The Jungle
own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of
self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And
trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while
a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway.
Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg.
Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were
nothing to it—it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his
feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched
him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was
nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to
whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this
hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done,
and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? Perhaps some glimpse of all
this was in the thoughts of our humble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to
go on with the rest of the party, and muttered: “Dieve—but I’m glad I’m
not a hog!”
The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it
fell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful
machine with numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size
and shape of the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly
all of its bristles removed. It was then again strung up by machinery,
and sent upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines
of men, who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single
thing to the carcass as it came to him. One scraped the outside of a
leg; another scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift
stroke cut the throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head,
which fell to the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a
slit down the body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw
cut the breastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them
out—and they also slid through a hole in the floor. There were men to
scrape each side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean
the carcass inside, to trim it and wash it. Looking down this room, one
saw, creeping slowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in
length; and for every yard there was a man, working as if a demon were
after him. At the end of this hog’s progress every inch of the carcass
had been gone over several times; and then it was rolled into the
chilling room, where it stayed for twenty-four hours, and where a
stranger might lose himself in a forest of freezing hogs.
Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a
government inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in
the neck for tuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the
manner of a man who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted
by a fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his
testing. If you were a sociable person, he was quite willing to enter
into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of
the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was
talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a
dozen carcasses were passing him untouched. This inspector wore a blue
uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave an atmosphere of authority to
the scene, and, as it were, put the stamp of official approval upon the
things which were done in Durham’s.
Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring
open-mouthed, lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forest
of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed
by several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he
took it all in guilelessly—even to the conspicuous signs demanding
immaculate cleanliness of the employees. Jurgis was vexed when the
cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic comments,
offering to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went
to be doctored.
The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste
materials were treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and
washed clean for sausage casings; men and women worked here in the
midst of a sickening stench, which caused the visitors to hasten by,
gasping. To another room came all the scraps to be “tanked,” which
meant boiling and pumping off the grease to make soap and lard; below
they took out the refuse, and this, too, was a region in which the
visitors did not linger. In still other places men were engaged in
cutting up the carcasses that had been through the chilling rooms.
First there were the “splitters,” the most expert workmen in the plant,
who earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and did not a thing all day
except chop hogs down the middle. Then there were “cleaver men,” great
giants with muscles of iron; each had two men to attend him—to slide
the half carcass in front of him on the table, and hold it while he
chopped it, and then turn each piece so that he might chop it once
more. His cleaver had a blade about two feet long, and he never made
but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his implement did not
smite through and dull itself—there was just enough force for a perfect
cut, and no more. So through various yawning holes there slipped to the
floor below—to one room hams, to another forequarters, to another sides
of pork. One might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms,
where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke rooms, with
their airtight iron doors. In other rooms they prepared salt pork—there
were whole cellars full of it, built up in great towers to the ceiling.
In yet other rooms they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels, and
wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing
them. From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the
platform where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out
there and realized with a start that he had come at last to the ground
floor of this enormous building.
Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of
beef—where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into
meat. Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one
floor; and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to
the workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from
one to another of these. This made a scene of intense activity, a
picture of human power wonderful to watch. It was all in one great
room, like a circus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running
over the center.
Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from the
floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads
which gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures
were prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them
no room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging,
over the top of the pen there leaned one of the “knockers,” armed with
a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room
echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking
of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the “knocker” passed
on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the
pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out
to the “killing bed.” Here a man put shackles about one leg, and
pressed another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There
were fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple
of minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then
once more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out
of each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men
upon the killing beds had to get out of the way.
The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never
forgotten. They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the
run—at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a
football game. It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his
task to do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific
cuts, and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses,
making these cuts upon each. First there came the “butcher,” to bleed
them; this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see
it—only the flash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the
man had darted on to the next line, and a stream of bright red was
pouring out upon the floor. This floor was half an inch deep with
blood, in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it
through holes; it must have made the floor slippery, but no one could
have guessed this by watching the men at work.
The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost,
however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was
always ready. It was let down to the ground, and there came the
“headsman,” whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three
swift strokes. Then came the “floorsman,” to make the first cut in the
skin; and then another to finish ripping the skin down the center; and
then half a dozen more in swift succession, to finish the skinning.
After they were through, the carcass was again swung up; and while a
man with a stick examined the skin, to make sure that it had not been
cut, and another rolled it up and tumbled it through one of the
inevitable holes in the floor, the beef proceeded on its journey. There
were men to cut it, and men to split it, and men to gut it and scrape
it clean inside. There were some with hose which threw jets of boiling
water upon it, and others who removed the feet and added the final
touches. In the end, as with the hogs, the finished beef was run into
the chilling room, to hang its appointed time.
The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows,
labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors—and
some, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the sign
of the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the
orthodox. And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the
building, to see what became of each particle of the waste material
that had vanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the
salting rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice
meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be
eaten in all the four corners of civilization. Afterward they went
outside, wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done
the work auxiliary to this great industry. There was scarcely a thing
needed in the business that Durham and Company did not make for
themselves. There was a great steam power plant and an electricity
plant. There was a barrel factory, and a boiler-repair shop. There was
a building to which the grease was piped, and made into soap and lard;
and then there was a factory for making lard cans, and another for
making soap boxes. There was a building in which the bristles were
cleaned and dried, for the making of hair cushions and such things;
there was a building where the skins were dried and tanned, there was
another where heads and feet were made into glue, and another where
bones were made into fertilizer. No tiniest particle of organic matter
was wasted in Durham’s. Out of the horns of the cattle they made combs,
buttons, hairpins, and imitation ivory; out of the shinbones and other
big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for
pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made
the rest into glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings,
and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin,