Chapter 3

by Upton Sinclair

　　In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had manyacquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employedby Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment.Jokubas had never tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he couldget some of his friends a job through this man. It was agreed, afterconsultation, that he should make the effort with old Antanas andwith Jonas. Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself,unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was not mistakenin this. He had gone to Brown's and stood there not more than halfan hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering abovethe rest, and signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was briefand to the point:"Speak English?""No; Lit-uanian." (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.)"Job?""Je." (A nod.)"Worked here before?""No 'stand." (Signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss. Vigorousshakes of the head by Jurgis.)"Shovel guts?""No 'stand." (More shakes of the head.)"Zarnos. Pagaiksztis. Szluofa!" (Imitative motions.)"Je.""See door. Durys?" (Pointing.)"Je." "To-morrow, seven o'clock. Understand? Rytoj! Prieszpietys! Septyni!""Dekui, tamistai!" (Thank you, sir.) And that was all. Jurgis turnedaway, and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumphswept over him, and he gave a yell and a jump, and started off on a run.He had a job! He had a job! And he went all the way home as if uponwings, and burst into the house like a cyclone, to the rage of thenumerous lodgers who had just turned in for their daily sleep.Meantime Jokubas had been to see his friend the policeman, and receivedencouragement, so it was a happy party. There being no more to be donethat day, the shop was left under the care of Lucija, and her husbandsallied forth to show his friends the sights of Packingtown. Jokubas didthis with the air of a country gentleman escorting a party of visitorsover his estate; he was an old-time resident, and all these wonders hadgrown up under his eyes, and he had a personal pride in them. The packersmight own the land, but he claimed the landscape, and there was no one tosay nay to this. They passed down the busy street that led to the yards. It was stillearly morning, and everything was at its high tide of activity.A steady stream of employees was pouring through the gate--employeesof the higher sort, at this hour, clerks and stenographers and such.For the women there were waiting big two-horse wagons, which set offat a gallop as fast as they were filled. In the distance there was heardagain the lowing of the cattle, a sound as of a far-off ocean calling.They followed it, this time, as eager as children in sight of a circusmenagerie--which, indeed, the scene a good deal resembled. They crossedthe railroad tracks, and then on each side of the street were the pensfull of cattle; they would have stopped to look, but Jokubas hurriedthem on, to where there was a stairway and a raised gallery, from whicheverything could be seen. Here they stood, staring, breathless with wonder.There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and more than halfof it is occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye canreach there stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled--so manycattle no one had ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black,white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowingbulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and fierce,long-horned Texas steers. The sound of them here was as of all thebarnyards of the universe; and as for counting them--it would have takenall day simply to count the pens. Here and there ran long alleys, blockedat intervals by gates; and Jokubas told them that the number of these gateswas twenty-five thousand. Jokubas had recently been reading a newspaperarticle which was full of statistics such as that, and he was very proudas he repeated them and made his guests cry out with wonder. Jurgis toohad a little of this sense of pride. Had he not just gotten a job, andbecome a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvelous machine?Here and there about the alleys galloped men upon horseback, booted,and carrying long whips; they were very busy, calling to each other,and to those who were driving the cattle. They were drovers and stockraisers, who had come from far states, and brokers and commissionmerchants, and buyers for all the big packing houses.Here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle, and therewould be a parley, brief and businesslike. The buyer would nod or drophis whip, and that would mean a bargain; and he would note it in hislittle book, along with hundreds of others he had made that morning.Then Jokubas pointed out the place where the cattle were driven to beweighed, upon a great scale that would weigh a hundred thousand pounds atonce and record it automatically. It was near to the east entrance thatthey stood, and all along this east side of the yards ran the railroadtracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle. All night longthis had been going on, and now the pens were full; by tonight they wouldall be empty, and the same thing would be done again."And what will become of all these creatures?" cried Teta Elzbieta."By tonight," Jokubas answered, "they will all be killed and cut up;and over there on the other side of the packing houses are morerailroad tracks, where the cars come to take them away."There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, theirguide went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head ofcattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep--which meantsome eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year.One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the tide,as it set in the direction of the packing houses. There were groups ofcattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about fifteen feetwide, raised high above the pens. In these chutes the stream of animalswas continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to theirfate, all unsuspicious a very river of death. Our friends were notpoetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny;they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all. The chutes intowhich the hogs went climbed high up--to the very top of the distantbuildings; and Jokubas explained that the hogs went up by the power oftheir own legs, and then their weight carried them back through all theprocesses necessary to make them into pork."They don't waste anything here," said the guide, and then he laughedand added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticatedfriends should take to be his own: "They use everything about the hogexcept the squeal." In front of Brown's General Office building theregrows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bitof green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and hissqueal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humorthat you will find there.After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street,to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards. Thesebuildings, made of brick and stained with innumerable layers ofPackingtown smoke, were painted all over with advertising signs, fromwhich the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of manyof the torments of his life. It was here that they made those productswith the wonders of which they pestered him so--by placards that defacedthe landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in thenewspapers and magazines--by silly little jingles that he could not getout of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around everystreet corner. Here was where they made Brown's Imperial Hams and Bacon,Brown's Dressed Beef, Brown's Excelsior Sausages! Here was theheadquarters of Durham's Pure Leaf Lard, of Durham's Breakfast Bacon,Durham's Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer!Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other visitorswaiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them through theplace. They make a great feature of showing strangers through the packingplants, for it is a good advertisement. But Ponas Jokubas whisperedmaliciously that the visitors did not see any more than the packerswanted them to. They climbed a long series of stairways outside of thebuilding, to the top of its five or six stories. Here was the chute,with its river of hogs, all patiently toiling upward; there was a placefor them to rest to cool off, and then through another passageway theywent into a room from which there is no returning for hogs.It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors. At thehead there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference,with rings here and there along its edge. Upon both sides of this wheelthere was a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of theirjourney; in the midst of them stood a great burly Negro, bare-armed andbare-chested. He was resting for the moment, for the wheel had stoppedwhile men were cleaning up. In a minute or two, however, it began slowlyto revolve, and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work. They hadchains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the otherend of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, asthe wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft.At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek;the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back.The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at thetop of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailingdown the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another,and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling bya foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling,perilous to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the roomto hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There werehigh squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there wouldcome a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever,surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of thevisitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and thewomen would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to theirfaces, and the tears starting in their eyes.Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were goingabout their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made anydifference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by onewith a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs,with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at last each startedagain, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water.It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It wasporkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yetsomehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of thehogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they wereso very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights!They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury,as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded,impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage ofa tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughteringmachine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crimecommitted in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight andof memory.One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical,without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hogsqueal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there wasnowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, wherethey were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was aseparate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown,some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean,some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own,a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting andstrong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadowhung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenlyit had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless,remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it--it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simplyno existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life.And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whomthis hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonieshad a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him,reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of hissacrifice? Perhaps some glimpse of all this was in the thoughts of ourhumble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to go on with the rest of the party,and muttered: "Dieve--but I'm glad I'm not a hog!"The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then itfell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful machinewith numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size and shapeof the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly all of itsbristles removed. It was then again strung up by machinery, and sentupon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines of men,who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single thing tothe carcass as it came to him. One scraped the outside of a leg;another scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift stroke cutthe throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head, which fellto the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a slit downthe body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw cut thebreastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them out--and they also slid through a hole in the floor. There were men to scrapeeach side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean the carcassinside, to trim it and wash it. Looking down this room, one saw, creepingslowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in length; and for everyyard there was a man, working as if a demon were after him. At the end ofthis hog's progress every inch of the carcass had been gone over severaltimes; and then it was rolled into the chilling room, where it stayed fortwenty-four hours, and where a stranger might lose himself in a forest offreezing hogs.Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a governmentinspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck fortuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the manner of a manwho was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted by a fear that thehog might get by him before he had finished his testing. If you were asociable person, he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you,and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found intubercular pork; and while he was talking with you you could hardly be soungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched.This inspector wore a blue uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave anatmosphere of authority to the scene, and, as it were, put the stamp ofofficial approval upon the things which were done in Durham's.Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staringopenmouthed, lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forestof Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressedby several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he tookit all in guilelessly--even to the conspicuous signs demanding immaculatecleanliness of the employees. Jurgis was vexed when the cynical Jokubastranslated these signs with sarcastic comments, offering to take them tothe secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to be doctored.The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste materialswere treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and washed clean forsausage casings; men and women worked here in the midst of a sickeningstench, which caused the visitors to hasten by, gasping. To another roomcame all the scraps to be "tanked," which meant boiling and pumping offthe grease to make soap and lard; below they took out the refuse, and this,too, was a region in which the visitors did not linger. In still otherplaces men were engaged in cutting up the carcasses that had been throughthe chilling rooms. First there were the "splitters," the most expertworkmen in the plant, who earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and didnot a thing all day except chop hogs down the middle. Then there were"cleaver men," great giants with muscles of iron; each had two men toattend him--to slide the half carcass in front of him on the table,and hold it while he chopped it, and then turn each piece so that he mightchop it once more. His cleaver had a blade about two feet long, and henever made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his implementdid not smite through and dull itself--there was just enough force for aperfect cut, and no more. So through various yawning holes there slippedto the floor below--to one room hams, to another forequarters, to anothersides of pork. One might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms,where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke rooms, with theirairtight iron doors. In other rooms they prepared salt pork--there werewhole cellars full of it, built up in great towers to the ceiling. In yetother rooms they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels, and wrappinghams and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing them.From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the platformwhere freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out there andrealized with a start that he had come at last to the ground floor of thisenormous building.Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing ofbeef--where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into meat.Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one floor;and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to theworkmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from oneto another of these. This made a scene of intense activity, a picture ofhuman power wonderful to watch. It was all in one great room, like acircus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running over the center.Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet fromthe floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goadswhich gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatureswere prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving themno room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging,over the top of the pen there leaned one of the "knockers," armed witha sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The roomechoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kickingof the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the "knocker" passedon to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of thepen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid outto the "killing bed." Here a man put shackles about one leg, and pressedanother lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There werefifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple ofminutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then oncemore the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out ofeach pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men uponthe killing beds had to get out of the way.The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and neverforgotten. They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the run--at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a footballgame. It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his taskto do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific cuts,and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses, makingthese cuts upon each. First there came the "butcher," to bleed them;this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see it--only theflash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the man had dartedon to the next line, and a stream of bright red was pouring out upon thefloor. This floor was half an inch deep with blood, in spite of the bestefforts of men who kept shoveling it through holes; it must have madethe floor slippery, but no one could have guessed this by watching themen at work.The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost,however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was alwaysready. It was let down to the ground, and there came the "headsman,"whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three swift strokes.Then came the "floorsman," to make the first cut in the skin; and thenanother to finish ripping the skin down the center; and then half a dozenmore in swift succession, to finish the skinning. After they were through,the carcass was again swung up; and while a man with a stick examined theskin, to make sure that it had not been cut, and another rolled it tipand tumbled it through one of the inevitable holes in the floor, the beefproceeded on its journey. There were men to cut it, and men to split it,and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside. There were some with hosewhich threw jets of boiling water upon it, and others who removed the feetand added the final touches. In the end, as with the hogs, the finishedbeef was run into the chilling room, to hang its appointed time. The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows,labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors--andsome, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the signof the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the orthodox.And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the building,to see what became of each particle of the waste material that hadvanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the saltingrooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice meat wasprepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be eaten in allthe four corners of civilization. Afterward they went outside, wanderingabout among the mazes of buildings in which was done the work auxiliaryto this great industry. There was scarcely a thing needed in the businessthat Durham and Company did not make for themselves. There was a greatsteam power plant and an electricity plant. There was a barrel factory,and a boiler-repair shop. There was a building to which the grease waspiped, and made into soap and lard; and then there was a factory formaking lard cans, and another for making soap boxes. There was a buildingin which the bristles were cleaned and dried, for the making of haircushions and such things; there was a building where the skins were driedand tanned, there was another where heads and feet were made into glue,and another where bones were made into fertilizer. No tiniest particleof organic matter was wasted in Durham's. Out of the horns of thecattle they made combs, buttons, hairpins, and imitation ivory; out ofthe shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles,and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins andbuttons, before they made the rest into glue. From such things as feet,knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikelyproducts as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking,and bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a"wool pullery" for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachsof the pigs, and albumen from the blood, and violin strings from theill-smelling entrails. When there was nothing else to be done witha thing, they first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallowand grease, and then they made it into fertilizer. All these industrieswere gathered into buildings near by, connected by galleries andrailroads with the main establishment; and it was estimated that theyhad handled nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since the foundingof the plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago. If youcounted with it the other big plants--and they were now really allone--it was, so Jokubas informed them, the greatest aggregation of laborand capital ever gathered in one place. It employed thirty thousand men;it suppported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in itsneighborhood, and indirectly it supported half a million. It sent itsproducts to every country in the civilized world, and it furnished thefood for no less than thirty million people!To all of these things our friends would listen openmouthed--it seemedto them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have beendevised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanityto speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing astremendous as the universe--the laws and ways of its working no more thanthe universe to be questioned or understood. All that a mere man could do,it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this as he found it, and doas he was told; to be given a place in it and a share in its wonderfulactivities was a blessing to be grateful for, as one was grateful for thesunshine and the rain. Jurgis was even glad that he had not seen theplace before meeting with his triumph, for he felt that the size of itwould have overwhelmed him. But now he had been admitted--he was a partof it all! He had the feeling that this whole huge establishment hadtaken him under its protection, and had become responsible for his welfare.So guileless was he, and ignorant of the nature of business, that he didnot even realize that he had become an employee of Brown's, and that Brownand Durham were supposed by all the world to be deadly rivals--were evenrequired to be deadly rivals by the law of the land, and ordered to tryto ruin each other under penalty of fine and imprisonment!