heavy smoker for more than 30 years, using not less than eight ounces of
tobacco a week, often two ounces in a day, he has found his passion for
tobacco nearly gone. He has had to get milder tobacco, and is now not
smoking half-an-ounce a day. He says "it does not taste the same; I am not
nearly so fond of it." He finds, with regard to wine, that he now cannot
drink it, "it tastes like physic." He writes: "These things have come upon
me as a revelation. I begin to see that the great cure for the evil of
national intemperance is not teetotal propaganda, but vegetarianism."
We have given reasons of a scientific character, for abstaining from flesh
as food, but higher than these are those relating to ethics. Everything
relating to the slaughter-house is revolting to a refined and humane
person. In the great slaughter-houses of Chicago; in those huge hideous
box-shaped buildings, five or six storeys high, about ten millions of
animals are killed every year. They are treated as if they were bales of
merchandise and as destitute of feeling. Bullocks are struck on the head
with a mallet and let fall into the basement of the building. They are
whilst stunned or half-stunned, at once strung up by their hind legs to
some machinery, which moves them along, their heads hanging downwards.
Regardless of their agony, men run after them to cut their throats,
followed by others with great pails to catch the blood. Much of the warm
blood is spilt over the men or on the floors; but this is of no
consequence, if but a small fraction of a minute is economised. In a short
time, whether the animal has bled long enough or not, it reaches the
lowest and darkest and worst ventilated portion of the gloomy building,
where it is disembowelled. The walls and floors are caked with blood, the
place is filthy, there is no proper lavatory accommodation, everything
both to eyes and nose is detestable. Even if the windows were kept clean,
light could not penetrate into the centre of the buildings. Consequently a
large part of the work is done by artificial light. Tuberculosis is
prevalent amongst the workpeople living under such unsanitary conditions.
Serious crime is much more common amongst them than amongst any other
class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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