of slaughtermen are habitually made up from persons
in whom one could hardly expect to find the sentiment
of pity strongly developed; yet, even among these, there
is a certain air of dissatisfaction with the work they
are compelled to do, and a mixture of insolence and
shamefacedness, of swagger and evident dislike of
inspection, which makes one think they know their trade
is a nasty one, only bearable from lack of other
employment and from the good wages earned. But there are
plenty of men engaged in this work of killing animals
for food who are much too good for the business. These
will tell you openly that they dislike the job, but
'people will have meat,' and if they were to give it up,
someone else would step into the work."[18]
Footnote 18:
"Behind the Scenes in Slaughter-houses."
Again, subordinate to the actual butchery, there are certain
disgusting, if not dangerous, occupations, such as that of the
women who work in or near the cattle markets at the malodorous
task of "preparing animal entrails for commercial uses," of
which process the following account has been given:[19] "The
women's share in the ugly business begins when the greasy, slimy
intestinal skins come to them for the scraping off of all fat
and substance still attaching to them. They are washed, twisted
up, dressed with salt, and are ready for the sausage-makers, on
whose behalf they have been thus prepared." The journalistic
comment is, that "in an ideal world men would not permit women
to do work from which every instinct of refinement and even
decency shrinks," but that all is over-ruled by "the demands of
present-day cheapness." This, as things go, is undeniable; but
it would be well that conscientious flesh-eaters should at least
realise what their diet imposes on other people.
Footnote 19:
_Daily Telegraph_, July 19, 1897.
That, however, is just what they are mostly determined _not_ to
realise, doubtless from a subconscious apprehension that, if
once they begin to look into this unsavoury subject, they
may be pushed to the verge of certain awkward conclusions.
Nothing is more significant than the extreme unwillingness of
philanthropists and members of ethical societies, who debate
almost every problem under the sun, to give serious attention to
the question of butchery—a reluctance which may be taken as one
of the strongest possible tributes to the pertinence of
vegetarianism. This is said to be especially true of the
philanthropists of Chicago—that great centre of the killing
trade. "No one who goes to Chicago," says an eye-witness,
"should fail to see the shambles. They are the most wicked
things in creation. They are sickening beyond description. The
men in them are more brutes than the animals they slaughter.
Missions and institutes have been built in the respectable parts
of the city from the profits, and the employees of the shambles
have been left to go straight down to the devil.... It is the
duty of everyone interested in social questions, of everyone
whose demands necessitate this kind of labour, to wade through
this filth to see these poor wretches at work."[20]
Footnote 20:
_New Age_, November 25, 1897.
And so they go their ways, the philanthropist to build "homes,"
the ethical folk to talk learnedly, and the social reformer to
concoct schemes for the amelioration of the human race. Yet,
meantime, these very persons are themselves perpetuating, by
their mode of living, the evil conditions which they profess to
be anxious to remove, and condemning the pariah slaughterman to
a life of sheer bestiality. "The meat-eater," says Mr. Lester,
"accepts the results of this man's demoralisation of character.
Pious and professed Christians are content to allow the deep
degradation of the nature of a whole class of men, set apart to
do the nation's dirty work of slaughtering, without an apparent
thought of the baseness of their conduct."
Here, as I said at the outset, is a distinctively _human_
question, and one which cannot be evaded, even by those slippery
reasoners who would shuffle out of the duty of humaneness to
animals by pretending (in the face of evolutionary science) that
there is no bond of consanguinity between the animals and
mankind. By no possible sophistry can "educated" people be
justified in placing this heavy burden of butchery on the hands
of their social "inferiors." The vivisector and the sportsman
have at least the courage to do their own devilries; and the
work even of the hardened agents of "murderous millinery" and
the fur-trade is diversified to some extent by travel and
adventure. But the slaughterman's task is one of unrelieved,
unmitigated brutality, involving the constant and systematic
doing of deeds that are inhuman in themselves, degrading to the
rough men who do them, and trebly disgraceful to the polite
ladies and gentlemen at whose behest they are done.
