about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the
chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel.
So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his
feet and borne aloft.

At the same instant the ear was assailed by a most
terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women
turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed
by another, louder and yet more agonizing -- for once
started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at
the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley,
and went sailing down the room. And meantime another
was swung up, and then another, and another, until
there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot
and kicking in frenzy -- and squealing. The uproar was
appalling, perilous to the ear-drums; one feared there was
too much sound for the room to hold -- that the walls
must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high
squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony;
there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh out~
burst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax.
It was too much for some of the visitors -- the men would
look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women
would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing
to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes.

Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the
floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of
hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them;
one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with
a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long
line of hogs, with squeals and life-blood ebbing away to~
gether; until at last each started again, and vanished
with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water.

It was all so very businesslike that one watched it
fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-
making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the
most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the
hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trust~
ingly; and they were so very human in their protests --
and so perfectly within their rights! They had done

[[40]]

p039 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p040w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p041

v?