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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (May 17, 1903)
American Food for ,a GERMAN HOOS ARM KEPT NEAT AND CLEAN. (Copyright, 1903, by Frank O. Carpenter.) I KHUN, May 6. (Special Corre al I spondence of The Hec.) Uncle i gam will noon be feeding Ger 5Tf Al many with a spoon. Her ability UiaJ tO ffed herself I BVlllllIV !- creasing. Her population Increase 800,000 a yenr, and she will eventually be dependent upon us, as Is John Hull. The first six ' months of lust year wc sold her 9.0C0 tons of ment, 20, COO tons of rye and tOO.OJO tons of wheat. The farmers are objecting to these Im- . ports, and they want a tariff. Tha truth Is they cannot supply the nation, no matter what their protection. Their soil U poor, and they luck the labor to work th lr es tates. The character of the empire is changing. A generation ago the majority of the people were farmers. Today two thirds of them ore engaged in proftslonal pursuits, manufactures and trade, and there Is a steady exodus from th? farms to the cities. The farmhands get low wages and their hours are long. The factory hands work less and are paid more. The army has also cut down the farm em ployes. According to law every Herman must bo a ro!dler at about the time he reaches manhood. The chief headquarterc rf the coldlers are In and about the cities, and the farmers' boys thus get a taste of city life. They refuse to go back to the farms at the close ot their service, and the result is that the agricultural workers grow fewer and fewer. Today the great part of the farmhands are women and much farming Is poorly done. Tou have seen mention of the agrarians In the newspapers. They are the chief en emies of American food stuffs. They fight the Introduction of cur pork and would like to put a big tax on American brandstuffs. Before I came here I supposed these men were hard-fisted farmers like our grangers, and that their party was a party of the poor against the rich, of the fanner against tho monopolist. It Is not. ' The agrarians re the nobles of Germany. They are the landholdlng classes, and their relatives, many of whom are In office and many In the army. The German empire is divided up Into large estates many of which have been In certain families for ages. There are also smaller estates, but many men have In the past lived off of the Income of their farms. The most of them are extravagant and liave largo families dependent upon them. Their sons In the civil and military em ploy are poorly paid and have to be helped and tho result Is If there is not a profit from the estates the whole family goes hungry, metaphorically speaking. Again tho soil of Germany Is poor. It cannot compete with our rich lands of the west, and the land holders are running be " hind. They have mortgaged their estates In some parts of Germany to 70 per cent of tl.olr value and they have an Interest debt to meet every quarter. Their only hope Is In raising the price of foodstuff. This rpenns keeping our grains out of the markets, which so far they have not beon able to do. The agrarians are to some extent backed by the kaiser. He la an estate owner him self. He belongs to their class and he knows he can rely upon them. Ills chief officials In both array and navy are from the agrarians and he would please them If he could. At the same time he is broad minded and far-seeing. He knows more abcut the country perhaps than any man lit It, and with all his Idiosyncrasies he Is packed with common sense. He knows that Germany must have cheap food If low wages are to prevail In the factories and the Germans thereby be able to compete with the rest ot the world In commerce and trade. The kaiser recently said he would not sanction "bread usury." He does much to hold the agrarians back, and at the same time helps them whenever he can. - He would like to see Germany raise Ita own and rye, for fear a war may shut off ft ait LL -i nr.mwJ I mum i "!"" p ii-.. T- I i outsldo Rupplies, but apparently realises the Impossibility. Today tho German army subsists largely on American food. Its horses eat American corn and when the troops were sent to China not long ago they were supplied with American canned meuts, much to the dis gUHt of the agrarians. This matter was brought up in the Reichstag and It was shown that the American canned meats were the cheapest and best. Indeed, the kaiser well knows that Ameri can fooda are good. lie likes American siUHiiKoa and American hams and uses them In the palace. When Admiral Evans w;is at Kiel lie had tho emperor to break fat, and at that time tickled his palate with a Smlthlleld ham. Tho .kalncr de- . manded to know where it came from, and since then I am told he has ordered a special shipment to Germany. He has sampled the canned meats furnished the army, and he knows as well as anyone that our meats are good. Just now the agrarians are making a big fight on the American hog. This is both open and secret. The meat Inspectors sym pathize with them, and our pork is thrown out on all sorts of pretexts. The authorities of the various provinces have been practically Instructed to discrim inate ngalnHt Americans, to refuse our