Hog cholera has always existed, mostly among young pigs as cholera infection has always existed among young children.

It should be remembered also that the report in question does not come from the pork-raising and pork-packing centers, where it is the easy duty of the British consular officers to acquaint themselves with all the facts bearing on this great branch of international commerce, but from a seaport through which but a small part of the packed product passes. This consideration alone is sufficient to throw some doubt upon the accuracy if not the good faith of Mr. Crump’s communication. As the publication of his report seems to have been made by the permission of Her Majesty’s Government, it is not unreasonable to request that the denial of its statements should be made with equal authority and equal publicity. The injury having been done, no step should be omitted to undo it.

Nor is the harm which has been wrought confined to Great Britain. The report has spread to the continent, and added to the prejudice already created there, probably by the same agencies which inspired Mr. Crump’s announcement. The action of the British Government in condemnation of it will undoubtedly influence the feeling on the continent. To this end contradiction cannot be too speedy or too positive. I have the honor, therefore, to bring this subject to the most serious consideration of your lord-ship, with the earnest request that Her Majesty’s Government will take such prompt and strenuous measures as will effectually check the widespread alarm and commercial derangement occasioned by Mr. Crump’s report.

I have the honor to be, &c.,