# The Condemned-Meat Industry

Everybody's Magazine - Volume 14
The Condemned-Meat Industry
A Reply to Mr. J. Ogden Armour
By UPTON SINCLAIR Author of "The Jungle"
EDITOR'S NOTE.-J. Ogden Armour has at last been smoked out of the sullen retirement in which the Beef Trust bosses have kept themselves since the fires of public indignation against them were lighted by Charles E. Russell's powerful series on the Beef Trust in this magazine. Mr. Armour, in an article in the "Saturday Evening Post," makes the flat-footed assertion that the Government inspection of the Beef Trust slaughter-houses is an impregnable wall protecting the public from impure meat, and that not an atom of diseased meat finds its way into the products of the Armours. EVERYBODY'S, having lighted the fire, feels impelled to discuss this statement. Mr. Russell is in the Orient working out for us his notable series, "Soldiers of the Common Good." Mr. Upton Sinclair, the author of " The Jungle" (a terrific statement of Packingtown conditions, which we commend to our readers aside from its political conclusions), is preparing for us a similar review of labor conditions in other industries. In collecting data for "The Jungle," Mr. Sinclair studied the meat industry for two years, including much time spent in the Chicago stock-yards as a workman; he is the best equipped outside authority on stock-yard conditions. We have asked Mr. Sinclair to suspend work on his new series in order to confront Mr. Armour in Mr. Russell's place. His answer is startling, and yet convincing. Soldiers of the Common Good" will be resumed in our June number.
IN the course of his recent defense of the Beef Trust, Mr. J. Ogden Armour writes as follows:
   Government inspection is another important feature of the packers' business. To the general public, the meat-eating public, it ought to appeal as one of the most important features of any and all business in the whole country. It is the wall that stands between the meat-eating public and the sale of diseased meat. This Government inspection alone, if there were no other business or economic reasons, would be an all-sufficient reason for the existence of the packing and dressed-meat business on a mammoth scale. It should, if understood, make the general public a partizan supporter of the large packers.
   Strangely enough, in view of its vital importance, this Government inspection has been the subject of almost endless misrepresentation-of ignorantly or maliciously false statements. The public has been told that meat animals and carcasses condemned as diseased are afterward secretly made use of by the packers and sold to the public for food in the form of both dressed meats and canned meats. Right here I desire to brand such statements as absolutely false as applied to the business of Armour & Co. I believe they are equally false as to all establishments in this country that are classed as packing-houses. I repeat: "In Armour & Co.'s business not one atom of any condemned animal or carcass finds its way, directly or indirectly, from any source, into any food product or food ingredient."
This denial is positive and all-inclusive. It comes from a man of immense wealth, occupying a position of enormous responsibility, and having a considerable standing in the community. It is a denial of acts which, if really committed, would be atrocious and abominable crimes; and, accordingly, ninety-nine per cent. of the people who read it, and who possess no information about the matter, accept it as final and conclusive. A man who proposes to controvert it must set out with all the convictions of his readers against him.
A year or so ago, when I was familiar with Packingtown, and with the methods employed in Mr. Armour's factories, but not with the conditions in his office, I should have been inclined to say that Mr. Armour was mistaken; I should have said that it was the Valentines and the Connors and the Arthur Meekers of his establishment who did the things which are regularly done; and that he, Mr. Armour, in making his denial to the public, was simply ignorant of the real truth. Now, however, I know that such is not the case; for I know that Mr. Armour is the master at Armour & Co.'s, and that he knows everything that goes on there. I know that he gets up and stands at his telephone every morning at seven o'clock, and fixes the prices which are to be paid for live stock throughout the markets of the United States on that day; I know this from men who have stood at the other end of the telephone when he did it. I know that in the consultations which take place concerning the business of Armour & Co., he is deferred to by all as the head and leader; I know this from men who attend these consultations. I know that he has his finger upon every detail of the packing-house business; and therefore -using italics, in accordance with Mr. Armour's own example-I know that in the statements quoted above, Mr. Armour wilfully and deliberately states what he absolutely and positively knows to be falsehoods.
I have had to face Mr. Armour, and his power, and his prestige, and his respectability, so often that I am now grown used to it. I had to face it, for instance, when I went out to find a publisher for my book; I know that several declined to print it, because they believed Mr. Armour, and did not believe me.
The firm which at present publishes it sent out to a man in Chicago, asking for an impartial opinion about the book, and in reply received a twenty-eight-page typewritten report, purporting to be the result of an impartial investigation, and branding "The Jungle" as a tissue of falsehoods, and as a malicious attempt to inflict gratuitous injury on the great and philanthropic house of Armour & Co.
