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Nye Wades In Blood

Nye Wades In Blood image
Parent Issue
Day
19
Month
November
Year
1890
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

riflht, 1890, by Edgar W. ifye.] Everythini; regardisg Chicago will be doubly interesting to the general public for the next two or three years, and it is therefore natural that the varied features of the young giant shoukl be more or lens discnssed both at home and abroad. That is just what Chicago rants. That suite her. That is what itae puts her various millions into an position for. (I should have referred to her as a giantess above instead of a giant, for I see that I have fallen into the femiaine pronoun since. However, we will let that pass.) The stranger should go at once from the depot to the Auditorium. He will Bve time by this, for then he can answerthose wlio ask him if hehas seen the Auditorium and answer afflrmatively, and be doiae with it; but if he should wait until he has done something else he will be more or less broken in upon by this inquiry. Later on I may speak of this great structure with the unf ortunate aame. but I shall not have space at this time, owing to the fact that I purpose speaking a word or two regarding the stock yards. All sorts of honest and successful industry are honorable, whether it b through the avenue of literature or dressed beef. Success is the mark of public approval, and continued success the irtificate of integrity. It was honorable for Gen. Grant to canvase for a book ortan skins. It was honorable for Vanderbilt to farm it or run a ferry. It was honorable for Gould to survey Delaware ixmnty with a wheelbarrow and a fine tooth comb. It was honorable for the older Astor to skiu muskrats and swap braas collar buttons to the Indiana for beaver skins if th noble red rnau Buffered for collar buttons. What I dislike is for the descendant of Mr. Astor to cultívate such a big robust and maliguant case of hauteur. He visited Chicago some thne go and stated in an interview, which ha had arranged for as soon as he could attend to it, that the people of Chicago f requently sat on the front steps and that risitors were met at the door by the housemaid. Thereby covertly intimating that Mr. Astor is in the habit of an3wering the door himself . Possibly, however, Mr. Astor keeps a man who answers the door bell and does notbing elso liardiy. That may be, but it is only a few brief autmnns since the brave and sturdy mother of the Astor race carne around from the spring housa to greet the guest in her stocking feet, and the greeting was none the less cordial oyether for a' that and a' that. We should not be held responsible for the errors and acquired snobbery of our grandchildren. From the deep recesses i of the unborn future there may come j some day a great-grandchild who will inherit my wealth and name, and while I squirm about in my close iitting tomb ha may have a valet to dress him in the morning and train up his whiskers on a ! trellis, and he may visit Chicago where i hia ancestors had been so generously and so hospitably treated years before, j and when he goes home to England or ' Tuxedo he may send for a reporter and j teil him how his refined nature was shocked all tiie time he was away. Glancing hastily from Mr. Astor to the Chicago stock yards, I will say that few realize, or can do so, the magnitude of this one institution of Chicago. We can hardly imagine 1,280 acres of ground covered with meat, to speak plainly; 1,280 acres almost covered at least with the business of converting live stock into ! food for man. I had never before j ited this institution, and so I went there all dressed up, in order to make an impression on the working classes. Shortly after my arrival it came on for to rain, and having came on for that purpose it removed its coat, suspendere ; and hat, and rained more earnestly and more vociferously than anywhere else I ! erer saw it outside of Ireland. I woro a frock coat, patent leather shoes and a sük hat. Af ter a while the mud, gore and ; hair, to say nothing of lard and disarranged liver, gave me a blasé look that attracted attention when I got back on i State street. One man whom I did not I know asked me if there had been any trouble or a strike at the stock yards. The visitor is apt to go first to the ! sassinating department. I remember ! butchering day at home w.'jen I was a ! boy. It was different frov this. We j had generally about three shotes to kill, and we waited most always until the i weather was so cold that we could not : plow. Then we butchered. We began , about dayligiit to heat water for , ing purposes. Then weclimbed the fence j and began a series of ttoc&Ued for yet bitter and personal -+ on the eldar i maternal hog, while her ear iit-rcing ; squeals rent the sky and hor hot blood spattered onr neat little overalls. All day we alternately scorched ourselves or froze to death, and at night three flabby, waxen remains, perfectly devoid of bowels of coinpassúm or otiior viscera, pried open so that the November wind conld Bough throogh their púlseles forms or dally with their leaflard tlirough the long and frigid hours, hun;í in i row. Then carne the days when all through tho dear oíd homestead the smell of nice hot lard sought out every corner and oven pervaded the beautiful brown linen Sabbath school suit, which caught and retained the ravishing fragranco for years after. Here you hear in the distant and the Boinber depths of the building a smothered wail ever andaaon. Yougo toward it and fiínl i brisk youn;j; man in tall rubber boots standing in i bloody stall with a flashing blade in his hand. while near him ; biu; pan to which is attaclied a long handle catchee the hot, fresh tide of life as it sports with a purple impulse following the long, keen blade. About every flfteen seconds, while we stood there, a new subjectcame up heels first out of the big slaughter pen, as a log is pulled out of the pond of a big saw mili, and with a plunge of the knife as it passed on another iwung into position head down, and the nnerring steel struck the same poiut forward of the shoulder and to the left of the windpipe. No experimenta were made. The young butchers style of vaccination always took. I remember once, years ago, my father went away on business, to serve on the petit jury, I think, and told me to kill the pig. It was easy to say that. He might also have included other friends of the family, but he did not think of it perhape. However, I began the most elabórate preparations and tried to nerve myself up to it by frequent recourse to hard eider, for I had never personally shed innocent blood before. The pig would probaMy weigh about KiOpounds, and was not tiercé until he í 'ound out that I seemed set on mutHuting him without any apparent cause. Theu he broke down the fence, ate up a small goddess of liberty which I had once had tattooed on my leg, so that I could be identified in case I should run away and go to sea and stumble against a watery grave, as I had intended to do at that tima. The animal wandered away iuto a corn field, and we tracked him by his bloody footsteps. We overtook him along toward noon, and my younger brother held hiin down while I made an incisión in the neck which proved fatal. As we started to drag the animal toward home his head feil off. I state this in order to show that sincerity and inflesdbility of purpose had already begun to show themselves even at this early age. After some delay we sneceeded in removing the bristles, also some of the pelt, and I began the delicate operation of prying into and exposing the animal's complex works. I guess it would not be best to describe this, for it gives me great pain to recall it. I only know that I c.mnot see vet what he had ever done with so inany f them or who could have ever arranged such a large aasottment in such a little space. They carne pouring out like a cataract of new and strange vitáis with crotcheted borders on them, and altogether I feit saddened and depressed. I went over to a neiprhbor and got him to come and assist me. I told him I had operated once or twice on a hen, but a hon travels light. She does not overburden herself with vitáis that way. J;;st gire a hen two or three little fixings of tliat kind and she will go around perfectly contented. But it is not so with a hog. I never saw a hog that knew when he had enongh of anything. In the early days they used to assess people here at the stock yards for beer money, and then if they did not get it they would pelt the visitor with fragments of liver and such littlo testimoniáis of respect as that. So it was a custom even among temperance people to give them the inoney. It was so until oned;y an English capitalist who owned a largo share of ono packing house got a steer's lung down the back of his neck and eighteen feet of sausage wound around his sük hat, and he spoke of it in terms of resentinent to the superintendent. Then it was changed. The sansage machine is one of the most intelligent that I eversaw. The Havana wrapper is pulled on over a metallic spout, and then by a temiic force erted abovo the sansage meat reservoir the whole tirina; is pushed throngh tliia spout into the w-rapper, and yard upon yard of this delician bivalve is reeled off while yoti walt. One house takes the lives of 2,400 pigs per day, and the-y are chillf d and ready for the takte by uight Mr. An , :nr personally killel 1 ,450,000 hogs last year, not in a spirit of revenge, tmt in order to improve thR condition of maiildnd and keep the rudo and disagreeable wolf