THE ÆSTHETIC ARGUMENT
Closely connected with the humane argument is the æsthetic
argument, the two being, in fact, twin branches of the same
stem. For "humane," as the Latin shows, has the double meaning
of "gentle" and "refined"; so that "humanity," in the original
conception of the term, implies not only a moral regard for the
rights of our fellow-beings, but also an æsthetic appreciation
of what is beautiful and pure. Culture and good-breeding,
together with justice and compassion, are the characteristics of
humane man; and the fact that this twofold sense of the word has
been well-nigh forgotten in the education of the modern
"gentleman" may serve to explain why there is often such a
grievious lack of gentleness in persons who claim to be
refined. Our _literæ humaniores_ are a mere academic course of
book-learning, the _humane_ element being altogether left out of
account; and to such bathos has this divorce of gentleness and
refinement carried us that, in some quarters, a "professor of
humanity" is—a teacher of Latin grammar.
We are prepared, then, to find that the æsthetic or artistic
faculty of the present day is deplorably narrow in its scope,
and is so ignorant of the true relationship of humanity and
art that it actually prides itself on omitting from its ken
all humane considerations, while it diligently searches for
the beautiful and the picturesque, as if beauty were a thing
detached from the realities of every-day life! The bare idea
that there is an æsthetic side to the diet question, beyond
the mere delicacies of cookery and embellishments of the
dining-table, would be scouted as ridiculous by ninety-nine
out of a hundred of our artists or literary men; for the very
force of habit which has made them so quick to resent the
least technical flaw in their special departments of work, has
left them blindly indifferent to the hideous and revolting
aspects of flesh-eating. To these æsthetes, so-called, the
sight of an ugly house, for example, is a sore trouble and
grievance, but the slaughter-house, with all its gruesome
doings, is a matter of supreme unconcern—nay, rather a thing
to be indirectly patronised and defended. I have known a case
where an æsthetic lady, of great personal culture, and the
centre of a polished circle, stained the floor of her charming
suburban villa with bullock's blood brought from the shambles
in a bucket.
Yet the æsthete does not usually vindicate his carnivorous diet
and its appurtenances with the old unhesitating heartiness of
the barbarian; he is somewhat ashamed of himself—unconsciously,
perhaps—in these latter days, even as the cannibal is ashamed
when the discussion turns upon "long pig." Like all the
apologists of flesh-eating, in their respective spheres, he is
shifty and evasive in his defences, and is not too proud, in his
moment of extremity, to have recourse to the "consistency
trick," and to try to trip up his vegetarian persecutor with the
retort of "You're another." From which signs of grace it may be
surmised that the æsthete, in spite of his brave exterior, is
not quite at ease in his dietetic philosophy, and that the
products of butchery are, in a very real sense, the "skeleton in
the cupboard" (the larder cupboard) of literature and art.
ÆSTHETE: Pray, why do you address yourself to _me_ in
that significant manner?
VEGETARIAN: Because I understand that you cultivate
the artistic sense. You love to have beautiful things
about you, do you not? So you must needs wish to be a
vegetarian.
ÆSTHETE: I love beautiful things, certainly. Art is my
vocation. But what has vegetarianism to do with it?
VEGETARIAN: Have the arrangements of the dinner-table
nothing to do with it—the cloth, the silver, the
glasses, the dessert, the flowers?
ÆSTHETE: A great deal, obviously. There is much art in
dining well.
VEGETARIAN: Yet the meats that are served at the
table have nothing to do with it! Is not that rather
contradictory?
ÆSTHETE: I did not say that. The cookery is an essential
point, of course.
VEGETARIAN: But what of the meat—the thing cooked? What
_is_ it? What _was_ it? And how did it come to be on
your plate?
ÆSTHETE: I never think of such questions. So long as it
is nice, I am content. It must satisfy my taste, that is
all.
VEGETARIAN: But are you sure that it _does_ satisfy your
taste in the same way that other things do? I think not,
for you have never put it to the trial. In no other
branch of art do you take things wholly on trust, but
you try them by the standard of an independent and
educated intelligence. In diet, and in diet only, you
"shut your eyes and open your mouth," as the children
say, and never distinguish between a real innate liking
and the liking that is merely traditional.