Fortunately, however, I was in a position to show the falsity of some of these statements, and I then suggested to the publishers the only plan by which they could assure themselves of the truth of my book, which was that they themselves should send out a man, of whose intelligence and integrity they were absolutely sure, who should make a thorough and first-hand investigation, and report to them the results. They adopted this suggestion; and in order that they might feel absolutely certain, they selected their own attorney, a gentleman intimately known to the members of the firm. The firm was Doubleday, Page & Co.; and the lawyer was Mr. Thomas H. McKee, of III Broadway, New York. He went to Chicago, met some of my witnesses, and made some private investigations of his own; and I will now quote one paragraph from the formal report which he transmitted over
his signature to the firm which had sent him out:
"With a special conductor, Mr. B. J. Mullaney, provided for me by Mr. Urion, attorney for Armour interests, I went through the Armour plant again. Mullaney introduced me to T. J. Conners, manager, who called Mr. Hull, superintendent of beef plant, and said to him: 'I have just told Mr. McKee that we have nothing here to conceal, and that he can see anything he wants, and can stay as long as he likes. Please see that my promise is made good.' I expressed my desire to investigate two points: first, the system of inspection; second, the by-product food industry.
"I saw six hogs hung in line which had been condemned. A truck loaded with chopped-up condemned hogs was, in my presence (I followed it), placed in one of the tanks from which lard comes. I asked particularly about this, and the inspector, together with Mr. Hull, stated that lard and fertilizer would be the product from that tank. The tanks are in a long room. The east side is lined with tanks for manufacture of lard and fertilizer; the west side with tanks whose product is grease and fertilizer. The grease is for soap, lubricator, etc. Here is a clear infraction of the law, because it requires that such condemned meat be mixed with sufficient offal to destroy it as food. Of the six condemned hogs referred to, two were afflicted with cholera, the skin being red as blood and the legs scabbed; three were marked 'tubercular,' though they appeared normal to a layman; the sixth had an ulcer in its side which was apparent. Two men were engaged in chopping up hogs from this line. The truck-load prepared while I stood there was deposited in a lard tank. I asked particularly about the line of demarcation between the carcasses used for lard and carcasses used for grease. No explanation was given either by the inspector or by my conductor. 'It all depends upon how bad he is,' was the answer. I gathered the impression, however, that not very many carcasses were placed in grease tanks."
I have no comments to make on the above narrative, except to refer the reader to the law, Department of Agriculture Rules, June 27, 1904, Article IX; and then to quote once more the italicized statement from Mr. Armour's article: "Not one atom of any condemned animal or carcass finds its way, directly or indirectly, from any source, into any food product or food ingredient."
Mr. Armour speaks of "ignorantly or maliciously false statements"; just what he imagines to be the cause of the malice in my case, he has not stated. I can only say that I went out to Chicago without the slightest idea of any of the things which I was to discover in Mr. Armour's establishment. I selected Packingtown because I wished to give a picture of working-class life in a modern, highly concentrated industry, and because I knew that Packingtown was a place where modern commercial forces had full and unrestricted sway. I lived among the stock-yards people. for many weeks, making the most minute and painstaking examination into every detail of their lives, as well as of the packing-house methods. I shall never forget my emotions on my very first evening in the yards, when I sat in the kitchen of one of Mr. Armour's cattle-butchers, an old Lithuanian working man, who had spent twenty-five years of his life in Packingtown. He had been one of Tom Carey's "Indians" in his early days; he had been naturalized when only two months in America, and had voted seven times at a recent election. He was intimately familiar with every detail of Mr. Armour's businesses familiar, I dare say, as Mr. Armour himself -and when he was fairly started at telling me what he had seen and done, my hair began to rise on end. He told me that meat which had been condemned as unfit for food, and had been dropped into tanks to be rendered into fertilizer, was taken out at the bottom of the tanks, and canned or cut up for sausage. He told me that he had done this with his own hands; he told me that his brother-in-law, who worked in another of the big packing-houses, had done it quite recently; and still I could not believe him-it could not be true! I took the story to the head of the University Settlement in the stock-yards, and asked her what she thought about it. She said: "Mr. Sinclair, I have lived thirteen years in this neighborhood, and during that time scarcely a week passes that some one does not tell me some such story; but I can't believe themthey can't be true! Will your man, or his brother-in-law, or other men that know of it, make an affidavit to it?" I took the question to the grizzled old cattle-butcher, and he laughed. "Sure," he said, "I'll make an affidavit to it on one condition." "What is that?" I asked. "Simply that the lady will go under bond to give me a job for the balance of my life."