frora his own door. Prying a little into his business affaire yesterday, I found that he did a busiDMsof $65,000,000 laat yer. He aU pwd oot f 3,500,000 in wagee. With a piece of challe I figured on the back of an oiX painting in Mr. Arniour's pleasant omen ihat, allowing each year the same nuinber of animáis killed last year, say 100,000 hogs, 650,000 cattle and 350,000 sheep at a low estímate, in five years Mr. Armour, single handed, could encircle the globe with a continuóos girdle of intestinos! What a thonght! What food for tiiought algo! Bot as Mr. Armour said in oor talk, when I asked him for a little recipe for becoming a millionaire: "Hert! is the secret of the success of the Big Foor. It is our syslein of carefully utilizing everytíiing. Here is a glass jar containing hoof meal. That is valoable for its ammonia. It is rnado from the desijised hoof of the animal after the neatsfoot oil and other toilet articles have been removed. Here is a jar of white phosphates, made from the pith of the horn. This industry will deorease if the dehorning of cattle grows, but probably it will not appreciably. Here is a sort of glue made from the tips of the ears and nose of deoeased cattle which die a violent death at our house. Here is a substance used in great quantities by the brewers. Some time in the old days before yoor reformation yon have noticed when yoo pulled yonr boer glass ofL the top of the table that it had a tendeney to stick. That is a gelaünons substance which we furnish the brewer in great quantities. It is made from the thin white film which lies between the bone and skin of the head, for instance, and if nothing more harmfnl goes into beer it will never kill people oLc at a big rate. Then there is a jar of dried blood. Some is used for purifying sugar and considerable is sent to New Orleans, but more is used for making buttons. So yon see we malie our money by saving it. Not long ago a Frenchman came to me and told me that I was losing a miïlion or so" unnecessavily. I froze to him till he told me how. We found that our big reservoirs containing water, and in which we give the beef a bath to sort of cool it and close up the pores, had been emptied into the Chicago river for years, ing with ït the bouquet of the beer. We now condense and compresa this nutritious jnico till we get the most stimulating and the most delectable extract of beef that ever gladdened the tottering stomach of au invalid or a chüd." And so it goes. It seems that an adult steer can afford more real, pare joy by bis death tlian any other animal, unlens it be the wife beater. I am told that when a wife beater sits for nis death mask, on a still day, yon eau hear the angels applauding. At Swift's establishment they have two odd animáis, one a steer calied Judas and the other a sheep calied Iscariot. Each of these animáis has a winning way with his set, and is utilized for the purpose of leading his fellows into the slaughter pen even against their better judgment. They have done this for years, and though the smell of blood naturally repels them, they listen to the siren voico of these two heartless brntes who preserve their own lives at the sacrifica of thousands of others, and death is their portion. Some day I will again visit the stock yards. I hope to select a rainy day, and shall hope also to take my friend Ward JIcAllister with me by the hand, dressed in his best suit of clothes. Skippiiij; u'.iyly rlirough the ruins of fonner beef creatures and the tottering relies of nude hogs that have been snatched from the glad sunlight and yielding mud of Illinois to deluge the abattoirs of this great commercial town with their bright young blood, I would like to yank the great parlor ornament clothed iu a white flannel suit and his unwavering ndmiration of himself , whüe cheery young butchers pinned to his coat tails yard upon yard of the future home of the sausage. It inay be a cruel wish, but when a man outshines me socially I cannot help it; I ahnest hate him. JLt is rei atea or John Kogers, the Arkansas cosgres8man, that he recently sat down iu a barber's chair, when the barber asked if he would not take ofif his collar. "Certainly," said Rogers pleasantly, "anything to accommodate," and, getting out of the chair, removed bis coat and vest, let down his suspenders, and began vmbuttoning his shirt. "Jes' yo' collah, sah," said the astonished barber, "jes' de collah; that'll be enough." "I understund," said Bogers. "I'm going to take it off." And he peeled his shirt ofif over his head. "You see, I have iny collars made on my shirts, " he calmly said, as he sat in his undershirt and enjoyed himself. - Cincinnati Cornaaercial-Gazette.

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Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Courier