THE MEAT FETISH. 7
The animal comes to the place of execution, as a rule, in a state of frenzy, and to overcome its resistance the eye must be gouged of the tail twisted till the gristle cracks. It is futile to preach humanity to men engaged in such a trade. You or I, enlisted in such a profession, would act in the same way.
The essential idea of butchery for food is cruel, and you cannot be cruel humanely. "How could you select such a business?" asked a horrified officer of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, upon his first visit to he stock-yards of Chicago. "We're only doing your dirty work, sir," was the true and silencing reply. It is brutalising work as well as cruel work, and those who create the demand for it are responsible for it. Where, as in rural regions, slaughter is less of a machine-like occupation it is hardly less revolting. I know of nothing more like a human murder than the killing of a pig on a farm, and the long-continued cries of the doomed beast are not unlike those of a terrified child. And here we have, too, that the ugliest ugliness of treachery. The pig, the hen, the turkey, as the case may be, has learned to look upon you as its best friend—the source of unfailing nourishment and care. And then, some fine day you come, not with the ground-meal or the water-pail, but with axe or knife, and with inexorable fate upon your countenance. What reason our domestic animals have for despising the human race! And with strange perversity we pick out the most inoffensive animals for slaughter. There might be an element of justice in preying upon beasts of prey, but we prefer to slay the harmless deer and cow and sheep. Is carnivorous flesh offensive? Then, why do we make our own flesh offensive by being carnivorous?
There can be but one justification for this consistent, all-round horror of butchery, and that is its necessity. But here again its apologists have no sure foundation to stand on. So far from being a necessary food for man, flesh is a poor food, and first of all it is not a clean food. The bodies of all living animals, including fish
