Individualist's Cows

Law & Custom again struck the unflinching, unbending Robert Gibsons a rude blow last week. They are a middle-aged couple who live at Tappan, N. Y., a New York village atop the Hudson River Palisades, just north of the New Jersey boundary.

The Gibsons' chief contributions to that storied region's ecology were a daughter Charlotte whom they reared with pre-War decorum and ignorance of life's facts; a

Jersey cow called Molly Lewis and her daughter Sylvia, from whom Charlotte Gibson learned nothing.

Five years ago the Gibsons' Molly Lewis and Sylvia were subject to rude attentions of veterinarians, sent by the State Department of Agriculture to test them for tuberculosis. The test was simple and harmless : the injection of a small quantity of tuberculin, made from the bacteria of tuberculosis, under the animal's skin. If she had the slightest trace of the disease, the cow would develop fever, and be killed as a menace to other cows and to children who drank her milk. Since the Gibsons neither permitted their cows to herd with other cows nor sold their milk, Lawyer Gibson sturdily stood on his legal right not to have his cows tested.

His child Charlotte meanwhile had taken to running around with a local youth who had taught her to ride horseback. By the time the baffled veterinarians withdrew from the cow pasture, Charlotte Gibson, 23, was going to have a baby. The upright Gibsons decided to shoulder her shame. They had Ridingmaster Sidney Homewood, 24, prosecuted for seducing Charlotte. He "had to be punished so that young girls in the future may be spared a similar fate. One cannot think of one's own humiliation, but of society in general, and the necessity for preserving the beauty and sanctity of love."

The baby was born, was adopted by the grandparents and named Mary Joan Gibson. She died at the age of twelve days of bleeding at the navel. Her father went to Sing Sing; her mother married Walter Mitchell Schubert in 1936; her grandparents, dropped out of the Social Register, remained at "Tappancroft," their integrity and independence intact (TIME, Dec. 19, 1932).

Last week Molly Lewis, 15, and her daughter, 7, chewed their cuds as placidly as usual but the rest of the Gibson estate was in commotion. In May the New York Legislature had ordered that every cow in the State, privately milked or not, be tested for tuberculosis. Lawyer Gibson and his wife took lonely counsel with themselves. The Law had them and their cows at bay. Mr. Gibson telephoned for a local veterinarian and one midnight, as the Gibsons sat alone, they heard, from the meadow behind the house, one shot kill Molly Lewis, a second shot kill Sylvia. A man still has the right to kill his own animals.

When the State veterinarians knocked at the door next morning to do their duty, Mrs. Gibson called out of an upstairs window: "You'll not be able to test them."

Murmured State Veterinarian Arthur C. Goebel: "They were beautiful cows, and the only ones in the county not tested."

Roared sturdy-souled Lawyer Robert Gibson: "It has been the policy of the State to do everything within its power to keep people from owning cows. The milk trust has been behind this legislation and gradually the condition will exist where there will be no privately owned cows in the State. In company with Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, whom I count among my friends, I am opposed to these laws. The new legislation is beyond the attempts of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. I felt that it was time somebody did something of a drastic nature to fight this new Tuberculin Test Law. There are other laws that are taking our freedom away. It's about time that people fought these crazy laws. Gradually the country is getting so that there is no personal liberty left."

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