I count in my memory five men who worked in the yards who told me that they had positive knowledge of this practise; but my efforts to see it with my own eyes were unavailing. I got into many places in the big packing-houses and I saw sights of filth and horror such as I hope never to see again; but even disguised as a working man, and in company with men who were intimately known in the establishments, I was unable to get past the "spotters" and watchmen who guard those particular doors that I wished to pass. I tried it until I was known at all the places, and then I had to give it up; and so I came away-and in mentioning this matter in my book, because I had not seen it myself, I told of it as a thing which my hero did not see, but which he heard as a rumor from other people. And then only the other day I came upon positive evidence of this crime-and in Mr. Armour's own establishment!
At the time of the embalmed-beef scandal, at the conclusion of the Spanish War, when the whole country was convulsed with fury over the revelations made by soldiers and officers (including General Miles and President Roosevelt) concerning the quality of meat which Armour & Co. had furnished to the troops, and concerning the death-rate which it had caused, the enormity of the "condemned-meat industry" became suddenly clear to one man who had formerly supervised it. Mr. Thomas F. Dolan, then residing in Boston, had, up to a short time previous, been a superintendent at Armour & Co.'s, and one of Mr. Philip D. Armour's most capable and trusted men. He had letters, written in a familiar tone, showing that Mr. Armour was of the opinion that he Mr. Dolan could kill more cattle for him in a given time than any other man he ever had; he had a jeweled pin presented to him by Mr. Armour, and a gold watch with Mr. Armour's name in it. When he read of the death-rate in the army, he made an affidavit concerning the things which were done in the establishment of Armour & Co., and this affidavit he took to the New York Journal, which published it on March 4, 1899. Here are some extracts from it:
   For ten years I was employed by Philip D. Armour, the great Chicago beef packer and canner. I rose from a common beef skinner to the station of superintendent of the beef-killing gang, with 500 men directly under me. . . .
   There were many ways of getting around the inspectors-so many, in fact, that not more than two or three cattle out of one thousand were condemned. I know exactly what I am writing of in this connection, as my particular instructions from Mr. W. E. Pierce, superintendent of the beef houses for Armour & Co., were very explicit and definite.
   Whenever a beef got past the yard inspectors with a case of lumpy jaw and came into the slaughterhouse or the "killing-bed," I was authorized by Mr. Pierce to take his head off, thus removing the evidences of lumpy jaw, and after casting the smitten portion into the tank where refuse goes, to send the rest of the carcass on its way to market.
   In cases where tuberculosis became evident to the men who were skinning the cattle it was their duty, on instructions from Mr. Pierce, communicated to them through me, at once to remove the tubercles and cast them into a trap-door provided for that purpose.
   I have seen as much as forty pounds of flesh afflicted with gangrene cut from the carcass of a beef, in order that the rest of the animal might be utilized in trade.
   One of the most important regulations of the Bureau of Animal Industry is that no cows in calf are to be placed on the market. Out of a slaughter of 2,000 cows, or a day's killing, perhaps one-half are with calves. My instructions from Mr. Pierce were to dispose of the calves by hiding them until night, or until the inspectors left off duty. The little carcasses were then brought from all over the packing-house and skinned by boys, who received two cents for removing each pelt. The pelts were sold for fifty cents each to the kid-glove manufacturers. This occurs every night at Mr. Armour's concern at Chicago, or after each killing of cows.
   I now propose to state here exactly what I myself have witnessed in Philip D. Armour's packing-house with cattle that have been condemned by the Government inspectors.
   A workman, one Nicholas Newson during my time, informs the inspector that the tanks are prepared for the reception of the condemned cattle and that his presence is required to see the beef cast into the steam-tank. Mr. Inspector proceeds at once to the place indicated, and the condemned cattle, having been brought up to the tank-room on trucks, are forthwith cast into the hissing steam-boilers and disappear. That is to say, they disappear so far as the inspector is concerned. He cranes his neck slightly, nods his head approvingly, and walks away. But the condemned steer does not stay in the tank any longer than the time required for his remains to drop through the boiler down to the floor below, where he is caught on a truck and hauled back again to the cutting-room. The bottom of the tank was open, and the steer passed through the aperture.
   I have witnessed the farce many times. I have seen the beef dropped into the vat in which a steampipe was exhausting with a great noise so that the thud of the beef striking the truck below could not be heard, and in a short time I have witnessed Nicholas bringing it back to be prepared for the market.
   I have even marked beef with my knife so as to distinguish it, and watched it return to the point where it started. . . .
