Part 37 (1/2)
That room was the mortuary chamber where the pigs lie for a little while in state ere they begin their progress through such pa.s.sages as kings may sometimes travel. Turning a corner and not noting an overhead arrangement of greased rail, wheel, and pulley, I ran into the arms of four eviscerated carca.s.ses, all pure white and of a human aspect, being pushed by a man clad in vehement red. When I leaped aside, the floor was slippery under me. There was a flavour of farmyard in my nostrils and the shouting of a mult.i.tude in my ears. But there was no joy in that shouting! Twelve men stood in two lines--six a-side. Between them and overhead ran the railway of death that had nearly shunted me through the window. Each man carried a knife, the sleeves of his s.h.i.+rt were cut off at the elbows, and from bosom to heel he was blood-red. The atmosphere was stifling as a night in the Rains, by reason of the steam and the crowd. I climbed to the beginning of things and, perched upon a narrow beam, overlooked very nearly all the pigs ever bred in Wisconsin. They had just been shot out of the mouth of the viaduct and huddled together in a large pen. Thence they were flicked persuasively, a few at a time, into a smaller chamber, and there a man fixed tackle on their hinder legs so that they rose in the air suspended from the railway of death.
Oh! it was then they shrieked and called on their mothers and made promises of amendment till the tackle-man punted them in their backs, and they slid head down into a brick-floored pa.s.sage, very like a big kitchen sink that was blood-red. There awaited them a red man with a knife which he pa.s.sed jauntily through their throats, and the full-voiced shriek became a sputter, and then a fall as of heavy tropical rain. The red man who was backed against the pa.s.sage wall stood clear of the wildly kicking hoofs and pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, not from any feeling of compa.s.sion, but because the spurted blood was in his eyes, and he had barely time to stick the next arrival. Then that first stuck swine dropped, still kicking, into a great vat of boiling water, and spoke no more words, but wallowed in obedience to some unseen machinery, and presently came forth at the lower end of the vat and was heaved on the blades of a blunt paddle-wheel-thing which said, ”Hough!
Hough! Hough!” and skelped all the hair off him except what little a couple of men with knives could remove. Then he was again hitched by the heels to that said railway and pa.s.sed down the line of the twelve men--each man with a knife--leaving with each man a certain amount of his individuality which was taken away in a wheel-barrow, and when he reached the last man he was very beautiful to behold, but immensely unstuffed and limp. Preponderance of individuality was ever a bar to foreign travel. That pig could have been in no case to visit you in India had he not parted with some of his most cherished notions.
The dissecting part impressed me not so much as the slaying. They were so excessively alive, these pigs. And then they were so excessively dead, and the man in the dripping, clammy, hot pa.s.sage did not seem to care, and ere the blood of such an one had ceased to foam on the floor, such another, and four friends with him, had shrieked and died. But a pig is only the Unclean animal--forbidden by the Prophet.
I was destined to make rather a queer discovery when I went over to the cattle-slaughter. All the buildings here were on a much larger scale, and there was no sound of trouble, but I could smell the salt reek of blood before I set foot in the place. The cattle did not come directly through the viaduct as the pigs had done. They debouched into a yard by the hundred, and they were big red brutes carrying much flesh. In the centre of that yard stood a red Texan steer with a headstall on his wicked head. No man controlled him. He was, so to speak, picking his teeth and whistling in an open byre of his own when the cattle arrived.
As soon as the first one had fearfully quitted the viaduct, this red devil put his hands in his pockets and slouched across the yard, no man guiding him. Then he lowed something to the effect that he was the regularly appointed guide of the establishment and would show them round. They were country folk, but they knew how to behave; and so followed Judas some hundred strong, patiently, and with a look of bland wonder in their faces. I saw his broad back jogging in advance of them, up a lime-washed incline where I was forbidden to follow. Then a door shut, and in a minute back came Judas with the air of a virtuous plough-bullock and took up his place in his byre. Somebody laughed across the yard, but I heard no sound of cattle from the big brick building into which the mob had disappeared. Only Judas chewed the cud with a malignant satisfaction, and so I knew there was trouble, and ran round to the front of the factory and so entered and stood aghast.
