Away back in the dark ages, even before the Christian era, a Chinese husbandman, so we are told, made a wonderful discovery—that pork was good to eat. No one had ever considered the possibility of eating pork, for in those days pigs were pets, and just as every family today has its dog “Rover,” so then, every family had its pig “Scraps.”

One day the house of Char-Lee was burned to the ground. The cause of the fire is unknown. Char-Lee was filled with remorse and, as he walked about among the ruins of his home, he felt that the gods of Good Luck had indeed turned their backs on him. As he was thus bewailing his misfortunes, he stumbled over a charred timber and fell flat on the ground. In lifting himself to his feet, he burned the fingers of his right hand, and, as does a child, he immediately proceeded to suck those fingers.

Imagine his amazement to find clinging to his fingers a substance most luscious to the taste, and most gratifying to the palate! He looked to see what it could be, and—behold, he saw that it was the remains of “Scraps,” who had been lost in the burning house and roasted as perhaps never has a pig been roasted since.

Eager to further enjoy this new delicacy, Char-Lee proceeded to feast himself, and it was then he found that pork not only pleases and gratifies—but satisfies. Desiring to share his new delights with his friends and neighbors, he called them together and they had a wonderful feast. From that day to this we have eaten roasted pork.

It was many, many years later that a Roman farmer, living on a beautiful little farm at the mouth of the Tiber, formed the habit of putting fresh pork in a covered pan and burying the whole deep in the cool sands by the water’s edge. But one day he put the pan too near the edge and at high tide the salt water from the ocean came up, filled the pan, and so smoothed the surface of the sands that he was unable to find the place where he had buried the container.

After several fortnights he accidentally found his meat again. He examined it carefully and was surprised to find that it had seemingly kept in perfect condition, the only trouble being that the water had gotten into his pan and his meat was all wet. So he carried it to his house, and, putting a long skewer through the piece, he hung it high above the fire in his open hearth, to dry it off before he should wish to roast it.

Later in the day he set out with two companions for a two-days’ hunting expedition in the woods. As the party returned, laden with the spoils of the hunt, his cook was preparing a meal for them. As he walked into the house, he thought of his piece of pork. You can readily imagine his astonishment when he found that the smoke from the smouldering embers, while he was away, had turned the meat a deep cherry hue, and that the fire, built up to prepare the home-coming feast, had broiled the piece to a nicety. It savored of an aroma so rare that it was given preference over even the choice pheasants which had been prepared.

This was the first time a cured and smoked piece of pork had ever been eaten, but could you have seen how delighted these men were with the result of this accidental preparation, you would have known from their enthusiasm that cured, smoked pork would one day have a very great popularity.

Later, a farmer and his family decided that they would like to eat meat even during the summer months when the activity of haying season made it impossible to prepare it in the usual way, and so, in March, or during some other convenient cool period, he would kill the pig which had been fattening all winter, and dissect the carcass into hams, shoulders, bacon sides and mess pork.

These parts were cured by different methods; one very popular way was to put the hams and shoulders on about an inch of salt in the bottom of a barrel, keeping these parts around the edge so as to leave room for the mess pork and bacon sides in the center. Each part would be carefully rubbed with salt before it was packed away, and slits were cut from the surface of the hams to the bone, so that one might force salt in them, thus keeping the meat from turning sour. The top of the meat was sprinkled with sugar and saltpetre. A small barrel head was laid on the top of the meat and a heavy stone placed on the head so as to hold the meat firmly in place. At the end of a week just enough water was added to cover the barrel head.

Another way was to make a very strong salt brine. To this brine would be added a little sugar and saltpetre, and, after packing the meat the same as in the other case, enough of this brine would be added to entirely cover the meat. By not letting the brine get old, or by keeping plenty of salt on it, the meat could be kept in this way for several months, but would be available for use at any time.