con suls statistical Information as to the In fractions of tho laws upon provixlons and food products, and withhold from them the finding of trichinae or other deleterious subKtances In domestic meat, and also the condition of human and animal diseases In their respective districts. Such orders are secret ones, but that which I have quoted was stolen by a clerk In one of the provin cial offices and read in a political Bieech in the Itelchstag. A leading. German paper In commenting upon It said: "What the order really means Is that If r-.ny disease Is found In any meat sold in Germany It must come from the outsldo, for we want the world to bellevo we have no disease, animal or human, and that trichinae can only come from American nsoats." Nevertheless, tho Germans are now eating about 3.CO0.COO pounds of our meat a month, and they would take millions more If tho agrarians would let It in. The Chamber of Commerce of Hamburg recently criticised the meat Inspection law, saying that Amer ican corned beef had been used for years by the imperial navy and the general pub lic, and that there Is no reason for ob jecting to It. It stated that a prise of 2,000 marks' was offered two years ngo for a case of trichinae caused by American meat, and that this had not yet been claimed. It spoke well of our lard and said that all suspicions against It woio based upon prejudice or gross Ignorance. I had a talk with the German agent of our biggest packing house trust In one of the cities of the Rhino as to the Importa tion of American meats. Said he:' "The people here want American food stuffs, but the agrarians crowd them out. Their talk about a tariff has raised the prices of meat, and also their success In excluding the American sausage. "We Germans are sausage eaters. We want our meat chewed. There Is no waxti In sausage and cheap sausage menni much to the poor. Before Amorlcan sausagei were excluded you could buy a good article for 15V4 cents a pound. The same thine now sells for $7 cents a pound, and other kinds of meat are proportionately high. We used to have a great, trade In Amer ican livers, but ,the agrarian Inspectors are keeping them out, and they excludo all American fresh meats by delaying the examination of the meat until It rp IK The result Is we dare not ship It. There Is a great deal of fuas now about the u ot boraclc arid as a preservative, nnd al together everything Is done to keep our meats out of the market." , Nearly all the cUies of Germany own their own market. They have their own cattle yards and their own slaughtea houses, the animals being killed under tho yes of Inspectors. I want out the other German Stomachs , '! r XJ - p - . r4 : vv: BLINDFOLDED BULL. LED day to see the cattle maikcta of Berlin. They are situated on the edge of the c.ty and are easily reached by the Ringbahn. They cover many acres and have cost about 11,000,000. During my visit the yards were filled with cattle, sheep and hogs. There wtr,i about 8,000 sheep In one Bet of stalls and I was told that '20,000 sheep are brought In every day. Accommodations are provided In one hall for 4,000 cattle and there are arrangements so that other thousands can be handled at the same tithe; The cattle were roaring like bulls o! Bashan when I entered the hall; acro.if the way the sheep were baaing and there was such a bleating of calves that it fairly dinned my ears. . I wish I could show you the hogs. There were thousands of them and the cleanest, prettiest hogs I have ever seen. Each porker had evidently been scrubbed before he had been brought In. His bristle shone like frosted silver and his skin was as rosy as the cheek of a baby. The drov ers in long, white coats were moving the pigs from one part of the yard to th other, and as they did so the sun poked this rays through the silver bristles and made them look like painted hogs. Each animal was marked with a stamp showing that the inspector had looked it over am passed upon It for killing, and later on 1 saw that every piece of meat was likewise stamped. There are altogether about 400 Inspectors employed, of whom 103 art women mlcroscoplsUt. The Inspectors were going over the cattle whtlo I was in the beet hall. The examination was thorough, although many of the animate were fierce. The bulls were led through tho yard with their eyes blindfolded. Leaving these halls, I visited some of the slaughter houses, where horses ar killed for fooc1, and also the shops where the meat is sold. Not only in Berlin, but In almost all tho great cities of Europe horse meat is eaten by the lower clashes. There are great slaughter houses in Pari.1 which kill' thousands of horses every year, In Vienna more than 25,00,) hordes anl a number of donkeys are annually killed, and Berlin eats horse meat by the thou sands of pounds every day. Such hore are inspected both before and after killing and every y'eco of meat must be utampet as healthful by the Inspectors. Have you ever Been a piece of horse flesh? It is redder than beef and looks for all the world like venison and tastes not unlike It. There are 200 butcher shops in Paris which sell nothing clso. I saw It sold side by side with beef In the butcher shops in Switzer