Rising Hogs

Slavering, grunting, squealing, huge paunchy cornfed bellies swaying to their awkward steps, thousands of big pigs went to market last week. In Omaha, in Kansas City and in Chicago's noisome Packingtown they arrived by carload lots. Penned up in long alleys they rooted, grunted and jostled one another with muddy, clammy snouts. In between them marched the buyers for the great meat companies, poking their porky flanks and paunches with sticks and crying the cry of hogs, "Tsaa, tsaa, tsaa." With swift gestures and few words the buyers made their purchases. Four times a day the results were broadcast and in the great hog States there was gladness on the farms. For last week the price of hogs was still rising. Speculators who had "tried a turn in piggies" chuckled. Farmers took paper & pencil to figure their gains.

Because of a bearish Government forecast, farmers had expected their hogs to fetch bad prices all summer. But last week they were selling as high as $5.15 a hundredweight against $3.40 on June 1. Because farmers have needed money so badly that they have sold their hogs right along it was expected that no sudden rush of pigs to market would upset the hog-cart. In Iowa where 13 million hogs are born and fattened every year, the rise from June 1 to last week's average price made a difference of $40,000,000 figuring each hog at 240 Ib. Another boon to hog farmers has been the low price of corn. It is generally assumed by farmers that they can make money if they can sell their hogs at a hundredweight price ten times higher than the cost of a bushel of corn. Corn on the Iowa farm last week was selling at 20-21-c- a bushel while hogs on the farm brought $4.25, or twice as much as usual. Only thing that disturbed farmers was the prospect of a rise in corn prices. Rain sent the corn stalks much beyond the established "knee high by Fourth of July" tradition, but the same rain has made ploughing hard, weeds abundant.

Destiny. When the "tsaa" shouting buyer makes his purchase, the hog's doom is near. Squinting up with quizzical beady eyes or grunting angrily he is sent running over a long viaduct to the packing house. When he reaches the killing floor he is hoisted up on a giant wheel by his left foot, delivered to a conveyor. Head down, tongue out, tail hanging down his back, squealing in terror, he is carried along until a husky man with a spear-like knife makes the deft throat-cutting thrust which kills him. Then an intricate web of knives scrapes off his hair, Government inspectors slice his neck glands to look for signs of tuberculosis. A knife cleaves off his head. Another knife sweeps his insides as clean as his skin. A twist of tweezers and his toenails go clattering to the floor. A bath of fire removes the last shred of hair. A cleaver drops and rends the backbone. Exactly 25 minutes is the interim between living animal and carcass ready for the cooler. Twenty-four hours elapse before it is cut into its component parts--hams, bellies (bacons), loins, shoulders, fat and trimming. The hog's destiny is complete except for the bacon and hams which must be cured (one month to three) and sausage which must hang in the drying rooms four months before being passed by inspectors. Of a 250-lb. hog all but 9.38 Ib. goes into edible products. The residue consists of hides for tanning, hair, skin and sinew good for glue, grease for lubricants, bones for buttons, bone-handles, Mah-Jongg sets and dust. Orientals pay more than $100 per Ib. for hog gallstones. The ultimate remainder is brewed, dried and ground, sold as stock feed. Only the paunch manure is not used for anything. And, as stockroom adage has it, the squeal.

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