The story of the development of these methods would be almost endless, but a trip through an up-to-date packing plant of the present day will show what time has brought about.
As the hogs come in from the farmers and shippers they are received by the live stock department, where they are carefully sorted and graded, and then run into holding pens, to carry over until they shall be driven to slaughter. These pens must hold thousands of hogs, for although the stock is held two or three days at the most before it is slaughtered, we must remember that the more important of the packing houses kill thousands of hogs each day, so these pens must be more or less gigantic affairs. The more modern of them are constructed of concrete and brick, and are a picture of cleanliness and sanitation. They are well protected by substantially built roofs and side walls so that the animals are not exposed to the weather at any time of the year.
Veterinarians in the employ of the government examine all the hogs that come into these pens, and any that seem to be at all sickly, or for any reason unfit for food, are held out.
On the killing floor a small army of men is engaged in the business of cleaning and dressing the carca.s.s of the hog. Each man has his particular part of the work to do, and to this end the hogs are conveyed around the room past the various workmen by means of an endless chain and trolley, so that each butcher"s work is put right before him and he does not have to make any unnecessary moves. The whole department works like one vast machine, and each man is a very definite and necessary cog in the whole scheme of procedure.
Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this department is the perfection that they are able to reach in cleaning the carca.s.ses. The hogs are first run through a great machine which takes all but a few stray hairs from them. This machine contains a number of rotating beaters and high-pressure streams of water.
As soon as they come out of the machine, the men on the rail finish the job of cleaning the carca.s.s and each animal is then run through a high-pressure washing machine so that it is absolutely clean before a single incision is made in it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: REFRIGERATING MACHINERY
These great pumps are used for circulating the brine through the cooling system of one of the great packing houses in Buenos Ayres, Argentine
_Reproduced by permission of The Philadelphia Museums._]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HALF-WAY HOUSE
Cattle from the Western plains gathered in the Union Stockyards awaiting slaughter and subsequent shipment. The great Union Stockyards in Chicago are the largest live-stock market in the world. Beef is slaughtered and cleansed very much in the same manner as the pork described in "The Story in a Sausage."
_Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._]
The workmen all stand on high benches, up from the floor, and under the hogs we find troughs to keep any sc.r.a.ps from getting under the workmen"s feet. The floors at all times are kept as clean as can be, and the meat is taken away quickly so that there is no chance of contamination of the finished product with the hogs which are just coming from the slaughter house.
Trained men, some of them veterinarians, in the employ of the government, make a thorough inspection of the glands and other organs of the hog. They are so particular that even bruises must be trimmed out before the animals are allowed to pa.s.s and go on with the bulk which are fit for food. It is surprising to learn how many carca.s.ses, or parts, are condemned because of one thing or another, for the least sign of sickness or unfitness of any kind calls forth a government "Condemned Tag" and holds the animal out to one side to be used for fertilizer or some other inedible purpose.
Pa.s.sing through the hog chill rooms, on the way from the killing floor, one is impressed with the great number of hogs hanging there in a temperature near the freezing point. This temperature is maintained both winter and summer, so that the hogs may be thoroughly chilled and the animal heat entirely eliminated as quickly as possible after the killing, so that there will be no chance of the meat souring or any unwholesome condition arising.
After about forty-eight hours in these chill rooms, the hogs are run onto the cutting floor, where they are made into the various commercial cuts which are seen in the meat markets at home. They start out with the whole side of a hog and work it through, until they have what the packers call the "Commercial Cuts"--that is to say, the hams, loins, spare ribs, the bacon sides, and so on.
The cutting room is a light, airy room with a high ceiling, and everything in it seems a perfect example of cleanliness, and men all work with white ap.r.o.ns, jackets and caps.
The next stop is in the by-products building. As the writer entered, his guide told him the old bromide about "everything about a packing house being saved except the squeal, and even that having been known to appear on a phonographic record." He thought to have some fun by asking the guide about the smell, but the laugh was on him, for the guide showed him how the air containing any odor was simply run through a condenser into a great volume of water, which absorbed it. The gases which had made the odor in the first place were then taken out in the form of solids, simply by evaporating the water away. The big evaporators which take care of this work are extremely interesting pieces of machinery to see.
There is a surprisingly large amount of expensive machinery in the hair plant. Hog hair would probably not appeal to the average person as being a thing of particular value, but it is processed so as to make the finished product worth as much as the meat itself.
Certain parts of the hog carca.s.ses which would not be palatable enough to go into human consumption are made up into stock foods. These are sold under a guaranteed a.n.a.lysis. Highly-paid chemists are busy all the time checking up the a.n.a.lysis of these foods, for they must contain certain amounts of protein and crude fiber, which is said to be very beneficial to stock in general.
