DON'T EAT ‘FANNY ADAMS.’

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 38, 7 May 1907, Page 6

DON'T EAT ‘FANNY ADAMS.’

THIS TELLS YOU ALL YOU WANT . TO KNOW ABOUT “THE JUNGLE.” + 'Tanny Adams.” Such is the name of which canned American meat has Deen known these twenty years past among our soldiers and sailors. Fanny Adams was the name of a girl who was murdered, and her body afterwards dismembered by the murderer, many years ago in the East End of Londop. The implied inference is obvious. Tt shows what Jack Tar an<l Tommy Atkins have always thought, and still think, of the tinned stuff they have to eat. But, up till quite recently, no one supposed for one single moment that it had any foundation in fact. Canned human remains ! The idea was too fantastically horrible, too shockingly loathsome, to be even imagined. And now comes along a young American author, Mr. Upton Sinclair, to tell us in so many w'ords that this abominable thing has actually been done. His book—“ The Junglo”—-is, of course, written in the guise of a romance, but Mr. Sinclair vouches for the truth of each and every one of the statements it contains. Here is the one abeve alluded to.

WHEN EMPLOYEES DISAPPEARED.

One of a family working in a packing house had disappeared. “It was said by the boss at Durham’s that he had gotten his week’s money and left there. That .might not be true, of <6r sometimes they would •ay that when a man had been killed, it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned. When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertiliser, there was no use letting out the fact and making his family unhappy.”

Horrible ! Yes, but this is not the worst. Such happenings could be only occasional. It is the things that go on in the packing houses day after day, year in and year out, as part of the ordinary routine of business, that most concerns us. And these latter are of a nature to shock the most callous, to turn the stomach of the least fastidious.

MEAT ALWAYS FRESH—PERHAPS.

We are told, for instance, of the thousands of rats that everywhere infest the factories, huge, fat rats gorged with offal, and of how tho dung of these loathsome vermin accumulates on the piles of embalmed beef stacked ready for canning. The packers could run their hands along meat and sweep off handfuls of this dried dung. But they seldom took the trouble. The rats, however, ware a nuisance, and the man would put poisoned bread out for them ; they would die. and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. Faugh ! Only to think of it !

A word as to the embalming process. Science has enabled the Chicago packer to so saturate the tissues of meat with powerful preservatives. that it will practically “keep good” for any length of time. That Is to say, it will never putrify. Neither would the bodies of the ancient Egyptians after being soaked la natron and doctored up internally with sulphate of alumina. Yet if jreu placed an Egyptian mummy before a Congo cannibal, and told him that it was just as good to eat as nice, freeh, juicy missionary steak, he would laugh you to soorn. The aaalogy holds good.

It is not even, either, sa if the meat was sound and good prior to undergoing the embalming process. On the contrary; it is exactly the reverse. We know now that the Chicago Beef Trust has agencies all over the country, that hunt out all the old and diseased cattle to be canned. From the Atlantic to the Pacific stretch their tentacles, ready to hook in anything on four legs that the farmers of the East and the cattle kings of the West can dispose of in no other way. FED ON BREWERY REFUSE. • “There were cattle there,’’ savs Marija, one of the principle characters in the book, “which had been fed on ‘whiskymalt,’ the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the men called ‘steerly’—which means covered with boils. It was a nasty iob killing these, for when you plunged your fknife into them they would turst and splash foul-smelling stuff onto your face ; and when a man s Reeves w-ere smeared with blood, and tie hands sluoted in it, how was lu* to wipe his lacs, or to clear his eyes

• 1 11 ' 14 '-I—— aad sailors. No° tsasd it “Faany Adams/, and in many cases absolutely refused to eat it, preferring to go hungry. And there is at this present moment seven years’ supply of the muck stored in the underground granaries at Malta, and two years’ supply at Gibraltar. Almost certainly other fortresses of ours hold similar supplies. What is the War Office going to do about it ? Are our soldiers and sailors, in the event of an outbreak of hostilities, to be poisoned as well as shot at ? If our Government wants an object-lesson, let them take to heart that afforded by the Spanish-American war, where this very embalmed beef “killed 1 several times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards.” This is not the statement of an irresponsible journalist. The words are the words of President Roosevelt. Therefore, I ask once again, “What is our Government going to do about it ?’±

WHAT SHALL WE DO ? It is not as though there are not British firms of repute able and ready to supply good tinned provisions. True, their prices are higher, although not greatly so ; but then, what would you ? One can hardly expoct prime beef at the price of offal. The truth of tho matter is that the products of the Chicago packing houses would he dear at any price. They would be dear if they were given away. They would be dear even if one were paid to eat them.

I recently, for the purpose of this article, paid several surprise visits to some of the leading firms of English packers, including Messrs. Poulton and Noel, and ethers of similar standing; and I am bound to say that not only did I find nowhere anything approaching, even in the remotest degree, the horrors of tho Chicago packing houses as set forth in' Mr. Sinclair’s book, but that, on the contrary, I discovered a state of things which for rigid cleanliness and perfection of sanitation could sc&reely be surpassed.

HOW WE INSPECT. “Indeed,’’ somewhat naively remarked one of the representatives who conducted me over the works, “it could scarcely be otherwise. Outside official inspection here is no farce, as it undoubtedly is in America. Wo have to deal primarily with the Government Inspector under the Factory Acts, who makes periodical visits, always, I need scarcely say, without previous warning. Then there is the Borough Council Inspector,. who also favours us with frequent surprise visits. And, lastly, there is the Lady Inspector of the Local Government Board, who looks continually and sharply after the interests of our female employees.”

Of course, there have been, even hero in London, scandals in connection with tinned provisions ; but I think it is a fact that in no single case havo British firms of repute been involved in them, even indirectly. Usually it has been some alie 4 . gang, with headquarters in the East End of London, whose agents havo bought up condemned or worthless stock, of no particular biand, and, after having “re-blown* and relabelled the tins, havo proceeded to sell them to/the poorest of the poor. Aiui when they are caught, what is their punishment ? A fine of £SO, or maybe £IOO. As well fine a man 5/ for breaking into a bank and stealing £5,000.

OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE. So much has been written about the one side of Mr. Sinclair’s epochmaking story, that one is apt to forget the other side of it, the side that tells of the tragedy of the human lives. Nor is there to tell of it here. I should advise everybody to get the book and read it for themselves. Especially would I advise •very working man # to read it. It will breed contentment in his mind ; and he will close it at the last chapter, with a muttered prayer of thankfulness to Heaven that his lot is cast in England rather than America

High wages ? Yes, the wages paid to the workers in the Chicago packing houses are undoubtedly high, when compared in terms of actual money values with those obtaining in London, or Liverpool, or Glasgow. And so they need be. For a pace is sot by the bosses that kills the strongest in four or five years, and that wears out the weaker ones in as many months.

HOW THH WORKERS LIVE. In the Chicago works Mr. Sinclair saw' “men, women, and children bending over whirling machines in suffocating cellars where the daylight never came, breathing their lungs full of poisonous exhalations, and doomed to die, every one of them, within a certain definite time.” Think on this picture, ye who are desirous of emigrating to the “Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave.”—-‘T. A.T.”