The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 7, 1925, Page 8

The Stockyards asked a worker where the stock- yards are and how I could best reach them. He tells me by the street car line and says that I could read in the car with tranquility—“As 8001 as we get near it, you will smell it right away.” _ What he said was true. A terrific, pervading stench envel- oped the car. into the nose, that penetrates the brain and remains there a long time. One feels it for days. When one eats, when one goes in the street, when one sees meat. Seen from outside, the neighbor- hood of the stockyards would not at- tract special notice. A broad street. Animation. The offices of the stock- yards. The cattle market. Officials. Police. Inspection stations. for the cattle. A division for the department of agriculture. In the street, mounted messengers gallop by, and I notice also a saddle factory. “Suddenly a loud bellow pierces the air. A dead ox in a cart. Bloody and dirty. And another dead ox. It may have died on the way. The stench which infects the air over a stretch of ten blocks, grows stronger and stronger in the broad street. And the number of mounted messengers grows continuatly. The rhythm of life increases from one mo- ment to the next. Now a-dline of carts crosses the street—the carts are like prairie dogs. The line of carts is loaded with manure which is trans- ported from the cattle pens for freighting. All of a sudden a horrible bellowing makes the air tremble. This is not the bellow of cattle pasturing on the open prairies of the wild west. The animals seem to feel that what is happening here is the beginning of the end. The bellowing spreads. It mix- es with other sounds coming out of the depths. The cattle are crowded in pens. The watering troughs are connected by canals. Cattle, cattle everywhere. All of America's cattle seem to have been driven here. And now the cat- tle stand here. Penned up. Bellow- ing. Waiting for the last moment. There is no rescue from these en- closures. Men come. Terrible to look upon with their elubs. These men push in among the cattle. The closely crowded cattle. And they swing their hard clubs. The defense- less, abandoned beasts look up at them with fright in their eyes. Now comes a troop of cowboys. Noisy. Yelling. The cowboys yell here in Chicago the same as in the wild west. The cattle hesitate a mo- ment at first, then they rear. They defend themselves, and their bellow- ing breaks out like a veritable hurri- cane, The cattle are in commotion. They strain in the direction of a bridge. The bridge bears a resemblance to the bridges of Venice. It connect the two sidewalks and vaults over the street in an arch. This is the bridge of sighs. A cowboy yells. One of the cattle bellows. The many cattle trot in that direction. Even the bridge seems to have acquired a voice. It as if the tones do not break ou the animals, but that the bridge self were wailing, bellowing, sobbing. The cattle push on. ee A few minutes later the railroad eae A stench that bursts’ If a sheep is picked out by the man’s eye, it is lost. The animals are driven from the enclosures. The sheep push street. The odor becomes unbearable. Here is the’assembling point for hogs. The grunting does not stop for a moment. Just as piercing as their odor. The hogs get nothing to eat before their slaughter, for it is easier to work on them this way. The hogs are hungry, they burrow eagerly in the ground. They too, are filled with uneasiness. ‘Death hangs here in the air. A yelling bursts out. The hogs start moving. They are counted. The line seems never to end. It is the lastroad. . . The hogs hasten forward in the street. * * # Beasts beasts. A jumble of people. One is tired from seeing and hear- ing. Beasts. os: + DOAntss 5. 67% And all are being killed, * ¢ #@ What is the fate of the hog? We go into the building. The scene: We stand on a bridge. Under- neath us a wheel. A wheel that nev- er stands still. And a sound cuts thru the air. In the din which is overwhelming, this very sound itself becomes part of the scene. It comes out of the depths. A shrieking sound of self-defense, which has not the slightest bit in common with the sound a hog makes, but seems much more as if coming from a child. A child, a little child, which is in the neighboring house, and whose shrill, bitter entreaty gives the same feeling as if on a feverish night one is tor- mented by the impression that a crim- inal is just getting ready to cut a child’s throat. The hog is hanging in the air. The wheel turms.: . oesovias oui The hog Js, seen esittd » the turning ot the Binys ly Si wheel. And chains hang down from the wheel. A Negro seizes the hog’s hind legs One does not see how the hog came down. A cry breaks out now. The hog defends itself. And the wheel revolves. Revolves without a stop and pulis the animal along. Now it is in the air with the hind legs up- ward. And it suddenly is struck dumb. It is bound against the wheel and is dumb. A second hog. Ceaselessly, one after the other, without interruption. Thirty head a minute. Two sec- onds are enough for one hog. The wheel revolves. Does not stop an in- stant. The chain pulls past, the ever- revolving chain which comes ever back again. The ‘stunned animal with head hanging towards the ground reaches the first man. No halt is made