Hams and shoulders were always smoked at the end of about two months. When getting ready to smoke some pieces, the farmer would first soak them twenty-four hours in clear, cold water. By tying a string through the shank of a ham and running this string up through a hole in the bottom of an inverted barrel, he could secure it by tying to a small stick on the outside of the hole. Under the barrel he would build a small fire, sometimes of corncobs, sometimes of hardwood and sawdust. It was the task of the small boy of the family to start this fire in the morning and maintain it all day, the idea being to keep a fire which was not too hot but which would give off plenty of smoke.

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At the end of three days the meat was considered thoroughly smoked, although some men liked it smoked much longer. After it had cooled off from the smoking it was hung in a cool, dry place or packed in a barrel of oats, so as to keep it from getting a damp mold and spoiling.

When a farmer had killed a hog, he would render out certain of the fats in an iron caldron. He would take certain parts of the meat and make his home-made sausages, but further than that, by-products were practically unknown.

The foregoing might be considered a short synopsis of the pork-packing industry up to the point which we will call the Modern Era.

This period had a small start back in the early days when a small dealer would kill a few hogs, sell the sausage and lard and cure and smoke the parts, carrying them as far into the summer months as he could, selling them out to his trade. Various methods were resorted to in order to keep mold and insects from spoiling the product. Perhaps the most generally used of these methods was to sew the piece of meat in a canvas sack and paint it with barytes. This gave them an airtight container for the meat and enabled them to keep smoked meats all during the summer months.

The advent of refrigeration, however, really marked the beginning of the modern packing era. When men learned the control of temperature it became possible for slaughter houses to assume such proportions as to warrant scientific research for the best possible methods of carrying on the business.

The story of the development of these methods would be almost endless, but a trip through an up-to-date packing plant of the present day will show what time has brought about.

As the hogs come in from the farmers and shippers they are received by the live stock department, where they are carefully sorted and graded, and then run into holding pens, to carry over until they shall be driven to slaughter. These pens must hold thousands of hogs, for although the stock is held two or three days at the most before it is slaughtered, we must remember that the more important of the packing houses kill thousands of hogs each day, so these pens must be more or less gigantic affairs. The more modern of them are constructed of concrete and brick, and are a picture of cleanliness and sanitation. They are well protected by substantially built roofs and side walls so that the animals are not exposed to the weather at any time of the year.

Veterinarians in the employ of the government examine all the hogs that come into these pens, and any that seem to be at all sickly, or for any reason unfit for food, are held out.

On the killing floor a small army of men is engaged in the business of cleaning and dressing the carcass of the hog. Each man has his particular part of the work to do, and to this end the hogs are conveyed around the room past the various workmen by means of an endless chain and trolley, so that each butcher’s work is put right before him and he does not have to make any unnecessary moves. The whole department works like one vast machine, and each man is a very definite and necessary cog in the whole scheme of procedure.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this department is the perfection that they are able to reach in cleaning the carcasses. The hogs are first run through a great machine which takes all but a few stray hairs from them. This machine contains a number of rotating beaters and high-pressure streams of water.

As soon as they come out of the machine, the men on the rail finish the job of cleaning the carcass and each animal is then run through a high-pressure washing machine so that it is absolutely clean before a single incision is made in it.

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The workmen all stand on high benches, up from the floor, and under the hogs we find troughs to keep any scraps from getting under the workmen’s feet. The floors at all times are kept as clean as can be, and the meat is taken away quickly so that there is no chance of contamination of the finished product with the hogs which are just coming from the slaughter house.

Trained men, some of them veterinarians, in the employ of the government, make a thorough inspection of the glands and other organs of the hog. They are so particular that even bruises must be trimmed out before the animals are allowed to pass and go on with the bulk which are fit for food. It is surprising to learn how many carcasses, or parts, are condemned because of one thing or another, for the least sign of sickness or unfitness of any kind calls forth a government “Condemned Tag” and holds the animal out to one side to be used for fertilizer or some other inedible purpose.

Passing through the hog chill rooms, on the way from the killing floor, one is impressed with the great number of hogs hanging there in a temperature near the freezing point. This temperature is maintained both winter and summer, so that the hogs may be thoroughly chilled and the animal heat entirely eliminated as quickly as possible after the killing, so that there will be no chance of the meat souring or any unwholesome condition arising.

