again from the hogs which had died of cholera on the
trains, and which you might see any day being loaded into
box-cars and hauled away to a place called Globe, in Indiana,
where they made a fancy grade of lard.

Jurgis heard of these things little by little, in the gossip
of those who were obliged to perpetrate them. It seemed
as if every time you met a person from a new department,
you heard of new swindles and new crimes. There was,
for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle-butcher for the
plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for can~
ning only; and to hear this man describe the animals which
came to his place would have been worthwhile for a Dante
or a Zola. It seemed that they must have agencies all over
the country, to hunt out old and crippled and diseased
cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had
been fed on "whisky-malt," the refuse of the brew~
eries, and had become what the men called "steerly" --
which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job kill~
ing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they
would burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face;
and when a man's sleeves were smeared with blood, and his
hands steeped in it, how was he ever to wipe his face, or to
clear his eyes so that he could see? It was stuff such as
this that made the "embalmed beef" that had killed sev~
eral times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets
of the Spaniards; only the army beef, besides, was not
fresh canned, it was old stuff that had been lying for
years in the cellars.

Then one Sunday evening, Jurgis sat puffing his pipe by
the kitchen stove, and talking with an old fellow whom
Jonas had introduced, and who worked in the canning-
rooms at Durham's; and so Jurgis learned a few things
about the great and only Durham canned goods, which
had become a national institution. They were regular
alchemists at Durham's; they advertised a mushroom-
catsup, and the men who made it did not know what a
mushroom looked like. They advertised "potted chicken,"
-- and it was like the boarding-house soup of the comic
papers, through which a chicken had walked with rub~

[[114]]

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v?