The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-09
WHERE BLOOD FLOWS.
Interesting Facts About the Great
Slaughter Houses Of Chicago.

An Interesting Description of Beef
and Pork-packing Embellishments
That Supply the Country With Meat.
Some Interesting Notes About the
Fair-What Particularly Arrests the
Attention of the Fair Visitors.
Chicago, Oct. 6.--"The beastly pros
perity,'' which so forcibly presented it.
self to the luminous intelligence of Mr..
Matthew Arnold, during his visit to Chi
cago, is nowhere more obvious than at the
stock tyards-those vast shambles into
whose CORY depths daily disappears that
interminable procession of swine and
beeves that has given the Windy City a
reputation and sanguinary SAVIOR of its
own. l do not recommend these stock
yards as congenial resort for persons of
refined susceptiDilities, nor do commend
the curiosity that leads delicate maidens
ard immaculate matrons to trip serenely
over running rivulets of blood in search
of excitement.
But the man who to the strength of his
curiosity unites a stronger stomach. will
nowhere find a more forcible illustration
of the methods by which Chicago has
made of itself the slaughter house
of the country and the glass
of greediness and the mould
of Mammon. No man, in a word, should
leave Chicago without leaving his card at
one of those great packing houses whose
towering buildings line the streets and
darken the courts of the city within
city. | am not much in love with detail,
and l am convinced that on this point [
have the majority with me, but as the
magnitude of the business carried on
here can be comprehended only by pro-
logue of prosaic detail, few figures are
necessary.
The Union Stock Yards - which
may be reached by way of Root and
years ago as private enterprise, and
passed few years since into the hands of
an English syndicate.
THE NUMBER OF SLAUGHTERED ANIMALS.
In the last twenty-seven years the
yards have handled ia, 034, SOB
hogs; 6O,O42 ,5S7 cattle; 1885, lis
horses; %, 237, 735 sheep; and l.
asa, 1893 calves-a total of 265, 1874, 1886: the
greater portion Of which have been
slaughtered here by the packers, who
rent space of the concern. 10000 men are
required to carry on the business of the
Yards, and the curious visitor, passing
slaughter house, finds himself in a broad
street, with wide wooden sidewalks
backed by great pens and sheep folds. In
every direction run cross streets and
more pens; railroads tracks cross
the yards at every available point,
swinging gates swing to and fro, one
street is shut off from another, and from
some distant pen pours great herd of
Texas steers or fat western hogs en-
route to the ''chutes" which are to con-
duct them to the knife. The gates are
opened, the cattle disappear, the crowd
that has collected melts away and presses
down into the shadow of the great build
ings below u.s.
All this is below the "arch," between
which and the street are the Transit
hotel, the lunch counter, the restaurant,
the offices of the stock yards paper, the
Daily Sun and that foremost of stock
raisers' papers, the Drovers Journal.
Below the arch" on the left is the great
Exchange building, with it's restaurant,
its dark passages and hurrying throug
of buyers and sellers, stockmen
and commission dealers. To the right
stretches away the interminabe vista of
pens and confused sea of white horns
and shaggy heads, men on wiry Texas
ponies, great drays loaded down with
hay, low carts bearing off the dead and
wounded, and over all dense pail of yell
low smoke, roar of many voices and
the trampling of thousand hoofs.
THE GENERAL OFFICES.
The general offices of the great house
of Swift & Company are the first to be
reached by the visitor and, as, like all
others here, they are open to the public,
the big elevators are full of the open
eyed worlds fair tourists. The day | first
visited this great packing house | was &C
companied by well-known Florida poiiti-
clan upon whose unaccostomed eyes the
sight of 800 pound steers and 400 pound
ers in the shape of hogs burst with great
force. What did we not see that
memorable day, from the vast counting
room, with hundreds of clerks, to the
immaculate purity of the butterine fac
tory, which turned out 81 900 pounds that
Saturday!
In all these slaughter houses the OBJ
jective point is the same; most people like
horrors, and the shambleS are always
surrounded by curious throng. Through
a long, ascending 'chute' or viaduct the
hogs are driven to the roof of the build
ing; a gate falls, small and dirty boy
clasps around the porkers hind leg a
chain; the hog rises into the air; another
chain falls, another hog rises and the
windlass revolves necessarily. The
chains are attached to an in
down which they slide in a never-ending
procession. AS the hogs pass the butcher
they are stuck; the red blood gushes, the
spectators in the greasy gallery above
cape and the hogs go steadily on their
journey through the great scalder, through
long lines of men with scrapers; hoses are
played on them, swabs are used on them.
the expert who eviscerates at the rate of
two minute placidly continues his hor-
rible task, and the carcasses slide on and
on from one floor to another until they
reach the cold storage rooms in the base
ment in the shape of sides, "frankfurters,
head cheese, and heaven knows what.
On the day of our visit 1000 hogs were
killed by Swift & Company, and and it
was not much of a day for hogs either.
THE WAY HORNED CATTLE ARE TREATED.
AS it is with swine, so it is with beeves. |
Confined in pens, knocked in the head, |
believing, paving, frantic, they are |
tipped up by floors that revolve and |
dumped beneath chains that hoist, |
against knives that cut, fay and dismem- |
Der. No man can long endure this scene, |
with its cutters of blood and great cars, |
shaped like coffee mills, of steaming in !