After about forty-eight hours in these chill rooms, the hogs are run onto the cutting floor, where they are made into the various commercial cuts which are seen in the meat markets at home. They start out with the whole side of a hog and work it through, until they have what the packers call the “Commercial Cuts”—that is to say, the hams, loins, spare ribs, the bacon sides, and so on.

The cutting room is a light, airy room with a high ceiling, and everything in it seems a perfect example of cleanliness, and men all work with white aprons, jackets and caps.

The next stop is in the by-products building. As the writer entered, his guide told him the old bromide about “everything about a packing house being saved except the squeal, and even that having been known to appear on a phonographic record.” He thought to have some fun by asking the guide about the smell, but the laugh was on him, for the guide showed him how the air containing any odor was simply run through a condenser into a great volume of water, which absorbed it. The gases which had made the odor in the first place were then taken out in the form of solids, simply by evaporating the water away. The big evaporators which take care of this work are extremely interesting pieces of machinery to see.

There is a surprisingly large amount of expensive machinery in the hair plant. Hog hair would probably not appeal to the average person as being a thing of particular value, but it is processed so as to make the finished product worth as much as the meat itself.

Certain parts of the hog carcasses which would not be palatable enough to go into human consumption are made up into stock foods. These are sold under a guaranteed analysis. Highly-paid chemists are busy all the time checking up the analysis of these foods, for they must contain certain amounts of protein and crude fiber, which is said to be very beneficial to stock in general.

Another department manufactures what is called a balanced ration, consisting of a certain amount of grain and a certain amount of this stock food, or “digester tankage,” as it is called. This balanced ration is said to be the most nutritious food and the quickest fattener which can be given to animals. It is made up as a result of protracted experiments and much scientific research, both by state institutions and by private individuals.

There is always a certain amount of grease which is not edible, but which is suitable for soap stocks, and the tank products which are not fit for food are made into commercial fertilizers, which are gotten up under chemical formulas, and are made up particularly for different kinds of grains, grasses, flowers and the like.

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The next place is the lard department. Here great closed tanks cook the fats, under high steam pressure, and make them into snow-white lard. There are great open caldrons, steam jacketed, where an even and uniform temperature is maintained. Only the pure leaf lard, which is supposed to be the choicest fat of the hog, is cooked in these kettles. In the lard packing room there is much automatic machinery, with which the various sized packages of lard are weighed out. Machines hermetically seal the tins, and men pack them in crates and carefully weigh them over two scales.

The average person does not have even an idea of what the modern curing cellar is like. The brines and curing mixtures are prepared by trained men who do no other work but this. Everything goes exactly according to formula, and the different ingredients are weighed out to the ounce. The guide insisted that a bare ten per cent of all the hams or bacon sides produced in the plant are finally allowed to bear the company’s trade-mark. The men who finally select these goods are the oldest and most trusted employees of the firm. They weigh out a certain amount of this meat for each tierce, or vat, to be packed, and then an exact number of gallons of pickle is put in with the meat so that each pound of meat will have just a certain amount of pickle to cure it. This is said to insure a uniform product so that one trade-marked ham is exactly like another.

Even the length of time which these are left in cure must not vary a day. In the great curing room thousands of vats and tierces are piled, and the usual tierces hold about three hundred pounds of meat, while the vats hold nearly fifteen hundred pounds.

In the dry-salt curing cellars are kept enormous stocks of the cheaper kinds of meat. These, instead of being cured in brine, are rubbed in salt and piled away. These piles are perhaps three or four feet high, and are so neat and true that they appear to have been the work of a master mason. A single one of these dry-salt curing rooms holds over three million pounds.

Sliced bacon, fancy sausage and other specialties are usually packed in a separate room, into attractive cartons for the retail trade.

The standard of cleanliness in the sausage kitchen has to be unusually high. Wherever white tile is not possible, white paint is used in profusion. The shining metal tables and trucks, on which the product is handled, give a new confidence in sausage. The girls and men employed all wear clean white aprons, jackets and caps, and no effort is spared in keeping everything and everybody in the place in an ideal condition.

