Until today all that we Berry Wagon Boys knew about meat was that we liked our steak rare and our pork well done, and we never thought where all the meat comes from or how it is prepared for the market. Here at the Union Stock Yards of Chicago we have learned many interesting things. Almost every farm in the United States has some cattle, hogs, and sheep, and out in the far west there are huge ranches where thousands of cow-boys are employed to care for the great herds of cattle. In Texas there is a ranch larger than the whole state of Connecticut. Farmers used to kill their own stock and sell the meat in the nearest town, but now there are great meat-packing centers to which they ship the live stock and where it is turned into canned meat or sent in refrigerator trains or ships to all parts of the world, and because of the intense cold in which it is kept, the meat will remain fresh for months. The packing industry amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In the stock yards of Chicago, there are over twenty miles of streets filled with huge pens, each pen containing hundreds of cattle, pigs, or sheep. While they are waiting to be killed, they are fed on good food and watered with pure artesian water, so their last hours are made as pleasant as possible. If the creatures could know how very useful they are to be, it would be quite a comfort to them, for besides being made into dried, canned, smoked, or fresh meat, they furnish materials for fertilizer, brushes, oils, glue, lard, leather, hairpins, mattresses, and many other things. The packers say that they can use every part of an ox but its kick and every part of a pig but its squeal. After the meat is prepared for the market, it is kept two days in a great chilling room where ten thousand sides of beef can be chilled at one time. It was interesting to see the sausage meat being pressed into the intestines of the pigs, for the big machines can fill a mile of skins a minute. We saw them making lard, too, and are proud to say that American lard is shipped all over the world and is considered the best. The reason that American meat products are so good is because the inspectors do not allow any carelessness. [Illustration: Scene in Chilling Room Cattle. Union Stock Yards Meat Inspection Rendering Lard STOCK YARDS AT CHICAGO Filling Sausage]