land, and have no difficulty In finding home . meat chops here. In Berlin the meat is ad vertised as horse meat, and there Is no chance of having horse steak passed off upon you us enlaon or beef. One ot the shops which I visited In tho poorer quarters of Berlin had steaks, roasts and soup bones nicely dressed and ready for sale. The meat was black where it had been exposed to the air, but red when fresh cut. Upon the walls hung horses' sides half cut up and cn hooka from the celling hung horses' hams, smoked and dried. On one wall were long strings of little sausages, black as Ink, speckled with bits of white fat. Each string weighed a pound, and tho bare-armed butcher behind the counter told me that it was made of ground horse flenh and sold for 12 cents a pound. He said a good loin roast cost S cents and the best steak 10 and 13 cents. He showed me a pile of Hamburger horse steak at a lower price, and also some yellow horse fat, which ho say the poorer classes use as cooking butter. He eays that horse fat Is as good as goose grease to cure a cold, and that horse oil Is excellent for rheumatism. This man's family was at dinner when I called, and upon my asking if he ate horse meat himself he took me Into his dining room, where his wife and children were de vouring plates of soup made from horse bones. The children looked healthy and he OUT FOK INSPECTION. told me that their bodies were largely made of horse flesh. He asked me to sample a bit of the meat and I did so. It tasted like tough deer, with a Blight gnmey flavor. I don't like it, but that may be owing to prejudice, or It may be that the bite I took was from an old street car plug, tougher than ordinary. I have visited several of the horse slaugh ter houses. The first one wns like a big barnyard surrounded by low stables and fenced in at one side wlt: long buildings of red brick. At the right of the gate stood a group of butchers, their shirt sleeves rolled up above their elbows and their bare, brawny arms covered with blood. Each butcher had a leather apron, well spattered, and looked altogether rather repulsive thon otherwise I had a permit to see the estab lishment, and In addition gave a small fee to one of these men, so that everything wm thrown open to me. The first room we entered contained the horses that had been killed that morning There were several score of them hung like beeves from the rafters, with their heads downward. A splendid bay horse which had Just been killed was being dressed on the floor, a white horse was being skinned, and an Inspector was going over the vari ous cuts of those hung from thej-afters and stamping them. Leaving this room I was taken to an other where they were killing. As I watched them a magnificent black carriage luirse was brought in, worth, I was told, 100 marks, or S. It was not more than years old, and a month or so ago his value was perhaps J500. He had slipped on the smooth streets a few days before and had so Injured himself that he would be lame for life. The horse looked at me through his soft, beautiful eyes as he came In, and it almost sickened mo to think of his death. It w;is affecting to watch him as the butchers dragged him on his three legs across the yard, and it Beemed a sacrilege when they clipped his mane and forelock with a pair of sheep shears preparatory to his killing, and more like murder than anything else when the deadly blow was struck. As the horse neared the door he seemed to realize his approaching end. He smelled the blood upon the floor. His sensitive nos trils quivered and he hung back. With a brutal blow from his club the butcher drove him on, and he finally stood there, with his legs quivering and trembling oil over. Now an apron of leather a foot square was hung over his eyes, leaving his forehead bare. Then one of the butchers pulled down his handsome head and an other raised tho sledge,, the hammer of which was ns big around as your wrist, and struck the blinded steed full In the forehead. There was a crash, and tho beast dropped to the floor. The blood poured from his nostrils, his eyes shone with pain for a second, and then became glazed. He was dead. At the same time a second butcher drove a knife into hi heart, and the life-blood came forth in great streams, being caught In pans and saved. A little later the horse was turned over on Its back and dressed for the mar kets. As I watched the butchers I noticed that every bit of the horse was saved. The blood Is used for making buttons. It Is evaporated and the residue pressed int shape. The albumen in it is sold to photo graph establishments and some parts of It are used for fertilisers. The horseskins bring about t3 apiece. They are tanned and made into sole leather. The tall goes with the skin, but the mane nnd fetlocks are cut off and sold as hair, bringing about 25 centa a pound. The bones and hoofs 3f each horse are worth about 60 cents. They are .used for making fertilizers, being ground up and disposed of at so much per ton. The old shoes are taken off and shipped out to China, where they bring a big prion, the Chinese using them for making razors and other tools In which a fine grade of iron la needed. FRANK O. CARPENTER.