The meat is run through enormous automatic grinders and choppers, and through mixers that approach a dairy churn in size. After it has been properly mixed and thoroughly taken care of, it is put into automatic machinery, run by air pressure, which stuffs it into the ham sacks and casings, in which we see the sausage in the markets. The cooking is done in great vats and in enormous electric ovens.

When we stop to think of the proportion of our food which is a packing-house product, we can be glad indeed that conditions such as those described above are becoming available more and more every day.

Why do We Call them “Dog-Days”?

When we talk about “dog-days” now, we mean the period of the year between July 3d and August 11th, twenty days before and after the rising of the “dog-star.”

The name was applied by the ancients to a period of about forty days, the hottest season of the year, at the time of the rising of Sirius, the dog-star.

The time of the rising is now, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, different from what it was then (July 1st). It is now about July 23d.

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How is a Five Dollar Gold Piece Made?

The process of converting the precious metals into coins is an interesting one.

The rolling machines through which the ingots are passed are adjustable, the space between the rollers being governed by the operator. About two hundred ingots are run through per hour on each pair of rollers.

When the rolling is completed the strip of metal is about six feet long. As it is impossible to roll perfectly true, it is necessary to “draw” these strips, after being softened by annealing. The drawing benches resemble long tables, with a bench on either side, at one end of which is an iron box secured to the table. In this are fastened two perpendicular steel cylinders. These are at the same distance apart that the thickness of the strip is required to be. It is drawn between the cylinders, which reduces the whole to an equal thickness.

These strips are now taken to the cutting machines, each of which will cut 225 planchets per minute. The press used consists of a vertical steel punch. From a strip worth $1,100 about $800 of planchets will be cut. These are then removed to the adjusting room, where they are adjusted. After inspection they are weighed on very accurate scales. If a planchet is too heavy, but near the weight, it is filed off at the edges; if too heavy for filing, it is thrown aside with the light ones to be remelted.

The planchets, after being adjusted, are taken to the coining and milling rooms, and are passed through the milling machine. They are fed to this machine through an upright tube, and as they descend are caught upon the edge of a revolving wheel and carried about a quarter of a revolution, during which the edge is compressed and forced up. By this apparatus 560 nickels can be milled in a minute; for large pieces the average is 120.

The massive but delicate coining presses coin from 80 to 100 pieces a minute. These presses do their work in a perfect manner. After being stamped the coins are taken to the coiner’s room. The light and heavy coins are kept separate in coining, and when delivered to the treasurer they are mixed in such proportions as to give him full weight in every delivery. By law, the deviation from the standard weight, in delivering to him, must not exceed three pennyweights in one thousand double eagles.

The coinage of the United States mints since the organization of the government has amounted to nearly 6,000,000,000 pieces, valued at over $4,000,000,000.

How does a Bird Fly?

The wing of a bird is an elastic, flexible organ, with a thick anterior and a thin posterior margin; hence the wing does not act like a solid board, but is thrown into a succession of curves. When a bird rises from the ground it leaps up with head stuck out and expanded tail, so that the body is in the position of a boy’s kite when thrown up. The wings are strongly flapped, striking forward and downward, and the bird quickly ascends. It has been shown that the wing describes a figure 8 in its action, the margin being brought down so that the tip of the wing gives the last blow after the part next the trunk has ceased to strike; hence, standing in front of a bird, the wing would be divided into two, the upper surface of one-half and the lower surface of the other being visible at the same time. These portions are reversed when the wing is drawn back and towards the body, before beginning another stroke; but it will be observed that during retraction the wing is still sloped, so that the resemblance to a kite is maintained. There are many varieties of flight among birds; of these the most remarkable is the sailing motion, in which the wings are but slightly moved. Probably the original impetus is maintained by the kite-like slope of the wing, and advantage may be taken of currents by a rotation of the wing at the shoulder, a movement invisible at any distance.