ld read. He accumulated
a considerable mass of facts about the Chicago stockyards, and
incorporated them with his story, and so enabled people to realize
what they might with a little imaginative effort have inferred before;
that the slaughtering of cattle and the preparation of meat, when it
is done wholly and solely for profit, that is to say when it is done
as rapidly and cheaply as possible, is done _horribly_; that it is a
business cruel to the beasts, cruel to the workers and dangerous to
the public health. The United States has long recognized the
inadequacy of private consciences in this concern, and while all the
vast profits of the business go to the meat packers, the community has
maintained an insufficient supply of underpaid and, it is said in some
cases, bribable inspectors to look after the public welfare.

In this country also, slaughtering is a private enterprise but
slightly checked by inspection, and if we have no Chicago, we probably
have all its mean savings, its dirt and carelessness and filth,
scattered here and there all over the country, a little in this
privately owned slaughter-house, a little in that. For what inducement
has a butcher to spend money and time in making his slaughter-house
decent, sanitary and humane above the standard of his fellows? To do
that will only make him poor and insolvent. Anyhow, few of his
customers will come to see their meat butchered, and, as they say in
the South of England, "What the eye don't see the heart don't grieve."

Many witnesses concur in declaring that our common jam, pickle and
preserve trade is carried on under equally filthy conditions. If it is
not, it is a miracle, in view of the inducements the Private Owner has
to cut his expenses, economize on premises and wages, and buy his
fruit as near decay and his sugar as near dirt as he can. The scandal
of our milk supply is an open one; it is more and more evident that so
long as Private Ownership rules the milk trade, we can never be sure
that at every point in the course of the milk from cow to consumer
there will not creep in harmful and dishonest profit-making elements.
The milking is too often done dirtily from dirty cows and into dirty
vessels--why should a business man fool away his profits in paying for
scrupulous cleanliness when it is almost impossible to tell at sight
whether milk is clean or dirty?--and there come more or less harmful
dilutions and adulterations and exposures to infection