Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1899-11-22
The Hog as He Was and as He Is.

II we look back at the originals of the
various animals which man has taken to
domesticate and improve by careful Sc
lection and breeding, in no instance do
we find that he has made so radical a
change between the original type and
the improved product as in the case of
the hog. Taking the wild boar
of the Black forest of Germany as a
fair type Of the original hog, we find him
a curious beast. He has an enormous
head. armed with savage tusks, a pow
erful snout, heavy forequarters, light
hams, long legs, remarkable muscular
development, minimum of fat. The
big head and those ugly looking tusks
fitted him to hold his own with any wild
beast of the forest; that powerful snout
enabled him to plow up the earth and
turn over fallen trees in his search for
roots and grubs for food; those long legs
and that muscular body fitted him to
run fast and for long time, to escape
his enemies; by nature he was forest
tramp with no fixed abiding place, roam
ing hither and thither in pursuit of food,
his food almost exclusively vegetable in
its character. The natural law of selec-
tion governed the propagation of his
species wholly, and none save the best
fighters and the strongest males became
sires Of the herd. This hog, so far as we
know, never had the cholera.
Man took him, confined him in close
quarters, bred the snout and the big ears
off him, shortened his legs so that he
could not run and hardly walk, reduced
the size of his bones one-half, stripped
the muscle from his carcass and loaded
him down with fat, put a ring in his
nose to keep him from roofing, deprived
him of all exercise and stuffed him with
unnatural and fat forming foods, bred
him from immature sires and dams and
by an unnatural and forcing process
sought to mature in eight months an
an animal which the Creator intended
should have two years to develop in.
Man further deprived his civilized hog
of his natural heterogeneous foods and
stuffed him with the otfal of slaughter
houses and the excrement Of of feeding
cattle, made ascavenger pure and simple
of him. Then he wanted hogs and more
hogs until the result represented little
besides purely corn and hog type of
agriculture and civilization. Then ma
ture kicked and entered protest, as she
is wont to under such fragrant violations
of her laws, and this artificial hog, the
improved Poland China of today, a
creature the Lord never made and would
not know, without constitutional vigor
and wholly degraded by the process Of
evolution, just lies down and dies, for
there is every reason why he should and
none why he should not. II the horse
or the sheep or the horned cattle OF our
farms had been in like manner bred
away from original types and original
environment and conditions as the hog
has been, the same penalties OF vio-
lated law would ensue in their cases.
From our standpoint it is useless to talk
of remedies for the diseases which carry
off the hogs Of the country by the mil
lion each year. The cause of the trou-
BILE lies far, far back OF modern diagno-
sis and beyond the reach OF any method
of treatment. The hog cholera is ma
lures penalty for violated natural law.