Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/283

 ASBELL . KANSAS.  U.S. Opinion o! tl Court. The cause, however, cannot be disposed of without inquiring whether there was at the time of the offense any legislation of Congress conflicting with the state law. If such legislatiun were in existence the state iaw, so far as it affected interstate commerce, would be compelled to yield to its superior authority. This question was considered and the national lcgisiation care- fully examined in Re/d v. Colorado, supra, and the conclusion reached that Congress had not then taken any action which had the effect of destroying the right of the State to act on the sub- jcct. It was there said, p. 148: "It did not undertake to invest any officer or agent of the Department with authority to go into a State, and, without its assent, take charge of the work of suppressing or extirpating contagious, infectious or communio cable diseases there prevailing, and which endangered the health of domestic animals. Nor did Congress give the Department authority, by its officers or agents, to inspect cattle within the limits of a State and give a certificate that should be of superior a. uthority in that or other States, or vhich should entitle the owner to .carry his cattle into or through another State without reference to the reasonable and valid regulations which the latter State may have adopted for the protection of its own domestic animals. It should never be held that Congress in- tends to supersede or by its legislation suspend the exercise of the police powers of the States, even when it may do so, unless it purpose to effect that result is clearly manifested." There has, however, been later national legislation which needs to be noticed. Large powers to control the interstate movement of cattle liable to be afflicted with a communicable disease have been conferred upon the Secretary of Agriculture by the act of February 2, 1903, 32 Star. 791, and the act of March 3, 1905, 33 Stat..1204. The provisions of these acts need not be fully stated. The only part of them which seems relevant to this case and the question under consideration which arises in it is contained in the law of 1903. In that law it is enacted that when an inspector of the Bureau of Animal Industry has issued a certificate that he has inspected cattle or live stock and found

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