Have you ever ridden through the Chicago stock-yards on a sunny day
in the month of June? If you have, you are not likely to forget the
experience.
As I rode with about twenty or thirty other girls in the bus, all
apparently perfectly contented and happy, I thought of some of my
father's vivid stories of old Shanghai, the city of smells.
I shall not describe the odors of the Chicago stock-yards. Suffice
it to say that they are many, varied, and strong, hard to bear at
first, but in time, like everything else, one becomes acclimated to
them, as it were. I have heard patriotic yards people, born and reared
in that rarefied atmosphere, declare that they "like it." And yet
the institution is one of the several wonders of the world. It is a
miraculous, an astounding, a mighty organization.
Again, as on that first day in Chicago, at the railway station, I was
one of many atoms pouring into buildings so colossal that they seemed
cities in themselves. I followed several of the stenographers--only
the stenographers rode in the busses; the factory girls of the yards
walked through, as did the men--up a few flights of stairs, and came to
a vast office where, I believe, something like three thousand clerks
are employed on one floor. Men, women, girls, and boys were passing
along, like puppet machines, each to his own desk and chair.
The departments were partitioned off with oak railings. There was a
manager and a little staff of clerks for every department, and, oh! the
amazing number of departments! During all the months I worked there
I never knew the names of more than half the departments, and when I
come to think of what was on the other floors, in other buildings, the
great factories, where thousands were employed, I feel bewildered and
stupendously impressed.
To think of the stock-yards as only a mighty butcher shop is a great
mistake. It is better to think of them as a sort of beneficent feeder
and provider of humanity, not merely because of the food they pour out
into the world, but for the thousands to whom they give work.
I heard much of the abuses there, of the hateful actions of many of the
employers; but one loses sight of these things in contemplating the
great general benefit of this astounding place. Of course I, in the
offices, saw perhaps only the better and cleaner side of the yards, and
therefore I cannot tell what went on elsewhere.