ÆSTHETE: _De gustibus non est disputandum._
VEGETARIAN: About genuine tastes, I admit, disputation
is idle. But the proverb is not true of the sham tastes
to which I refer. There is a great deal to be discussed
about _them_.
ÆSTHETE: But I assure you my liking for a ham-sandwich
is a genuine taste.
VEGETARIAN: With full knowledge of the pig-sty and the
pig-sticker. Do not the antecedents of your ham-sandwich
cause you a feeling of disgust?
ÆSTHETE: Oh, well, if you persist in thinking about it,
_all_ feeding causes disgust. Don't you think there is
something gross in the whole process of ingestion?
VEGETARIAN: Then why not gorge on carrion at once? The
moment you adopt the "in for a penny, in for a pound"
attitude, you sacrifice the whole art of living.
ÆSTHETE: But what of the processes on which
vegetarianism itself depends? You talk of the filth of
the slaughter-house; but how about the filth of market
gardening? To watch the soil being manured, if we let
our thoughts dwell upon it, is enough to spoil all
appetite for the produce of the garden. The more
delicious the asparagus or the strawberries, the more we
ought to loathe them.
VEGETARIAN: There I disagree with you entirely. There
is nothing in the least disgusting, to me, at any rate
(and I speak from personal experience), in the manuring
of the soil or in any agricultural process—on the
contrary, there is much that is wholesome and cheering
in this chemistry of nature. The healthy mind takes a
delight in gardening, just as it regards slaughtering
with abhorrence. If you want to see the contrast between
the effects of the two professions on those who practise
them, compare the face of the typical slaughterman with
that of the typical gardener. It is as remarkable as the
contrast between a butcher's and a fruiterer's shop.
ÆSTHETE: Well, it is no use talking about it; our views
of life are different. You are a social reformer and
agitator, and agitation is fatal to the tranquility of
art. I am an artist, and do not care a straw for social
reform. My creed is expressed in Keats's couplet:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
VEGETARIAN: Yes, but it is possible that Keats's meaning
is somewhat deeper than you imagine. It is not your
creed that I quarrel with, but your own misunderstanding
and misuse of it. That the oneness of truth and beauty
is knowledge sufficient, I admit; but my complaint is
that you do _not_ really know it, and therefore I regard
your æstheticism—the æstheticism that makes clean the
outside of the cup and the platter, and the outside
only—as mere vandalism in masquerade.
Nor is even the outside of the æsthetic platter free from
offence, for there is nothing more hideous to the eye (not to
mention the mind) than the "scorched corpses," as Bernard Shaw
calls them, that are displayed on polite dinner-tables when the
dish-covers are removed. "Among the customs at table that
deserve to be abolished," wrote Leigh Hunt, "is that of serving
up dishes that retain a look of life in death—codfish with their
staring eyes, hares with their hollow countenances, etc. It is
in bad taste, an incongruity, an anomaly; to say nothing of its
effect on morbid imaginations." Perhaps, however, the most
morbid imagination, or lack of imagination, is that of the
persons who are _not_ disgusted by these ugly sights.
Art and humanity, then, are but two branches of the same stock:
the true humanist and the true artist are own brethren. To the
artistic temperament, in particular, vegetarianism has the
surest right of appeal; for the æstheticism which can prate of
truth and beauty, while it battens like a ghoul on bloodshed and
suffering, has abnegated its own principles, and has ceased to
be artistic. How would it be possible for the scenes that are
hourly enacted in slaughter-houses to be tolerated for a moment
in a community which had any real artistic consciousness? Yet
what "æsthetic" protest, except from vegetarians, is ever raised
against them? Take, for example, the following extract from some
notes descriptive of the Chicago meat factories:
"Slithered over bloody floor. Nearly broke neck in gore
of old porker. Saw few hundred men slicing pigs, making
hams, sausages, and pork chops. Whole sight not
edifying; indeed, rather beastly. Next went to
cattle-killing house. Cattle driven along gangway and
banged over head with iron hammer. Fell stunned; then
swung up by legs, and man cuts throats. Small army of
men with buckets catching blood; it gushed over them in
torrents—a bit sickening. Next to sheep slaughter-house.
More throat-cutting—ten thousand sheep killed a day—more
blood. Place reeks with blood; walls and floor splashed
with it; air thick, warm, offensive. 'Yes,' said guide,
'Armour's biggest slaughter-house in the world. There's
no waste; we utilise everything—everything except the
squeak of the pigs. We can't can that.' Went and drank
brandy."[21]
Footnote 21:
From a series of letters contributed to the _Nottingham
Guardian_ by Mr. J. F. Fraser, author of "America at Work."
It is much to be regretted that it is not found possible, in
this enterprising establishment, to "can" the squeak, as well as
the flesh, of the pig; for such a phonographic effect might
suggest certain novel thoughts to the refined ladies and
gentlemen who contentedly regale themselves on ham-sandwiches at
polite supper-tables. For imagine what the result would be, in
studio and boudoir, dining-room and drawing-room, if the
death-cries of the slaughter-house could be but once uncanned
and brought to hearing. "The groans and screams of this poor
persecuted race," as De Quincey said of cats, "if gathered into
some great echoing hall of horrors, would melt the heart of the
stoniest." But far vaster and more impressive would be the
world-wide hall of horrors which should contain the bitter cry
of the victims of the butcher. Would that it were possible thus
to compel the æsthetic flesh-eater to "face the music" of his
misdeeds!
And, remember, it is not only at the big slaughtering centres
that these ugly trades are carried on, nor are they there,
perhaps, at their ugliest; but every town and every village has
its private torture-dens where the same carnage is performed the
year round on a smaller scale and in a clumsier manner, and
everywhere the butcher's shop presents the same ghastly
spectacle of quartered carcases hanging a-row, and gloated over
by "shopping" women. One would think it incredible that any
lover of the beautiful could doubt that the national sense of
beauty must be seriously impaired by these disgusting and
degrading sights. But enough of the subject! Were we to dwell
too long on it, we should be tempted to exclaim, as was said of
another kind of iniquity, "While these things are being done,
beauty stands veiled, and music is a screeching lie."
THE HYGIENIC ARGUMENT
The humane and the æsthetic aspects of vegetarianism are constantly
described by the advocates of flesh-eating as "sentimental," and if it
be sentimental to have regard for the sufferings of animals and the
beauty of our own surroundings, the charge will be gladly admitted;
but there is also, independent of all considerations of humanity, a
distinctly hygienic movement towards the disuse of flesh food, on the
ground that such diet is not only barbarous but unwholesome. It is
held that flesh food is in itself a stimulant, and that incidentally
it is very liable to transmit disease, while vegetarianism, on the
contrary, is a simple, natural, less inflammatory diet, which from the
earliest times has been known and practised by a few wise persons as
containing the secret of health. In Germany, especially, the system of
"natural living" has attracted much attention, and the propaganda of
food reform is there mainly on those lines; in England less so, but
here, too, there are a number of vegetarians who are hygienists first
and humanitarians afterwards, and all humanitarians are to some extent
hygienists, so that it is ridiculous, in any serious criticism of
vegetarianism, to leave out of sight, as some of our opponents do, this
essential part of the system.
There is, in fact, a considerable scientific literature on the
subject, a train of thought and experience handed down from
Cornaro and Gassendi, through their successors Cheyne, Hartley,
Lambe, Abernethy, and others, to such modern authorities as Sir
Benjamin Richardson and Dr. Alexander Haig; yet so little known
is this testimony that it might be imagined, from the nervous
apprehension with which the abandonment of flesh flood is
regarded, that vegetarianism were some new and hazardous
experiment, whereon he who enters carries his life in his hands.
This ignorance of the long-standing claims of vegetarianism to a
scientific basis is the result of the indifference and prejudice
that have always made dietetics the most unpopular of studies,
those who are in health not caring to give more than a passing
thought to the hygienic quality of their food, while those who
are sick are naturally suspicious of change or over-ruled by
medical advisers.