   Of all the evils of the stock-yards, the canning department is perhaps the worst. It is there that the cattle from all parts of the United States are prepared for canning. No matter how scrawny or debilitated canners are, they must go the route of their brothers and arrive ultimately at the great boiling vats, where they are steamed until they are reasonably tender. Bundles of gristle and bone melt into pulpy masses and are stirred up for the canning department.
   I have seen cattle come into Armour's stock-yard so weak and exhausted that they expired in the corrals, where they lay for an hour or two, dead, until they were afterward hauled in, skinned, and put on the market for beef or into the canning department for cans.
   It was the custom to make a pretense of killing in such cases. The coagulated blood in their veins was too sluggish to flow, and instead of getting five gallons of blood, which is the amount commonly taken from a healthy steer, a mere dark-red clot would form at the wound.
   In other words, the Armour establishment was selling carrion.
   There are hundreds of other men in the employ of Mr. Armour who could verify every line I have written. They have known of these things ever since packing has been an industry. But I do not ask them to come to the front in this matter. I stand on my oath, word for word, sentence for sentence, and statement for statement.
   I write this story of my own free will and volition and no one is responsible for it but myself. It is the product of ten years of experience. It is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
   THOMAS F. DOLAN.
   Sworn to and subscribed before me this first day of March, 1899.
   ORVILLE P. DERBY.
   Notary Public Kings County N.Y.
   Certificate filed in New York County
You read all that, and you say: "It is a Hearst story. It is one of the romances of the yellow journals. It was made up by a man who is engaged in stirring up class hatred, and in selling extra editions of his newspapers. The thing is probably a fake from beginning to end." Very well, suppose we grant it; that is nothing whatever to the point. The essential thing is an entirely different thing from the truth of the story-it is that the story was published; and that it was published in a newspaper whose proprietor owns property, and can be reached by the courts. It was a definite and explicit charge concerning certain things which Mr. Armour has "branded," over his own signature, as "absolutely false"; and now the one question of any importance is:
What did Mr. Armour do about it?
Did he have Mr. Thomas F. Dolan arrested for criminal libel; did he bring a suit for a million dollars libel against Mr. William R. Hearst; did he defy his accusers to produce their evidence and prove the atrocious crimes with which they had charged him? No, he did not do any of these things! What he did, I happen to know from a man who was present in Mr. Armour's office when he did it, and who advised and urged Mr. Armour strongly not to do it; what he did, upon his own decision, was to send an agent to Boston with five new, crisp one-thousand-dollar bills, to offer to Mr. Dolan, provided that he would make another affidavit declaring that his former statements were false, and that he had been paid a large sum of money by the New York Journal to make them!
The man whom Mr. Armour sent is now in an insane asylum at Peoria, Ill.; his name is Gilligan. He went to Mr. Dolan and offered him, not merely the five new, crisp onethousand-dollar bills, but also a trip to Europe, with expenses for himself and family paid for three years, provided that he would make oath to a falsehood, and then take the next steamer. Mr. Dolan referred the matter to the newspaper people, who agreed with him that he could make quite as good use of the $5,000 as could Mr. Armour, and so Mr. Dolan took the five new, crisp one-thousand-dollar bills and deposited them in bank, to be held in trust for the education of his children; and that afternoon Mr. Gilligan, on his way back to report his triumph to his employer, was confronted with a copy of the New York Evening Journal, of March 16, 1899, containing the whole affidavit and the whole story, under the caption (in letters which it would take a good part of this magazine page to reproduce):
ARMOUR PAYS $5,000 FOR A GOLD BRICK IN BOSTON!
This is a pretty story. It falls in so beautifully with the letter recently made public by President Roosevelt, describing how Mr. Armour's attorneys had been bribing newspaper reporters to misrepresent the evidence at the Government prosecutions in Chicago. It also falls in beautifully with Mr. Armour's statement concerning the endless blackmail to which a packer would be liable who undertook to profit by the “condemnedmeat industry." As a matter of fact, any one who knows anything at all about Mr. Armour's affairs knows that his life is made miserable by blackmailers. Scarcely an employee of any responsibility leaves Armour & Co., who fails to take with him some incriminating documents, and then come back and sell them to Mr. Armour at fancy prices. I wish I were at liberty to tell some of the stories which I know about such things. Only last week an intimate friend of mine was conversing with a man who had gotten an immense sum from Mr. Armour; that I do not name the man and the exact figure is simply because Mr. Armour might buy him again, and thus close an important source of information.