Who takes count of the prejudices which we absorb through the skin by way of our surroundings? It was not the spectacle that impressed me. The first thought that almost spoke itself aloud was: ”They are killing kine;” and it was a shock. The pigs were n.o.body's concern, but cattle--the brothers of the Cow, the Sacred Cow--were quite otherwise.
The next time an M.P. tells me that India either Sultanises or Brahminises a man, I shall believe about half what he says. It is unpleasant to watch the slaughter of cattle when one has laughed at the notion for a few years. I could not see actually what was done in the first instance, because the row of stalls in which they lay was separated from me by fifty impa.s.sable feet of butchers and slung carca.s.ses. All I know is that men swung open the doors of a stall as occasion required, and there lay two steers already stunned, and breathing heavily. These two they pole-axed, and half raising them by tackle they cut their throats. Two men skinned each carcase, somebody cut off the head, and in half a minute more the overhead rail carried two sides of beef to their appointed place. There was clamour enough in the operating room, but from the waiting cattle, invisible on the other side of the line of pens, never a sound. They went to their death, trusting Judas, without a word. They were slain at the rate of five a minute, and if the pig men were spattered with blood, the cow butchers were bathed in it. The blood ran in muttering gutters. There was no place for hand or foot that was not coated with thicknesses of dried blood, and the stench of it in the nostrils bred fear.
And then the same merciful Providence that has showered good things on my path throughout sent me an embodiment of the city of Chicago, so that I might remember it forever. Women come sometimes to see the slaughter, as they would come to see the slaughter of men. And there entered that vermilion hall a young woman of large mould, with brilliantly scarlet lips, and heavy eyebrows, and dark hair that came in a ”widow's peak” on the forehead. She was well and healthy and alive, and she was dressed in flaming red and black, and her feet (know you that the feet of American women are like unto the feet of fairies?) her feet, I say, were cased in red leather shoes. She stood in a patch of sunlight, the red blood under her shoes, the vivid carca.s.ses packed round her, a bullock bleeding its life away not six feet away from her, and the death factory roaring all round her. She looked curiously, with hard, bold eyes, and was not ashamed.
Then said I: ”This is a special Sending. I have seen the City of Chicago.” And I went away to get peace and rest.
No. x.x.xVI
HOW I FOUND PEACE AT MUSQUASH ON THE MONONGAHELA.
”Prince, blown by many a western breeze Our vessels greet you treasure-laden; We send them all--but best of these A free and frank young Yankee maiden.”
It is a mean thing and an unhandsome to ”do” a continent in five-hundred-mile jumps. But after those swine and bullocks at Chicago I felt that complete change of air would be good. The United States at present hinge in or about Chicago, as a double-leaved screen hinges. To be sure, the tiny New England States call a trip to Pennsylvania ”going west,” but the larger-minded citizen seems to reckon his longitude from Chicago. Twenty years hence the centre of population--that shaded square on the census map--will have s.h.i.+fted, men say, far west of Chicago.
Twenty years later it will be on the Pacific slope. Twenty years after that America will begin to crowd up, and there will be some trouble.
People will demand manufactured goods for their reduced-establishment households at the cheapest possible rates, and the cry that the land is rich enough to afford protection will cease with a great abruptness. At present it is the farmer who pays most dearly for the luxury of high prices. In the old days, when the land was fresh and there was plenty of it and it cropped like the garden of Eden, he did not mind paying.
Now there is not so much free land, and the old acres are needing stimulants, which cost money, and the farmer, who pays for everything, is beginning to ask questions. Also the great American nation, which individually never shuts a door behind its n.o.ble self, very seldom attempts to put back anything that it has taken from Nature's shelves.
