The First Cartoon

The first cartoon commences on the left with the "clutch-pen."  Into this pen, which adjoins the "feeding-pen," a boy drives from fifteen to twenty hogs at a time.  In the cut the sliding door of the pen is thrown open to give a view of the mode of clutching.  The clutch is a pair of tongs with which the hind-end of the hog is clasped.  The ends of the arms of these tongs are joined by a chain, to the middle of which a grooved pulley, free on one side, is attached.  This pulley, resting on an aerial iron rail, suspends the live hog head downward (the clutches tighten with the weight of the hog like ice-tongs), and puts him on wheels ready to be moved forward.  A man and a boy in the pen do this work, lifting the clutch wheel upon the railway by means of a rope and pulley.  After making up a train of half a dozen hogs the sliding door of the pen is opened and the suspended animals and [pushed forward into the presence of the executioner.  This man of blood seizes the animal with his left hand by a foreleg, steadies it, and deftly, with a plunge so swift that the eye can scarcely follow the motion, sinks his sharp butcher-knife into its throat, then slides it along the rail a little way and proceeds in the same manner with the next, and the next, all day long.  This work requires skill and courage.  A very slight deviation of the knife from the right direction will spoil a shoulder by pricking it.  The animal, by plunging, sometimes strikes the knife with his fore-foot and cuts the man who wields it.

 The floor of the bleeding apartment is covered with a wood grating to permit the blood to descend into the sewer.  This is about the only part of the hog that is allowed to go to waste.  After the bleeding is over a man disengages the clutch, and sends it back to the clutch pen on a steeply inclined rail, while the hog, sliding down the incline, plunges into the scalding-vat.  This is a water-tight wooden box fourteen feet long, five feet wide, and three feet deep.  The water it contains is heated by a continuous current of steam introduced near the bottom.  Two men with poles stir the hogs, and when it is full keep from seven to ten of them floating.  They also rub the hair from the ears and the feet of the animal with their hands, while a third man works the lever of the iron cradle, which lifts the scalded animal out of the opposite end of the vat, and rolls it over on the adjoining cleaning bench.  The bench is a long inclined plane, down which the carcass, as desired, slides or rolls easily.  The two (sometimes four) men next to the vat are employees of a hair curling establishment, which pays so much per hog (usually ten cents) for what hair and bristles these men can pull in the brief time the animal is permitted to remain before them.  Next come the scrapers, four in number, in sets of two.  Their implement is a steel scraper resembling a very small short-handles hoe.  The first set scrape one side of the animal, then roll it over to the next set, who scrape the other side.  These pass it on to the shavers, of whom there are three pairs, each man provided with a sharp steel butcher knife.  Under their treatment the cleaning of the hair from the hog is completed.  All along the bench hose suspended at intervals send streams of cold water down to facilitate the cleaning process. Two men, called gambrelers, prepare the hog for the next process. A stout round stick, two and a half feet long, with a crease in the middle, and the ends turned up slightly smaller with shoulders, is called the gambrel.  The tendons of the hind-legs of the hog, exposed by a slit from the knife, are slipped over the ends of the gambrel, and the crease in its middle part is placed upon a hook, which exactly fits it, and which is attached to a grooved pulley that runs on a suspended single-track railway which leads past one end of the drying room.  These adjustments made, a light push slides the carcass from the bench and swings it, head downward, above a floor set three or four feet lower down than that on which is the table it just left.

 The next work is the disemboweling, Three men do this work; one splits the animal, the next takes out the entrails and the third removes the viscera.  The entrails are passed to a table, at which stand five men removing the fat from them.  A boy usually takes the viscera and trims the hearts and livers, and prepares them for the market and sends the refuse down a chute.  Next, the inside of the carcass is washed by the hose man, after which it is rolled along the rail to the drying room. Here, by means of a movable lever, the hog is lifted from the rail, and the ends of the gambrel are placed on trams, attached to the lower side of heavy joists, which extend at right angles to the single railway.  Along this double railway it moves easily by sliding.  It is pushed along by one man with an apparatus resembling the handle and head of a common hand rake.  Here two men, with knives and buckets of water, pay the last respects to the carcass, giving it a final scrubbing and washing.  This done, the hogs are placed as close together as they will hand without touching.  A room one hundred feet square will accommodate fifteen hundred hogs, weighing net from two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds each.

 The room represented in the first cartoon is long and narrow, usually admitting direct light on each side from high windows.  It enters the main building just at the point where the gambrelers suspend the hog.  The process least interesting to the eye falls to the lot of five or six men who strip the fat from the entrails.  The neatest place is the drying room.  It's floor is usually covered with sawdust, and the carcasses have a clean and bloodless appearance.

from Harpers Weekly, September 6, 1873