But not all the persons who have information about the practises of the Chicago packers are blackmailers. Some of them are honest and public-spirited men. One of these is Dr. William K. Jaques, of 4316 Greenwood Avenue, Chicago, a physician of large practise in the city, a professor of bacteriology in the Illinois State University, and bacteriologist in charge of the city inspection of meat during the years 1902-3. Dr. Jaques was a competent and conscientious official, who conceived it to be his duty to protect the people of the United States from eating diseased and tainted meat. He found that the carcasses of steers which had been condemned for tuberculosis, actinomycosis, lumpy jaw, and gangrene, and which were supposed to be "locked up in bond" (until they could be deposited in tanks and rendered into fertilizer), were left upon open platforms and carted away at night to be sold in Chicago for human food. He found also that the bodies of hogs which had been smothered or killed in transit were dumped out upon the platforms and left until a convenient time, and then loaded into box-cars, shipped to a place called Globe, in Indiana, and made into a fancy grade of lard. In his efforts to prevent these practises Dr. Jaques armed his inspectors with bicycle pumps, and ordered them to inject kerosene into all meat which they condemned. As a result of this Dr. Jaques was removed for "insubordination"; shortly afterward the entire city bureau of inspection was abolished.
Mr. Armour makes a great deal of the inspection of his meat by the Federal Government, and after describing in detail how the work of inspection is done, he adds: "This Government inspection thus becomes an important adjunct of the packer's business from two view-points. It puts the stamp of legitimacy and honesty upon the packer's product, and so is to him a necessity; to the public it is an insurance against the selling of diseased meats." This is a statement which the packers make continuously; it is hard for a man who knows the truth to read them and preserve his temper. What is the truth about this Federal inspection? To put it into one sentence-again following Mr. Armour's example by using italics-it is this: That the Federal inspection of meat was, historically, established at the packers' request; that it is maintained and paid for by the people of the United States for the benefit of the packers; that men wearing the blue uniforms and brass buttons of the United States service are employed for the purpose of certifying to the nations of the civilized world that all the diseased and tainted meat which happens to come into existence in the United States of America is carefully sifted out and consumed by the American people.
This is a strong statement; and yet I might go even farther. I might say this also: that the laws regulating the inspection of meat were written by the packers, and written by the packers for the express purpose of making this whole condemned-meat industry impossible of prevention. The Federal inspectors have power to condemn meat, but they have no power to destroy it. This power is delegated, under the law, to the representatives of "the State or municipality in which it is found." I cannot do better, upon this whole point, than to quote a letter written to me last January by Dr. Jaques, who is an unimpeachable authority upon this subject:
   The condemnation of diseased meat is a State function and it is delegated to the city of Chicago in its charter. The city ordinance empowers the Commissioner of Health to perform this duty. Federal inspectors do condemn and destroy meat, but they have no legal right to do this. Their instructions as to separating and tagging of diseased meat ends with "to be disposed of according to the laws and ordinances of the State and municipality in which it is found." This throws it into the hands of the city inspectors, and they are the only ones who can legally destroy it. The Federal inspectors admit this, and claim that their condemnations are made under the threat of withdrawing the inspection if not allowed to do so.
   Foreign countries refused our meat and the packers appealed to our Government. It was finally arranged that Germany would accept American meat if our Government would guarantee its quality; to this end Federal inspection was instituted at the packing-houses. The Federal inspector comes to the packer to inspect his meat for export, and at his bidding. He is under the packer's influence continually, and if not satisfactory to the packer will lose his place. His instructions make it easy for him by saying that the diseased meat is "to be disposed of according to the laws and ordinances of the State and municipality in which it is found." The city inspectors are the usual grade of employees, on duty during City Hall hours, from 9 until 5. The Civic Federation employed a detective to watch three of these, and found that most of their time was spent in saloons. There were only four of them at the yards. They were under a head of department at the City Hall, who got his position for strenuous activity in the last campaign. The packers' contribution made this same duty pleasant.
   Just to show how the packers have their hands on the situation I have only to say that the first of this month Dr. Biehn, my successor, was withdrawn from this work and the stock-yards inspection placed under "Fish" Murray, a protégé of the stock-yards alderman, Cary. Murray was fish inspector under me and laughed at my efforts to make him do something to earn his salary. To my knowledge, he never condemned a pound of fish nor did a day's work in the fourteen months that I was his chief. The Health Department now issues a statement that the condition is remedied, and that Chicago is no longer a dumping-ground for bad meat. The truth is that the mayor is already fixing up his fences for reelection.
