“‘Of the 327 slaughter-houses inspected, only 23, or 7 per cent., were found to fulfil the sanitary standards.... At nearly all slaughter-houses inspected, foul, nauseating odours filled the air for yards round. Swarms of flies filled the air and the buildings and covered the carcasses which were hung up to cool. Beneath the houses was to be found a thin mud, or a mixture of blood and earth, churned by hogs, which are kept to feed upon offal.... Maggots frequently existed in numbers so great as to cause a visible movement of the mud. Water for washing the meat was frequently drawn from dug wells, which receive seepage from the slaughter-house yards, or the water was taken from the adjoining streams, to which the hogs had access. Dilapidated buildings were the usual thing, and always the most repulsive odours and surroundings existed.’ ... “One of the butchers was asked what they did with ‘sick’ cattle. He laughed and answered ‘What do they all do with them?’ “In another large eastern city there are only four slaughter-houses in the city proper which do not have Federal Inspection. The total kill at these places is about 1,000 cattle and 2,500 hogs per month. The only inspection is furnished by one inspector of the board of health, and this inspector is not a veterinarian. Previous to his employment by the board of health, he was a hotel porter.” It need only be added that such strict economy is practised in all these slaughter-houses that the odds and ends—the “trimmings”—are now valued by the butchers at about 14 per cent. of the whole. The trimmings consist of every part of the animal except the actual refuse it contains, everything else being utilised in one way or another. As one Chicago packer proudly expressed it, when speaking of hogs, “we use everything but the squeal!” This, be it observed, is the meat placed upon the market and eaten by the American public, to the extent of millions of carcasses yearly! Is it any wonder that the people have cancer, and tapeworm, and tuberculosis, and other illnesses, and break down prematurely and become miserable and die? It would be a wonder indeed if they did anything else! It is well known that large quantities of diseased meat are constantly being introduced and placed upon the market—far more than the public is aware of. But, for the present argument, it is not necessary that we should force this conclusion, since we can establish the point, even assuming that all the meat eaten is from the carcasses of healthy animals—the actual content of the tissue containing toxic material, no matter how free the animal may be from what is generally known as “disease.” This being true, all the arguments advanced above will remain perfectly valid—no matter how “healthy” the animal may be. VI THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE (_Nations and Individuals_)