oval upon the
things which were done in Durham's.

Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring
open-mouthed, lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forest
of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed
by several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he
took it all in guilelessly--even to the conspicuous signs demanding
immaculate cleanliness of the employees. Jurgis was vexed when the
cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic comments, offering
to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to be
doctored.

The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste materials
were treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and washed clean for
sausage casings; men and women worked here in the midst of a sickening
stench, which caused the visitors to hasten by, gasping. To another room
came all the scraps to be "tanked," which meant boiling and pumping off
the 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
other places men were engaged in cutting up the carcasses that had been
through the chilling rooms. First there were the "splitters," the most
expert workmen in the plant, who earned as high as fifty cents an hour,
and did not 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
to attend 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
might chop it once more. His cleaver had a blade about two feet long,
and he never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his
implement did not smite through and dull itself--there was just enough
force for a perfect cut, and no more. So through various yawning
holes there slipped to the floor below--to one room hams, to another
forequarters, to another sides 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 their airtight iron doors. In other rooms they
prepared salt pork--there were whole cellars full of it, built up in
great towers to the ceiling. In yet other rooms they were putting up
meats in boxes and barrels, and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper,
sealing and labeling and sewing them. From the doors of these rooms went
men w