ACRES OF MEAT.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 34, 17 March 1914, Page 6

ACRES OF MEAT.

ADDINGTON'S OFFERING. [Specially written for The Sun.] - Meat! Meat on the hoof! That is the first impression of Addington stockyards on a stranger. One wandera down along the hundreds of, pens, some? crowded .with sheep, others with only a few picked animals for sale, -,and on every side there are farmers, farmers with wide billycock hats, straggling whiskers, and "reach-me : dowh" suits, farmers in well-cut tweeds, eminently respectable hats, wearing pince-nez and trim -beards; young 'farmers in riding "breeches, sporting coats, and rakish .hats—all sorts and conditions of f&r•mer.. And .on the rails of the • pens, perched- above the buyers, are the auctioneers' and' their 'assistants, for the.most, part-clad, in khaki overalls. Over all this great maze of peus hang? an atmosphere , of ■ dust, the greasy odour of aninials, and a babel of confused noises—the bleating of uneasy sheep, the lowing of. calves, the shrill vindictive squealing of pigs, and the unceasing clamour of the auctioneer—'' Seventeen-half - seventeen - half-seventeen-half-if-I-don 't- get - any - more-than-seventeen-half -going-at - seventeenhalf ✓„" The hurried jumble of bids, entreaties and offers rises frorria dozen pens/ and : meanwhile the- farmers, quitje unconscious of theufcafrety stand inXgroups all over the yards,! discussing the crops, the weather, wool prices, or one of the dozen other topics paramount in the farming mind. The Plaintive Auctioneer. Down the front of the cattle pens runs a long and narrow roofed platform, and here the auctioneer, his satellites, and sellers stand. The cattle move uneasily about, but they are :he least noisy of all * the animals in the yards; an attendant walks along on the rails and stirs a pen of steers. "Come on," says the auctioneer, "wha/ am I offered for this lot of prime beef? * Seven pounds—seven pounds—seven quid—come on, shake it up. ..." One moves away from this'.fated mob, dull-eyed, apathetic, and already described as beef. Near at hand another auctioneer is selling calves. ' He stands over a pen: "Here, now;, eight first-class young bulla these are; what am I offered! One quid, one quid! Not near enough; right you are, twenty-two bob, twenty-two, twenty-two, twentythree —no advance on twenty-three? Twenty-five I'm offered, twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five, going at twenty-five." Then, having knocked the lot down, he says in an aggrieved voice, "It's a rotten price, a stinking price," and moves on to the next pen. The calves here are started at twenty shillings and rise to twenty-four shillings The auctioneer is about to knock them down, and turns appealingly to the last buyer: "What say now, Joe, twenty-five? No? Right, then; gojng at twenty-four." A roan calf goes for twenty-seven shillings, and again the auctioneer voices his grief: "Well," he says, "this is a rotten sale." Merely Mutton. At the entrance to the sheep pens, one stumbles on another evidence of this tragedy of meat—it is a dead ewe, lying carelessly in the alley, -just as she has been dragged from the pen, glazed eyes, lolling tongue, her stiff, legs pointing starkly to the sky. No one notices such a trifle. An auctioneer is shouting " Seventeen-three, seventeen three, seventeen-three, seventeennine, eighteen bob I'm offered"; and .further down, a stout, khaki-clad salesman with a round mouth is detonating .similar figures with the velocity of a maxim-gun. "All these lovely, big, sound ewes — come on, eighteen shillings? No? Seventeen, then —seventeen-half, seven-teen-half I'm offered; eighteen bob, eighteen-half there; nineteen bob, nineteen bob, gone at nineteen bob. Now Ave'll take the two white faces." Calm in Confusion. It takes about thirty seconds on an average to sell a pen of sheep, and as they are sold the auctioneers move along the rails to the next pen. Three auctioneers are selling close to each other, but there is no confusion. The bidders know what they want, and they know the fair price for it —so does the auctioners are selling close to each

quick, and why there is no confusion, as the bidder keeps his attention fixed on the lot he is bidding for and on no other.

''Look at them, look at them, look at them," shouts one salesman, dancing' a sort of two-step on the rail, "look at them now —seventeen-nine- —and shorn in October. Seventeen-nine, seventeen-nine, and down they go! Damn it. there's five" bob's worth of wool on each of 'em now. No, it's against you, sir; eighteen! right, eighteen bob, eighteen bob—and they're gone*!' V Towards Ihe back, of the yards the men are shutting gates, opening pens> and shouting at their elamorous dogs. The sheep, once started down the race, rush pell-mell, the dogs at their heels. If any should try to turn the dogs are on them, heading them back. It may be work for the meny but the dogs evidently regard it as sport. Here; at the back the store sheep are being sold, a fat, perspiring, gesticulating auctioneer is imploring the buyers to pay a reasonable-price for such superlative store sheep. An auctioneer must have a, grievance, if only to convince the buyers that they are getting -undeserved profit. Querulous Pork. Really, sheep are selling well this day, and the auctioneers' complaints are just force of habit—business habit. At the back of the yards one sees a long string of cattle trucks wherein, these acres of apathetic beasts, have' •been jolted up from their pleasant grazing grounds—some' of them to be jolted back to other grazing grounds, but the most of them to be soon consigned to the abattoirs and the butcher's/knife. Leaving the store sheep, one comes upon the pig pens, which announce themselves afar off, and here is more meat —pigs in heaps, crowding on each other and complaining shrilly, a few Berkshire sows penned , apart—sprawl on the . brick floor of their pens—panting, quivering masses of meat. In one i>en two men are coercing reluctant pigs up an inelinded gangway into a sort of cage on ■wheels, and one of the men persuades them to enter by jabbing them with a pointed stick. .

The Daily Sacrifice. ~ This sweltering mass of Animals is the daily sacrifice to humanity. Here one realises that man does not live by bread alone, and that meat makes' a large part of his dietary, whatever, else may* enter into it. These animals represent wool and leather, glue' and bone-dust, but mostly meat — acres of mea# As one leaves the at-, mosphere of grease arid dust and a mob of sheep is manoeuvred into another pen, and a man with a bunch of raddle pots in his hand goes amongst thehi dab&ing them deftly with different colours. Two green spots and one yellow on the rump for this pen; the next pen is decorated with one black and one red splodge on the head, and some of the sheep that have come in with raddle marks, on them go out as multicoloured as Joseph's' coat.

Just Meat and Leather. They may be marked for different owners, but their untimate destination is the same —they are doomed to become .meat, and- they look doomed, all except the pigs, which are the only, animals in the yards that are neither apathetic nori resigned. Only meat! and one leaves the yards musing on the chemical actions whereby sun and air are turned into grass, and grass is turned into sheep, how sheep turns into man, and man turns into bed at night without caring much anyhow — and, while so musing, a cart passes, loaded high with freshly stripped pelts, destined for the fellmongery. And that babel of bleating and squealing that one leaves behind is only the ineffectual protest of meat, and leather—just acres of meat and leather. P.H.