It grabs all it can and moves on. But the moving-on is nearly finished and the grabbing must stop, and then the Federal Government will have to establish a Woods and Forests Department the like of which was never seen in the world before. And all the people who have been accustomed to hack, mangle, and burn timber as they please will object, with shots and protestations, to this infringement of their rights. The n.i.g.g.e.r will breed bounteously, and _he_ will have to be reckoned with; and the manufacturer will have to be contented with smaller profits, and _he_ will have to be reckoned with; and the railways will no longer rule the countries through which they run, and they will have to be reckoned with. And n.o.body will approve of it in the least.
Yes; it will be a spectacle for all the world to watch, this big, slas.h.i.+ng colt of a nation, that has got off with a flying start on a freshly littered course, being pulled back to the ruck by that very mutton-fisted jockey Necessity. There will be excitement in America when a few score millions of ”sovereigns” discover that what they considered the outcome of their own Government is but the rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng bounty of Nature; and that if they want to get on comfortably they must tackle every single problem from labour to finance humbly, without gasconade, and afresh. But at present they look ”that all the to-morrows shall be as to-day,” and if you argue with them they say that the Democratic Idea will keep things going. They believe in that Idea, and the less well-informed fortify themselves in their belief by curious a.s.sertions as to the despotism that exists in England. This is pure provincialism, of course; but it is very funny to listen to, especially when you compare the theory with the practice (pistol, chiefly) as proven in the newspapers. I have striven to find out where the central authority of the land lies. It isn't at Was.h.i.+ngton, because the Federal Government can't do anything to the States save run the mail and collect a Federal tax or two. It isn't in the States, because the towns.h.i.+ps can do as they like; and it isn't in the towns.h.i.+ps, because these are bossed by alien voters or rings of patriotic homebred citizens. And it certainly is not in the citizens, because they are governed and coerced by despotic power of public opinion as represented by their papers, preachers, or local society. I found one man who told me that if anything went wrong in this huge congress of kings,--if there was a split or an upheaval or a smash,--the people in detail would be subject to the Idea of the sovereign people in ma.s.s. This is a survival from the Civil War, when, you remember, the people in a majority did with guns and swords slay and wound the people in detail. All the same, the notion seems very much like the wors.h.i.+p by the savage of the unloaded rifle as it leans against the wall.
But the men and women set Us an example in patriotism. They believe in their land and its future, and its honour, and its glory, and they are not ashamed to say so. From the largest to the least runs this same proud, pa.s.sionate conviction to which I take off my hat and for which I love them. An average English householder seems to regard his country as an abstraction to supply him with policemen and fire-brigades. The c.o.c.kney cad cannot understand what the word means. The bloomin' toffs he knows, and the law, and the soldiers that supply him with a spectacle in the Parks; but he would laugh in your face at the notion of any duty being owed by himself to his land. Pick an American of the second generation anywhere you please--from the cab-rank, the porter's room, or the plough-tail,--'specially the plough-tail,--and that man will make you understand in five minutes that he understands what manner of thing his Republic is. He might laugh at a law that didn't suit his convenience, draw your eye-teeth in a bargain, and applaud 'cuteness on the outer verge of swindling: but you should hear him stand up and sing:--
”My country 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing!”
I have heard a few thousand of them engaged in that employment. I respect him. There is too much Romeo and too little balcony about our National Anthem. With the American article it is all balcony. There must be born a poet who shall give the English _the_ song of their own, own country--which is to say, of about half the world. Remains then only to compose the greatest song of all--The Saga of the Anglo-Saxon all round the earth--a paean that shall combine the terrible slow swing of the _Battle Hymn of the Republic_ (which, if you know not, get chanted to you) with _Britannia needs no Bulwarks_, the skirl of the _British Grenadiers_ with that perfect quickstep, _Marching through Georgia_, and at the end the wail of the _Dead March_. For We, even We who share the earth between us as no G.o.ds have ever shared it, we also are mortal in the matter of our single selves. Will any one take the contract?