her either. The wheel revolves. The chain pulls past. Rolls on. The eter- nal chain. Together with the hog. It is still living, but is completely stunned. It gets the dea*h blow from i ze ef it als forward in the} bo heard a last rattle. Here, however, His face, overalls. blood. From the enclosure nearby can still His boots. His cap. His Everything here drips with caly blood prevails. * * &* The hog is already dead now. The chain swings off, and the animal to- gether with it. A long way still lies ahead of it. On this floor it has to move further on along a winding route. The men sit here along the chain in two long rows. The dangling hog moves past them. Six hundred men work in this one big room. The room seems to stretch off into infinity. Every worker has a single motion to perform. Here, too, there is no pause. Everyone must do his own work with the same speed with which the hog is slaughtered. Thirty move- ments in one minute. The same move- ment thirty times. Exact to a hair. The hog moves in quick measure from one to the other. The second man slits open the belly, the third has to make a further cut; “then the intestines have their turn. At one point the bristles are removed. At the next the dirt is swept away . . Further than that the hog is dis- posed of in various ways. One part goes entirely to the refri- gerating.room. Another is cut up ‘nd dressed. To the animals. them- selves this should be of no coneern. * * ” The chain reaches one floor high- er up, still loaded with the hogs. Those which reach the highest floor undergo a complete process of treat- ment. On this floor the hogs are divided into pféces. This work too, goes on ai a breathless pace. Here they work with axes. Moving tables advance the meat further on. The axes whizz downwards. Always on the same place. The fat is cut away. Every piece has the same shape. From there everything goes to the salting rooms, where the separate pideés Pethain “OifFty-six hours, fh the packing rooms again a flood of workers. Here too, each one per- forms a single movement . . . with- out a let-up, without a pause, one and the same movement. ... Swift & Co. . . Best quality ... That is the way the meat is adver- tised. , The meat .. . the bloody .. . bloody meat. . . eee The cattle are slaughtered by a dif- ferent method, but the essential does not change. Fourteen cattle are handled at once. Here too, the way leads over a bridge from upon which the whole room can be surveyed. Here too, the men are bloody. And the floor is bloody. The axe is bloody. Fourteen cattle are awaiting their turn. There are two cattle in each of seven enclosures. They do not bel- low. At least their bellowing is not audible. It is so far off. Hurry up! Everything is ready. The chains. The people. The axes. Twelve o'clock is near. The men are already tired. The big, broad-shouldered men drag themselves on, bent over. Their The poor men are dead tired. But the working time is not yet over. Another bit must still be done. Their mouths move constantly. They chew tobacco and spit from time to time. Strained waiting A signal sounds The trapdoors fly open. The cat- g § Se nae Se enna ener c eS By JOHN LASSEN In vain, Still they do not give up without a struggle. That would be contrary to the nature of a living being. The will to live, which every creature has. The ox stumbles. The men start up. The axe strikes downward. The animal still writhes. It is all in vain. : : Blood spurts. Hot blood. It streams over the men. A bright red. Blood runs from the axes. Blood runs from the hands of the men. Poor, tired men drag themselves bloody. thru the blood. . . Everything here smells of blood. Even the chewing tobacco tastes of blood. Even the spit seems to be blood, The room exhales blood. And the poor bloody human. bodies moving about the bloody animal bodies. are ever inhaling the bloody air. The beasts, the people, the room, everything, everything exhales blood. The chain clinks. The bloody animal’s body swings up into the air. The tired, bloody men’s bodies pounce upon the animal. They slit open its belly with a single motion. The intestines burst out. * ¢ @¢ A man fetches off the intestines in a small cart. The excrement, the dirt, which fell out of the body thru the opening, is shoveled together. The intestines are carried away in small carts; the animals are skin- ned. All who work here, are already tired, very, very tired. They can hardly drag themselves forward. The piercing, heavy smell of blood settles on the chest. . * @e¢ The work goes on in rhythm, The fast work. * Even we are tired, altho we have only looked on. Now it is the turn of the refrigerat- one pulls: wp: nm Man cold here. We seem accustomed al- ready to the smell of blood and flesh. The refrigerating room offers a hell- ish sight. It is almost impossible to see the end of the immense room. The meat hangs from hooks. The bloody meat. One sees nothing else than meat, fresh meat, as it had just been hung up. Bloody and red. An endless mass. Meat, meat, meat. . * * 8 Noon rings. Luach. The steel arms of the tired, bloody people sink down. Then faintness takes possession of their muscles. The meal is eaten in the building. The dining room is there. The, smell of blood prevails where the people work; the smell of ee On the-floor below there is gE. 2 RF ee fii] a! - : eit ;