e work thus goes on without interruption. The fifteen
animals which stand compressed, with their heads thrust upward, awaiting
the stroke of fate, express their emotions in the language natural to
them, and the noise is great. The executioner, armed with a
long-handled, slender hammer, and sitting astride of the fence, gives to
each of these yelling creatures his quietus by a blow upon the head. The
pig does not fall when he is struck; he cannot; he only stares and
becomes silent. The stranger who is unable to witness the execution has
an awful sense of the progress of the fell work by the gradual cessation
of the noise. We mention here, for the benefit of political economists,
that this knocker-down, who does the most disagreeable and laborious
part of the work, has the lowest wages paid to any man in the house. He
does not rank as an artist at all, but only as a laborer. Readers of
Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill know why. When silence within the pen
announces the surrender of its occupants, a door is opened, and the
senseless hogs are laid in a row up an inclined plane, at the bottom of
which is a long trough of hot water. One of the artists, called "the
Sticker," now appears, provided with a long, thin, pointed knife, and
approaches the pig nearest the steaming trough, gently lifts its fore
leg, and gives it one easy, delicate, and graceful thrust in the throat.
Along the trough, on each side of it, is a row of men, each with an
instrument in his hand, waiting to begin; and apart from them stands the
Head-Scalder, who ranks second in the corps, having a task of all but
the greatest difficulty to perform. Scald a pig ten seconds too long, or
in water twenty degrees too hot, and he comes out as red as a lobster;
let the water be too cool, or keep the animal in it too short a time,
and the labor of scraping is trebled. Into the hot water the hogs are
soused at intervals of twenty seconds, and the Scalder stands, watching
the clock, and occasionally trying the temperature of the water with his
finger, or the adherence of the hair on the creature first to be
handled. "Number One," he says, at length. By a machine for the purpose,
Number One is turned over upon a long, declining table, where he lies
smoking. At the same instant two men pull out his valuable bristles and
put them in a barrel, and two other men scrape one side of him with
scrapers. In a few seconds, these turn him over and pass him on to two
other scrapers, w