It was with these rambling notions that I arrived at the infinite peace of the tiny towns.h.i.+p of Musquash on the Monongahela River. The clang and tumult of Chicago belonged to another world. Imagine a rolling, wooded, English landscape, under softest of blue skies, dotted at three-mile intervals with fat little, quiet little villages, or aggressive little manufacturing towns that the trees and the folds of the hills mercifully prevented from betraying their presence. The golden-rod blazed in the pastures against the green of the mulleins, and the cows picked their way home through the twisted paths between the blackberry bushes. All summer was on the orchards, and the apples--such apples as we dream of when we eat the woolly imitations of Kashmir--were ripe and toothsome.
It was good to lie in a hammock with half-shut eyes, and, in the utter stillness, to hear the apples dropping from the trees, and the tinkle of the cowbells as the cows walked statelily down the main road of the village. Everybody in that restful place seemed to have just as much as he wanted; a house with all comfortable appliances, a big or little verandah wherein to spend the day, a neatly shaved garden with a wild wealth of flowers, some cows, and an orchard. Everybody knew everybody else intimately, and what they did not know, the local daily paper--a daily for a village of twelve hundred people!--supplied. There was a court-house where justice was done, and a jail where some most enviable prisoners lived, and there were four or five churches of four or five denominations. Also it was impossible to buy openly any liquor in that little paradise. But--and this is a very serious _but_--you could by procuring a medical certificate get strong drinks from the chemist. That is the drawback of prohibition. It makes a man who wants a drink a s.h.i.+rker and a contriver, which things are not good for the soul of a man, and presently, 'specially if he be young, causes him to believe that he may just as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb; and the end of that young man is not pretty. Nothing except a rattling fall will persuade an average colt that a fence is not meant to be jumped over; whereas if he be turned out into the open he learns to carry himself with discretion. One heard a good deal of this same dread of drink in Musquash, and even the maidens seemed to know too much about its effects upon certain unregenerate youths, who, if they had been once made thoroughly, effectually, and persistently drunk--with a tepid brandy and soda thrust before their goose-fleshed noses on the terrible Next Morning--would perhaps have seen the futility of their ways. It was a sin by village canons to imbibe lager, though--_experto crede_--you can get dropsy on that stuff long before you can get drunk. ”But what man knows his mind?” Besides, it was all their own affair.
The little community seemed to be as self-contained as an Indian village. Had the rest of the land sunk under the sea, Musquash would have gone on sending its sons to school in order to make them ”good citizens,” which is the constant prayer of the true American father, settling its own road-making, local cesses, town-lot arbitrations, and internal government by ballot and vote and due respect to the voices of the headmen (which is the salvation of the ballot), until such time as all should take their places in the cemetery appointed for their faith.
Here were Americans and no aliens--men ruling themselves by themselves and for themselves and their wives and their children--in peace, order, and decency.
But what went straightest to this heart, though they did not know it, was that they were Methody folk for the most part--ay, Methody as ever trod a Yorks.h.i.+re Moor, or drove on a Sunday to some chapel of the Faith in the Dales. The old Methody talk was there, with the discipline whereby the souls of the Just are, sometimes to their intense vexation, made perfect on this earth in order that they may ”take out their letters and live and die in good standing.” If you don't know the talk, you won't know what that means. The discipline, or dis_cip_line, is no thing to be trifled with, and its working among a congregation depends entirely upon the tact, humanity, and sympathy of the leader who works it. He, knowing what youth's desires are, can turn the soul in the direction of good, gently, instead of wrenching it savagely towards the right path only to see it break away quivering and scared. The arm of the Dis_cip_line is long. A maiden told me, as a new and strange fact and one that would interest a foreigner, of a friend of hers who had once been admonished by some elders somewhere--not in Musquash--for the heinous crime of dancing. She, the friend, did not in the least like it.