Yet the moment impartial inquiry is made into the comparative
benefits and perils of the two modes of living, certain
undeniable facts begin to appear, of which the first and most
obvious, though not the most important, perhaps, are the
_incidental_ dangers of flesh-eating. Many, indeed, and
unsuspected by the ordinary man who takes a "good meat dinner,"
are the ills that flesh is heir to, especially in the diet of
the poor; for, as Professor F. W. Newman pointed out, "where the
population is dense, the poorer classes, if they eat flesh-meat
at all, are sure to get a sensible portion of their supply in
an unwholesome state." This assertion is no mere piece of
vegetarian polemics; it rests on the authority of more than
one Royal Commission, the latest of which has insisted, in
the Tuberculosis Report of 1898, that "so long as private
slaughter-houses are permitted to exist, so long must inspection
be carried out under conditions incompatible with efficiency."
There is, in fact, no genuine inspection of the meat killed in
private slaughter-houses, nor is the case (at present) much
better in public ones, and it is notorious that a large amount
of tuberculous flesh, examined and rejected under their more
careful scrutiny by the Jews, is thought good enough to be sold
for the use of the "Gentiles." It would be easy to quote
official figures to show the prevalence of the mischief, but it
is not necessary here to do so, because the facts are not
denied.[22] The cause of the disease thus prevalent among cattle
must be sought partly in the excessive demand for flesh food,
and the consequent high price of meat, which is a great
temptation to graziers to breed from immature stock; partly,
too, in the unhealthy system of stall-feeding and cramming, and
last, but not least, in the rough treatment to which animals are
exposed during their transit by sea and rail—an evil which is
recognised by butchers no less than by humanitarians.
Footnote 22:
See the official facts and figures cited in "Tuberculosis," by
Dr. J. Oldfield, 1892.
Moreover, in addition to the dangers which flesh-eaters incur of
diseases contagious and parasitic, there is the risk of eating
decomposed meat under the title of "table delicacies." Here, as
one instance out of many, is an extract from a London daily
paper.
Some exemplary fines were inflicted when summonses
connected with the seizure of 13 tons of rotten pigs'
livers came on for hearing. A company promoter, trading
as manufacturer of table delicacies, was fined £100,
including costs, for the possession of forty-four
barrels of the livers, which were deposited for the
purpose of being converted into human food in the shape
of meat-extracts, soups, and other table delicacies.
The magistrate characterised the condemned goods as
"absolute filth."
The bearing of such facts on the public health is obvious. "The
shocking revelations," it has been said, "as to the potted meat
trade of London, clearly give us the key-note to the terrible
weekly statistics of fevers and other diseases in the poorer
districts of London and big towns generally. Putrid sheep's
hearts—putrid meat of unknown origin—anything from horse to pug
dog—slimy livers, reeking lights that would poison even a Fleet
Street cat, and moribund hams from diseased pigs are the
foundation of our table delicacies. Ugh! it is enough to make a
man forswear anything 'potted' for ever."[23]
Footnote 23:
_Reynolds's Newspaper_, March 19, 1899.
But, though these and similar facts are indisputable, and though
so great an authority as Sir B. W. Richardson has stated that,
"in respect to the propagation of disease, it seems just to
declare that the danger is much less and much more easily
preventable on the vegetarian than on the animal diet," the
flesh-eaters, strong or weak as they may happen to be, even to
the sickliest valetudinarian that ever sipped his Liebig, are
much more afraid of being infected with vegetarian principles
than with the poisons of the murdered ox, and would venture on
every drug in the Pharmacopœia rather than on a pure and simple
diet. Yet more than a hundred and fifty years ago so eminent a
physician as Dr. George Cheyne, then in a hale old age, had
written as follows:
"My regimen at present is milk, with tea, coffee,
bread-and-butter, mild cheese, salads, fruits and seeds
of all kinds, with tender roots (as potatoes, turnips,
carrots), and, in short, everything that has not life,
dressed or not, as I like, in which there is as much or
a greater variety than in animal foods, so that the
stomach need never be cloyed. I drink no wine nor any
fermented liquors, and am rarely dry, most of my food
being liquid, moist, or juicy. Only after dinner I drink
either coffee or green tea, but seldom both in the same
day, and sometimes a glass of soft small cider. The
thinner my diet, the easier, more cheerful and lightsome
I find myself; my sleep is also the sounder, though
perhaps somewhat shorter than formerly under my full
animal diet; but, then, I am more alive than ever I
was."[24]
Footnote 24:
The "Author's Case."