I quote this at length in order that the reader may realize in all its hideous detail the exact significance of that innocent-looking little provision in our national laws that meat which is condemned as unfit for food shall be disposed of "according to the laws and ordinances of the State or municipality in which it is found." If anything further is necessary to convince him of the truth of my statement that these laws were written by the packers, and in order to make the "condemned-meat industry" impossible of prevention, let him consider these two sentences-as bald and explicit as sentences can be: "Rules and Regulations for the Inspection of Live Stock and their Products; United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industries, Order No. 125, Section 25: 'A microscopic examination for trichinosis shall be made of all swine products exported to countries requiring such examination. No microscopic examination will be made of hogs slaughtered for interstate trade, but this examination shall be confined to those intended for the export trade.'" Since one and one-half per cent. of all the hogs slaughtered in Chicago are found to be infected with trichinosis, it follows that the American people eat not only their own one and one-half per cent., but also the one and one-half per cent. of the share of Europe!
Mr. Armour dilates at length upon the fact that the Federal inspectors are appointed by the Government, and that they are all trained veterinarians. It is a pity that he did not go into detail, and state how many of them there are and how much work they have to do. When I was in Packingtown I met Mr. Adolphe Smith, an English specialist who had been sent out as correspondent of the London Lancet, the leading medical paper of Great Britain. Mr. Smith had made a lifelong study of the subject of slaughter-houses; for the past fourteen years he had been inspecting for the Lancet the abattoirs of every country in the civilized world; and in the articles which he wrote for the Lancet (January 7, 14, 21, 28, 1905) he denounced the conditions which he found in Chicago as unspeakable and abominable, worthy of the Dark Ages. Among the things which he censured most severely were the insufficiency of the Government inspection force, the ridiculously inadequate pay of the inspectors, and the disgraceful lack of consideration with which they were treated. "At the Chicago stock-yards," he wrote, “I could not but feel scandalized and humiliated when I saw the foul and abominable premises in which the representatives of science, the representatives of the United States of America, the representatives of the majesty of the law, condescended to work daily in the accomplishment of their mission. ... It is a very good thing that inspectors are appointed by the authorities at Washington, but it would be better still if they were first sent to Berlin to learn not only how a slaughter-house ought to be managed and constructed, but to observe how those who have the honor of being intrusted with a public duty are more respected than business men, however rich."
Some time after Dr. Jaques left his position a brief account of his experiences crept into print, and a Chicago newspaper interviewed him and misquoted him; he offered a statement of what he had really said, which the newspaper the same one to which I have referred previously in this article-refused to print. The following is a brief extract from that statement:
   My education as a physician teaches me that disease follows the same law whether in animals or human beings. An accurate post mortem requires close inspection of all the internal organs together with the use of the microscope, before a physician can say there is no disease present. How many post mortems could the most expert physician make in a day? Ten would be a big day's work; fifty would tax the endurance of the most strenuous. It is reported that 150,000 animals have been received at the Union Stock-yards in a single day. How many animal pathologists are employed by the Government who are capable of making a reliable post mortem and saying that an animal is not diseased? In round numbers, say there are fifty-a few more or less, for the sake of illustration, are not material. Say there are only fifty thousand animals killed a day at the stock-yards. This would be a thousand to each inspector, a hundred an hour, nearly two a minute. What is such inspection as that worth? It is true, there is some inspection that is well done; it is that which is done for the sharp eyes of the foreigner.
   Inspection to be effective should include the entire twenty-four hours. Federal inspection is probably effective in daylight. City inspectors work during City Hall hours. The railroads and express companies bring animals into the city every hour of the day. When the chief inspector has access to every room in the packing-houses and knows what is done there every hour in the twenty-four; when his army of inspectors know the disposition of the meat brought into the city by more than thirty railroads; when he knows the destination and use of the refuse which the meat and liver wagons gather after nightfall from Fulton Market, South Water Street, and other markets; when he knows the meat that comes to the city by wagon and other ways; then, in my estimation, he can give something like an accurate estimation of the amount of diseased, putrid meat that is converted into food in Chicago. Until he has this information, he must confess to the ignorance of which he accuses others. No one has this information. There are a hundred streets and avenues by which diseased meat can enter the city and be put on sale in the markets. The public has made no effort to find out, and it is left to the men who deal in this merchandise to dump what they please into the stomachs of the blissfully ignorant public. Neither do any of us know how much disease and suffering this food causes. The diagnosis of the best physicians is so often turned down at the post-mortem table that the actual results of diseased food are difficult to ascertain.
