The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1875-11-19

a
place in the world as portion of the
vitalized creation and becomes so much
bacon, so many spareribs and such
quantity of lard. As the process in
wolves the pei sonality of the hog to
some extent, we will begin with him
i'm his living, breathing form. He IS
contained in an immense pen on the
ground floor of The building and there
are a good many of him, say five or
six hundred ut time. The pOrcine
Crunters having had their doom duly
sealed. spoken their "last words" and
tearsrlEy handed around among their
ailing and spared companions few
locks of bristles and mementoes, are
driven up gangway to the slaughter
pen. where an able bodied colored
gentleman claps chain around their
hind legs, one at time. ano the pros
sure of a steam lever jerks the strng-
Cling and loudly squealing pig into
fhe air. He is now suspended on
hovizout.d bar about thirty feet long.
The chain by which he is suspended
slides along the bar, and before he
fairly cumprefscrsds the situation an
other man, CORY to his very armpits,
plunges knife into his throat, and taps
the life current. He squeals and kicks
about half second, and before the
vital spark has fled" has beside him
former comrade of the pen, who has
met with the same misfortune, and,
with him, is on the way to meet his
Gadarene ancestors There is a con-
stant line of stuck hogs passing down
this elevated bar, and when they get to
the end of it they are dead, and are
pumped into an enormous tank OF
boiling water The great personal
pride Of a pig-sticker is to Lave very
little if any squealing on the part of n
hog after he Introduces his knife into
his jugular- There was sub on
deck yesterday afternoon, and the pigs
squealed a good deal, 50 much, in fact,
that his assistants were disposed to
complain.
The hogs take their post t-mortem
warm bath, into which they are plunged
from the iron rod, eight and ten at
time, and, by means Ofa revolving iron
skid operated by steam at one ena Of
the tank, are thrown out singly upon
long wooden table, on which they are
scraped bv twelve or fifteen men.
They start in rough, shaggy and dirty
ut one end Of the table, and reach the
other end as clean and white as may
be. At the far end of the table one
man cuts Off the head, another hops
the bloodless trunk over to gang
below, who 'gut" him, hang him up
and cool him off with stream of water.
The beheading process is new here, we
believe, and comes from acephalous
Chicago 1t is claimed that by cut
ting off the head the hog is more
speedily cooled, and that the lard,
tongue and head pieces are got at Il
day in advance Of the old method.
The hams are also faced and the
inside fat taken out while the hog is
still warm, instead of waiting foi it to
cool as formerly, and the innovation is
said TO be very advantageous. When
the heads have been cut Oft, the entrails
and fatty substance taken out and the
hams dressed, the cleaned hogs are
hung on runaways between the joist
of the drying room and rHr into that
department to cool. Nearly all the
houses on the avenue will "hang" about
$500 hogs on a floor. In this room,
when the hogs are sufficiently cool
they are cut up into all the various
forms of pork-hams, shoulders, mid
dies, &c, and the men who do the
cutting use their knives and saws with
the skill and precision of anatomists,
cleaning bone when it IS to be thrown
away that hungry dog would pass it
by in disgust. Since the adoption of
the new method of taking off the heads
and facing" the hams i'm the killing
room, the cutters work very fast and
to much better advantage. To cut up
thousand hogs is now considered
only fair days work for one man,
and in the busy season even more than
that amount of work is exacted All
of the houses are supplied with huge
iron watts extending from the killing
room to the floor below, in which the
fatty portions Of the hog are boiled or
steamed into lard An improvement
known as "Caldwell's Manhead,' - has
recently been made TO these vats. 1t
Is a manhead in the centre of the bot
tom of the tank instead Of at the side
as in the old tanks, and its utility
is that when the cooking process is
complete it is opened and the 'chow-
der" or "slush," as the refuse of the
lard is called, drops ont at once. The
old tanks had to cool so as to allow a
man To go into them and shovel out
the "chowder," and that generally re-
quired two or three hours When the
lard is done" it is pumped into an
elevated galvanized receiver called a
zig gag" some thirty 10y twelve feet
square. and traversed by cutters ag-
gregating in length nearly 400 feet
The lard having passed through these
cutters passes through a long pipe to
another receiver, from which it is
drawn into the tierces i'm which it finds
its way to market The bristles 90 To