if you wish to see an exemplification of the law of life, the survival of one by the failure and death of another, go some day to any one of the great abattoirs which to-day on the east river, or in jersey city, or elsewhere near the great metropolis receive and slay annually the thousands and hundreds of thousands of animals that make up a part of the city’s meat supply. and there be sure and see, also, the individual who, as your agent and mine, is vicariously responsible for the awful slaughter. you will find him in a dark, red pit, blood-covered, standing in a sea of blood, while hour after hour and day after day there passes before him a line of screaming animals, hung by one leg, head down, and rolling steadily along a rail, which is slanted to get the benefit of gravity, while he, knife in hand, jabs unweariedly at their throats, the task of cutting their throats so that they may die of bleeding and exhaustion having become a wearisome and commonplace labor, one which he scarcely notices at all. he is a blood-red slayer, this individual, a butcher by trade, big, brawny, muscular, but clothed from head to foot in a tarpaulin coat and cap, which from long spattering by the blood of animals he has slain, have become this darksome134 red. day after day and month after month here you may see him—your agent and mine—the great world wagging its way, the task of destroying life never becoming less arduous, the line of animals never becoming less thin.
a peculiar life to lead, is it not? one would think a man of any sensibility would become heartsick, or at the least, revolted and disgusted; but this man does not seem to be. rather, he takes it as a matter of course, a thing which has no significance, any more than the eating of his food or the washing of his hands. since it is a matter of business or of living, and seeing that others live by his labor, he does not care.
but it has significance. these creatures we see thus automatically and hopelessly trundling down a rail of death are really not so far removed from us in the scale of existence. you will find them but a little way down the ladder of mind, climbing slowly and patiently towards those heights to which we think we have permanently attained. there is a force back of them, a law which wills their existence, and they do not part with it readily. there is a terror of death for them as there is for us, and you will see it here exemplified, the horror that makes them run cold with the knowledge of their situation.
you will hear them squeal, the hogs; you will hear them baa, the sheep; you will hear the grinding clank of the chains and see the victims dropping: hogs, half-alive,135 into the vats of boiling water; the sheep into the range of butchers and carvers who flay them half-alive; while our red representative—yours and mine—stands there, stabbing, stabbing, stabbing, that we who are not sheep or hogs and who pay him for his labor may live and be merry and not die. strange, isn’t it?
a gruesome labor. a gruesome picture. we have been flattering ourselves these many centuries that our civilization had somehow got away from this old-time law of life living on death, but here amid all the gauds and refinements of our metropolitan life we find ourselves confronted by it, and here stands our salaried red man who murders our victims for us, while we look on indifferently, or stranger yet, remain blissfully unconscious that the bloody labor is in existence.
we live in cities such as this; crowd ourselves in ornamented chambers as much as possible; walk paths from which all painful indications of death have been eliminated, and think ourselves clean and kind and free of the old struggle, and yet behold our salaried agent ever at work; and ever the cry of the destroyed is rising to what heaven we know not, nor to what gods. we dream dreams of universal brotherhood and prate of the era of coming peace, but this slaughter is a stumbling-block over which we may not readily vault. it augurs something besides peace and love in this world. it forms a great commentary on the arrangement of the universe.
136 and yet this revolting picture is not without its relieving feature, though alas! the little softness visible points no way by which the victims may be spared. the very butcher is a human being, a father with little children. one day, after a discouraging hour of this terrible panorama, i walked out into the afternoon sunlight only to brood over the tragedy and terror of it all. this man struck me as a demon, a chill, phlegmatic, animal creature whose horrible eyes would contain no light save that of non-understanding and indifference. moved by some curious impulse, i made my way to his home—to the sty where i expected to find him groveling—and found instead a little cottage, set about with grass and flowers, and under a large tree a bench. here was my murderer sitting, here taking his evening’s rest.
the sun was going down, the shadows beginning to fall. in the cool of the evening he was taking his ease, a rough, horny-handed man, large and uncouth, but on his knee a child. and such a child—young, not over two years, soft and delicate, with the bloom of babyhood on its cheek and the light of innocence in its eye; and here was this great murderer stroking it gently, the red man touching it softly with his hand.
i stood and looked at this picture, the thought of the blood-red pit coming back to me, the gouts of blood, the knife, the cries of his victims, the death throes; and then at this green grass and this tree and the father and his child.
137 heaven forefend against the mysteries of life and its dangers. we know in part, we believe in part, but these things surpass the understanding of man and make our humble consciousness reel with the inexplicable riddle of existence. to live, to die, to be generous, to be brutal! how in the scheme of things are the conditions and feelings inextricably jumbled, and how we grope and stumble through our days to our graves!