Owing to the agitation created in Chicago by the revelations of the London Lancet, the city inspection bureau, which had been restored by Mayor Dunne, went to work really to enforce the law. The results are set forth in the city bulletins. During the week ending September, 1905, the city inspectors condemned at the Chicago stock-yards 173,769 pounds of meat; and during the corresponding week of the previous year they had condemned only 2,002 pounds! By October 28th six new meat inspectors had been appointed, and they destroyed in one week 496 animals, weighing 145,345 pounds. The Federal Government employs in the packing-houses of the entire country a total of 411 inspectors; and during the year 1904 these inspectors condemned 19,097 carcasses, an average of 367 per week, or less than one per week for each inspector. During one week, as we have seen, the eight or nine new appointees of the city of Chicago condemned 496 animals, or an average of over fifty for each inspector! The 411 Government inspectors passed a total of 104,203,753 carcasses; and assuming that each inspector was on duty eight hours a day for 300 days, he examined and certified to the good condition of 105 animals an hour, or nearly two a minute-a calculation for the entire country, which gives about the same result as that of Dr. Jaques for the inspection in Chicago. In the bulletin of the Chicago Board of Health for September 23, 1905, we are told what happened in the stock-yards when the city inspection so suddenly woke up:
   Among these animals were six cattle that had been passed by the Government inspectors. Two cattle were found last week by the Department inspectors that had been passed by the Government inspectors after the evidences of tuberculosis had been trimmed out. The city inspectors destroyed these cattle. The Government inspectors refused to allow the city meat inspectors to remove glands and other organs suspected of being diseased, for the purpose of microscopic examination by the laboratory bacteriologists.
At the close of the Spanish War there was held a court of inquiry which took testimony that shed a flood of light upon packing-house methods. I quote a few facts which were brought out dealing with this question of the efficiency of the Federal inspection, concerning which Mr. Armour boasts so boldly. In the course of "The Jungle" I described how "downers," that is, cattle which have been injured or killed in transit, are slaughtered at night, and how the big packing-houses have special elevators upon which to lift them to the "killing-beds." Dr. George Lytle, an assistant inspector, on duty at Swift's and Armour's, testified that he left the packing-house at about half past five in the afternoon; that he went on at seven o'clock the next morning; and that during the thirteen or fourteen hours between he was not there, nor was any one else connected with the bureau there, and that the room was not "secured or locked or fastened in any way." Dr. Lytle also admitted that the inspectors had no authority to prevent the use of chemicals in the preserving of meat. There was brought into evidence a letter from Dr. D. E. Salmon, chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry in Washington, which letter stated explicitly that "the inspection of live animals and meat products by this bureau is made before and at the time of slaughter to determine the disease, or announce an unwholesome condition of the animal or meat at that time. The stamps which are affixed to the packages are simply to indicate that an inspection as stated above has been made, and is no guarantee that the meat has been properly cured and packed."
Let the reader realize the full significance of this fact, and the light which it throws upon the system of inspection upon which Mr. Armour congratulates the American people. In a pamphlet put out by the Kentucky State Food Control Department occurs the following paragraph:
   This [Government] stamp was intended by Congress to show that the animal has been passed by the veterinary inspector as fit for slaughter, and the carcass as fit for packing, having in mind the physiological wholesomeness only. But the public has been educated by continuous advertisement to believe that this unqualified "Meat Inspection Stamp" guarantees the product against all forms of unwholesomeness and adulteration, when the facts are, meats bearing this stamp often contain antiseptics, aniline dyes, and such other adulterations as the packer may find profitable, thereby making this unqualified stamp of the Federal Government one of the grossest forms of food misbranding.
