HOGS
The national peril of the United States is hogs. Of the peculiar and
subtle influences which have driven most Americans into the pig business
I find it impossible to formulate any reasonable account. Of course,
there is the fact that the pig business has large monies in it, and that
America is a country in which it would seem you have only to tickle a
little pig with a hoe to turn him into a fine fat porker.
There can be no doubt whatever that a very large percentage of Americans
think, talk, and raise pig throughout the whole of their natural lives.
This industry appears to be of such a fascinating character that when
once you have got into it you cannot possibly get out of it. Even if
you wax unrighteously rich and get elected to Congress and move your
family to New York, you still stick to pork and lard as if they were your
brother. I understand that many of the ball-rooms in the big brown stone
mansions in Fifth Avenue are waxed with lard.
I do not know whether there were any pigs in America before the Pilgrim
Fathers landed. But it is certain that there are millions of them there
now, and that they eat apples and grow wondrous frisky and have a good
time of it—till killing day comes around. And it is precisely here that
the frightful Americanism of the hog begins. For the wicked pig, like the
wicked man, has a knack of finding his way to Chicago—which, as all the
world now knows, is the most bloodthirsty, sultry, and unregenerate city
on the face of the earth. In this place they kill pigs by the thousand
daily. Hoggish shrieks rend all the air, the stores and warehouses groan
with the pig’s dismembered parts, and the odour of his frizzling adipose
tissue is in every nostril.
It seems to me more than likely that the pig owes the beginnings of his
present supremacy in the United States to the Irish, who are pretty thick
upon the ground there. An Irishman without a pig in one form or another
would in all likelihood take cold, or die of heart-ache. In his own
distressful Island, the Irishman and his pig live on terms of freedom
and fraternity that put the American Constitution to the distinct blush.
Not only does the pig pay the greater proportion of rent that gets paid
in Ireland, but he is the friend and playmate of the family, and is
invariably accorded a cosy corner for himself on the domestic hearth.
It seems only natural, therefore, that in emigrating to the States, the
Irishman who could manage it would insist on taking with him one or more
pigs, probably as much for company’s sake as for any other reason. And
behold the result! What was a simple and very human foible on the part of
the Irishman, has become, with the American, a raging and soul-consuming
obsession. Pork, pork, pork, pork, pork! That is the cry that rises daily
and hourly to heaven from the greater part of the United-States-half
of North America. Everybody is concerned in it; everybody has money
in it; everybody wants to get more money out of it. The pig is rushed
through his feeds, weighed every morning till he has assumed the right
specific gravity, hurried off by car to his doom, killed and slain on the
no-waiting-here principle, and turned into hams, sides, lard, brawn, and
sausages for the delectation of a hungry world before he has a chance to
say George Washington.
America as a country, and the Americans as a people, depend upon hogs for
their prosperity to an extent that is appalling. Upon the dead weight
of him in the warehouses, and upon his firmness, or want of it, in the
markets, hangs the stability of all sorts of stocks, shares, bonds,
debentures, and general securities. If pig is “up,” America is a land of
contented households and smiling faces. If pig is “down,” she is plunged
forthwith into the deepest woe and the meanest irritability.
All of which affords one further striking evidence that the Americans are
really a wonderful people, and that they deserve the generous tributes of
praise that they so consistently and lavishly draw upon themselves.
A nation whose principal diet is pea-nuts, and whose principal profit is
derived from the sale of pigs, is obviously pretty low down in the scale
of civilisation. A hog tender cannot by any chance be the finest kind of
man, neither can a pork butcher or a wholesale ham merchant. And every
American who is not a member of a trust, or a pastor of a church, or a
boss billposter, or a missionary, or a comic singer, is either a hog
tender, a pork butcher, or a wholesale ham merchant. At any rate, so one
gathers from the authorised reports.
And just as nut-chewing is responsible for certain grave weaknesses in
the American character, so is pig-dealing. The pig and the potato have
made the Irishman the idlest man in the world. The pig takes no rearing,
and the potato is such a lively and prolific tuber that it will grow
almost without planting. The Irishman has reaped the full disadvantages
incident to these merits in the pig and the potato. And one feels sure
that the American is suffering equally from the effects of the pig. I
have no wish to reopen the box of horrors which was introduced to our
notice some time back by the author of “The Jungle.” That gentleman
did his work thoroughly, and the atmosphere is even yet redolent in
consequence. It does not concern me that Chicago meats, tinned or cured,
are not always entirely fitted for human consumption, or that the Chicago
method of treating such meats are uncleanly, or that the Chicago idea of
industrial efficiency is a perverted one. What does concern me is that
Chicago is an American city, built by Americans, run by Americans, and
made lurid by Americans—on pig.
To suggest to the American reformer that he should take steps for the
immediate extermination of the pigs in America, steps, in fact, such
as have been taken with a view to the extinction of the rabbit in
Australia, would be to fill him with horror and amazement. He is all for
the amelioration and improvement and cleaning up of Chicago; he does not
see that it is the pig and the great American people who are the root
trouble. Prohibit the breeding and rearing of pigs throughout the United
States, and you will have gone much further towards the cleaning up of
Chicago, and, for that matter, the cleaning up of America, than you are
ever likely to get by dealing simply with Chicago itself. So long as
there are pigs, so long will Chicago reek. Abolish pigs, and you have
abolished the worst features of the world’s foulest city.
The reformer will find that my suggestion is an impracticable one. He may
even go the length of calling it frivolous and ridiculous. But we shall
see what we shall see. America will one day either have to forsake pig or
come to very bitter grief. She is already in considerable straits as to
the marketing of her porcine staples. She has shoved them down the necks
of her own people till they can no more. She is pushing them down English
throats with all the force that in her lies, and the limit is within a
very little way of being reached. Do as one will, one cannot consume
more than a certain amount of American pig in the course of the day’s
deglutition. Europe is taking far more than is good for her even now,
and yet the American demand is for bigger sales and extended markets, to
prevent the stuff from rotting at home. The position is unfortunate in
quite a number of senses; but it is precisely what any prescient American
ought to have expected. America is overdoing it in the matter of pig,
just as she is overdoing it in most other matters. When you have got the
measure of people’s hunger and purchasing capacity you cannot appreciably
increase them by any amount of advertising or bluff.
The Americans boast that they can sell everything appertaining to a pig
save and except the squeal. I don’t wish to frighten them, but it would
not surprise me in the least if within the space of a few years the large
accumulation of squeals which they must, by this time, have on hand were
to arise up as it were, and din their ears in a manner which they will
not relish.
I may remark finally that in spite of everything that Chicago may say
and publish in their praise, there can be no question that American pig
products are of a most inferior and unappetising quality as compared
with the real article. American hog meat exhibits a coarseness of
grain and a crudeness of flavour which will incline any person of
gustatory discrimination to the abstention of the Hebrew. Eggs and bacon
constitute the English national breakfast dish; ham and eggs are the
sure rock and support of our country inns and cheap restaurants. Both
these dishes have, however, fallen into sad disrepute during late years,
and I have no hesitation in attributing this grave and heartrending
circumstance to the fact that the bacon and ham nowadays served are
almost exclusively American.
The gentlemen from the other side must excuse me if I appear as he would
phrase it, “to tread somewhat too severely on his face”; but I really
mean him no evil. Rather do I wish him all manner of good.
Besides which it is one’s duty to be patriotic; and charity—even in the
article of pig—should begin at home.
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