The comet. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1877-1882, 1880-10-02
Chicago Hog killing.

Charles Dudley Warner conc!t,,les
as follows "Some Notes of .TTavel,n in
the latest issue Of the Springfield
Mass mOnthlEIIftGood Company :"
The Uniore Stock Yards Company is
a gigantic corporation with a capital
OF tive millions of dollars. 1t has au
area of ground of about three hundred
and sixty acres, and on fair day one
may overlook in its yards and pens
about three hundred and twenty-five
acres of cattle and hogs. This area is
penetrated by the tracks of sixteen
railroads, with forty miles of rails.
In this yard twelve hundred cars of
stock can be unloaded and taken care
of daily. The yards have fifteen
miles OF macadamized streets, and
forty miles of drainage and watering
pipes. In this enclosure is a mann
moth hotel of the first class, vast
Exchange Building, containing all the
offices OF the company and over hun
dred rooms for commission firms, IL
board of trade room, a telegraph office
reading-room, saloon, newsstand, bar
ber's shop, and various other conven
lencles; with a restaurant sixty feet
by eighty, handsome room, made
cheerful by profusion of growing
plants and flowers in bloom, and vocal
with the singing Of scores of birds of
many species in cages large and small.
The establishment has its own bank,
in which the transactions are enorm-
Gus, and its daily newspaper dew Oted
to the arrival, death and value of ami
mails, which has the stock news of all
the world. All the talk in this little
world is on one subject. Life seems
to be mere question of receiving and
dispatching cattle and hogs; its he
roes are those who have collected or
killed the most hogs. A stranger
who is guiltless of the blood of these
animals feels that he has led trivial
existence. But if it is a place of death |
and transit, it is a place of repose |
Here at the.end of their long pilgrim
age, may lie down at rest in one night |
twenty thousand cattle, one hundred |
and fifty thousand sheep, and
thousand horses in stables.
TO this great depot and mausoleum
are vending every day in the year vast
herds from far Oregon, Lower Califor-
mia, from Texas, slowly feeding their
way through many months, until |
they come to the railways these vast |
and constant streams are reinforced by
lesser rills of live stock from all the
western country, until the highways
Of rails are gorged with the living
freight, and the believing, squealing
whose good health and fit
ness only insure them their speedier
leath, are dumped into this plain of
destruction to feed the Unsuitable NAV
If the public. 1t is a transaction of
fit to make an angel weep.
During the year 1879 there were re-
,eived into these yards ,21j, 732 cattle
J, 44S, $3.50 hogs, 325, 119 sheep, and TO-
-73 horses. The human mind is happily
o constituted that it cannot take in
tx millions of hogs at once. 1t re-
uses to believe the fact that a million
# these disagreeable animals came to-
ether in convention here in one
month of January.
What is the fate of these unfortu- .
lates? Sausages and hams, mostly.
'Ome Of them travel farther, but swift [
cath is merciful here to the majority. |
his is the place where twenty thou
and hogs IRE done TO death i'm ten ,
ours. ,
In my recollection Of New England, 1
he killing of a hog was an event
'hich occupied the attention of a |
for day. In one of Q
ne great packing establishments, one +
the buildings of which covers four +
eres of ground, in the month of June a
(which is not a good month for \
onors-I had a Vision Of Sudden o
'eath. A man with mild expression, a
cool eye, a quick hand ard a sharp b
nlfe, was killing seven hogs a minute. v
abiding i'm serenity each squealing d
angler as IL came within his reach. n
lspended by one leg, and gravitating h
own the fatal wire. And I watched ii
he long line on that railway Of death.
into something more life
IS and disinlegrated at every station +
a hundred def hands, until in the Y
r vista / saw suspended acres Of e.
Dirk, all the noise and protest being il
ken out Of it now, and beyond that h
res OF susages, in coils like the he il
inning Of a new life. Before the :
lueal has fairly gone out Of the poor q
rute he i as thoroughly distributed n
. the mail in a post-office. n
One does not witness all this vast =,
IOvement Of the raw material with :,
lt a new impression Of the energy N
ld rapacity Of man. D