In the course of the testimony before the court, the chief men of Armour & Co. admitted that the "canned roast beef" which they furnished to our soldiers during the Spanish War had first been boiled to make "extracts"; and we see that the Federal inspection is powerless to prevent that. I have charged, and I charge here again, that the socalled "potted ham" and "deviled ham" sold by Armour & Co. consist of the old dry waste ends of smoked beef, ground up with potato skins, with the hard cartilaginous gullets of beef, and with the udders of cows, dyed to prevent their showing white. And the Federal inspection has no power to prevent that! The Federal inspection has no power to say whether or not any measures shall be taken to see that poisoned rats are not ground up in the sausage meat, as man after man in the yards told me that he had seen; it has no power to prevent the "doctoring” of spoiled hams with all sorts of chemicals; to prevent the preserving of sausage with borax and salicylic acid, and the dyeing of it to save the time and expense incidental to smoking! It has no power to prevent the adulteration of sausages with "potato flour," the by-product of the manufacture of potato-alcohol; or to prevent the adulteration of lard with beef fat, tallow and lard stearin, paraffin and cottonseed oil. Does Mr. Armour deny that all these things which I have named are done in his establishment? If he does deny it, I will refer him to the Tenth Biennial Report of the Minnesota State Dairy and Food Commissioner, in which, on page 173, the "Shield Leaf Lard" of Armour & Co. is officially branded as "illegal"; and again, on page 175, the "Lard," and on page 176, the "Vegetol," and on page 182, the "Shield Lard" are described in the same way. What has Mr. Armour to say to that? Mr. Armour advertises extensively his "Veribest" brands of potted meats. In the Bulletin of the Dairy and Food Division of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, for November 15, 1905, I find that Armour & Co.'s "Veribest" potted ham is declared, as a result of analyses by the State chemist, to be "preserved." What has Mr. Armour to say to that? Similarly his "Frankfurter Sausage," purchased in open market in Altoona, Pa., was found to be "preserved"; similarly his "Minced Ham," purchased in Greenburg and in Pittsburg, and his potted ham, purchased in Lancaster. In the Kentucky pamphlet previously quoted are some cases reported to the courts in September and October, 1905, and among them are Mr. Armour's "Star Sausage" and "Oleomargarine," both preserved with "boric acid." In Bulletin No. 63 of the North Dakota Agricultural College, I find the following among the meats labeled "illegal," as containing either borax or sulphites: Armour's "Sliced Star Brand" of dried beef, Armour's "White Label Brand" of sliced dried beef, Armour's "Gold Brand" breakfast bacon, Armour's bologna sausage, and again Armour's "Gold Brand" breakfast bacon. The report continues: "The question is asked as to the amount of these preservatives present in meats. In ham, dried beef, and like cured products we have found from five to fifteen grains of boric acid per pound of meat. In sausages, bolognas, hamburger steak, etc., we have found from twenty grains to fifty grains of boric acid per pound." In the Bulletin of the North Carolina State Board of Agriculture for December, 1904, I find the "Oxford Smoked" chipped beef of Armour & Co. containing salicylic acid, and the "Shield Brand" dried chipped beef of the Armour Canning Company, containing salicylic acid. In the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Ohio Dairy and Food Commissioner, I find the pork and sausage from Armour & Co. analyzed as preserved with borax and adulterated with starch. In the Monthly Bulletin of the Indiana State Board of Health for November, 1905, I find three different brands of Armour & Co.'s sausage containing borax, also one brand of "Leberwurst." According to the New York Health Journal "borax and boric acid have been proven by French investigators to cause deterioration of the blood-corpuscles on continued use, so that now in that country it is no longer permitted to be mixed with butter as a preservative." Dr. Wiley, the Government chemist, made a practical test of them upon his "poison-squad," and after two years of exhaustive experiment he made a report summarized in the press as follows:
   The results obtained from the experiments show that even in doses not exceeding a half gram (7 1/2 grains) a day, boric acid and borax as preservatives are prejudicial to health when consumed for a long time. The safe rule is to exclude these preservatives from foods for general consumption. When mixed with food they are absorbed into the circulation from the intestinal canal. If continued for a long time in quantities not exceeding a half-grain per day they cause occasional periods of loss of appetite, bad feeling, fulness in the head, and distress in the stomach. If given in larger and increasing doses, these symptoms are more rapidly developed and accentuated with a slight clouding of the mental processes. When increased to three grams a day the doses sometimes cause nausea and vomiting.
In the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Ohio Dairy and Food Commissioner, page 110, Mr. Armour's "Berlin Ham" is branded as colored with aniline dye; a discovery which the reader will not fail to connect with my statement concerning the grinding up and dyeing of the udders of cows and the gullets of beef! At an exhibition given before the National Association of Stewards at Philadelphia a few weeks ago, three dogs were shown which had been fed on colored foods, and had lost flesh and become weak. After a fifteen days' diet of artificially colored foods, a St. Bernard dog lost thirty-two pounds. One of these dogs was scarcely able to stagger across the stage, and the Philadelphia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was asked to stop the experiments!
Writing in a magazine of large circulation and influence, and having the floor all to himself, Mr. Armour spoke serenely and boastfully of the quality of his meat products, and challenged the world to impeach his integrity, but when he was brought into court charged with crime by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he spoke in a different tone, and to a different purport; he said "guilty." He pleaded this to a criminal indictment for selling "preserved" minced ham in Greenburg, and paid the fine of $50 and costs. He pleaded guilty again in Shenandoah, Pa., on June 16, 1905, to the criminal charge of selling adulterated "blockweirst"; and again he paid the fine of $50 and costs. Why should Mr. Armour be let off with fines which are of less consequence to him than the price of a postage stamp to you or me, instead of going to jail like other convicted criminals who do not happen to be millionaires?
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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