ho scrape the other side, and then slide him along to
four other men, who trim and finish him, leaving not a hair upon his
soft and quivering body. Then he falls into the hands of two
"gamble-men," who insert a stick to keep the hind legs apart, and, by
the aid of a machine, hang him up with his head downward. Next, the
animal is consigned to the great artist of all, who performs upon him
the operation so much in favor among the nobility of Japan. This artist,
we regret to say, but will not conceal from a too fastidious public, is
called "the Gutter." One long, swift cut down the whole length of the
body,--two or three rapid, in-and-out cuts in the inside,--and the
entire respiratory and digestive apparatus lies smoking upon a table,
under the hands of men who are removing from it the material for lard.
This operation, here performed in twenty seconds, and which is
frequently done by the same man fifteen hundred times a day, takes an
ordinary butcher ten minutes. This man earns six dollars and a half a
day, while no one else receives more than four; and if he is absent from
his post, his substitute, who has _seen_ the thing done for years, can
only perform it one fifth as fast, and the day's work of the house is
reduced to one fifth of its ordinary production.

The long room in which the creatures are put to death, scalded, and
japanned presents, as may be imagined, a most horrid scene of massacre
and blood,--of steaming water and flabby, naked, quivering hogs,--of men
in oil-skin suits all shining with wet and grease. The rest of the
establishment is perfectly clean and agreeable. The moment the body of
the animal is emptied, a boy inundates it from a hose, and then another
boy pushes it along the wire from which it hangs on a wheel, and takes
it to its place in the cooling-room, where it hangs all night. This
cooling-room is a curious spectacle. It contains two regiments of
suspended hogs, arranged in long, regular rows: one regiment, the result
of to-day's operations; the other, of yesterday's. The cutting up of
these huge carcasses is accomplished with the same easy and wonderful
rapidity. The first that we chanced to see cut to pieces was an enormous
fellow of six hundred pounds, and it was done in just one third of a
minute. Two men tumbled him over upon a wagon, wheeled him to the
scales, where his weight was instantly ascertained and recorded. Near by
was the cutting-table, upon which he was immediately flopped.