Another department manufactures what is called a balanced ration, consisting of a certain amount of grain and a certain amount of this stock food, or "digester tankage," as it is called. This balanced ration is said to be the most nutritious food and the quickest fattener which can be given to animals. It is made up as a result of protracted experiments and much scientific research, both by state inst.i.tutions and by private individuals.
There is always a certain amount of grease which is not edible, but which is suitable for soap stocks, and the tank products which are not fit for food are made into commercial fertilizers, which are gotten up under chemical formulas, and are made up particularly for different kinds of grains, gra.s.ses, flowers and the like.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COLD STORAGE OF MEAT, BUENOS AYRES, ARGENTINE
Interior of one of the great South American cold storage plants. Much of the meat consumed in Europe is shipped from this point.
_Reproduced by permission of The Philadelphia Museums._]
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Courtesy of Armour & Co._
PACKING BACON
The girls are packing sliced bacon into gla.s.s jars, taking the slices from a moving belt which pa.s.ses in front of them. The rooms are light, thoroughly ventilated, and cleaned at the end of each day. The girls"
hands are manicured at frequent intervals by manicurists employed by the company.]
The next place is the lard department. Here great closed tanks cook the fats, under high steam pressure, and make them into snow-white lard.
There are great open caldrons, steam jacketed, where an even and uniform temperature is maintained. Only the pure leaf lard, which is supposed to be the choicest fat of the hog, is cooked in these kettles. In the lard packing room there is much automatic machinery, with which the various sized packages of lard are weighed out. Machines hermetically seal the tins, and men pack them in crates and carefully weigh them over two scales.
The average person does not have even an idea of what the modern curing cellar is like. The brines and curing mixtures are prepared by trained men who do no other work but this. Everything goes exactly according to formula, and the different ingredients are weighed out to the ounce. The guide insisted that a bare ten per cent of all the hams or bacon sides produced in the plant are finally allowed to bear the company"s trade-mark. The men who finally select these goods are the oldest and most trusted employees of the firm. They weigh out a certain amount of this meat for each tierce, or vat, to be packed, and then an exact number of gallons of pickle is put in with the meat so that each pound of meat will have just a certain amount of pickle to cure it. This is said to insure a uniform product so that one trade-marked ham is exactly like another.
Even the length of time which these are left in cure must not vary a day. In the great curing room thousands of vats and tierces are piled, and the usual tierces hold about three hundred pounds of meat, while the vats hold nearly fifteen hundred pounds.
In the dry-salt curing cellars are kept enormous stocks of the cheaper kinds of meat. These, instead of being cured in brine, are rubbed in salt and piled away. These piles are perhaps three or four feet high, and are so neat and true that they appear to have been the work of a master mason. A single one of these dry-salt curing rooms holds over three million pounds.
Sliced bacon, fancy sausage and other specialties are usually packed in a separate room, into attractive cartons for the retail trade.
The standard of cleanliness in the sausage kitchen has to be unusually high. Wherever white tile is not possible, white paint is used in profusion. The shining metal tables and trucks, on which the product is handled, give a new confidence in sausage. The girls and men employed all wear clean white ap.r.o.ns, jackets and caps, and no effort is spared in keeping everything and everybody in the place in an ideal condition.
The meat is run through enormous automatic grinders and choppers, and through mixers that approach a dairy churn in size. After it has been properly mixed and thoroughly taken care of, it is put into automatic machinery, run by air pressure, which stuffs it into the ham sacks and casings, in which we see the sausage in the markets. The cooking is done in great vats and in enormous electric ovens.
When we stop to think of the proportion of our food which is a packing-house product, we can be glad indeed that conditions such as those described above are becoming available more and more every day.
Why do We Call them "Dog-Days"?
When we talk about "dog-days" now, we mean the period of the year between July 3d and August 11th, twenty days before and after the rising of the "dog-star."
The name was applied by the ancients to a period of about forty days, the hottest season of the year, at the time of the rising of Sirius, the dog-star.
The time of the rising is now, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, different from what it was then (July 1st). It is now about July 23d.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ELECTRIC COINING PRESS, U. S. MINT, PHILADELPHIA
Woman feeding planchets to bra.s.s tubes, from the bottom of which they are carried to the steel dies which form the coins.]
How is a Five Dollar Gold Piece Made?
The process of converting the precious metals into coins is an interesting one.
The rolling machines through which the ingots are pa.s.sed are adjustable, the s.p.a.ce between the rollers being governed by the operator. About two hundred ingots are run through per hour on each pair of rollers.
When the rolling is completed the strip of metal is about six feet long.
As it is impossible to roll perfectly true, it is necessary to "draw"
these strips, after being softened by annealing. The drawing benches resemble long tables, with a bench on either side, at one end of which is an iron box secured to the table. In this are fastened two perpendicular steel cylinders. These are at the same distance apart that the thickness of the strip is required to be. It is drawn between the cylinders, which reduces the whole to an equal thickness.