January 7, 1900.
THE OMAHA ILLUSTRATED DEE.
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Part the Refrigerator Gar Plays in Supplying the World With Meat
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INSPECTING BEF FOR
nOUT B0.000 Mfrl iterator car loads
I V I of packing house product! art
LVJ ahlDDed out of South Omaha an
nually, or 160 cars per day.
The products shipped In refrig
erator cars are largely dressed beef,
dressed sheep and a few dressed hogs.
Very few hog carcasses are shipped In re
frigeration. ' These are mostly sent out
cured In the form of bacon, ham, sldemeat
and other various cured, canned or pick
led products Into which the hog Is turned at
the packing house. Refrigeration In the
packing houses applies almost wholly to
dressed beef and mutton.
The killing capacity of a packing house
depends on Its cold storage capacity. All
beef must go through the cold storage or
refrigeration process before it becomes a
marketable commodity. And here again the
killing capacity must be governed by the
refrigerator car supply of the paoklng
house, lor dressed beef Is bulky stuff and It
Winnipeg
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PORTAGE AVENUE, IN WINNIPEG.
(Copyright, 1908, by Frank O. Carpenter.) There at the end is the new Canadian
I ilXNIPEG Manitoba, Jan. 4. (Spe- Pacific depot hotel and railway offices fast
lA7 clal Correspondence of The Bee.) ' approaching completion. Those buildings
I V I o,. .,h h. n nf- alone will cost as much as 12,000.000. and
U tun A with ma nn the inn nf
the Union bank building Winnl-
., , oa tuw
look at the city. You had best pull Canadian Northern, which will cost $3,000.
your fur cap down over your ears and more.
button -your coonskln coat tightly about "Y. 8lr." tha Wlnnlpegger at my
you, for the wind is blowing a gale. The
air Is nipping, but the sky is bright and
there is so much ozone thnKwe seem to
be breathing champagne. . Have- you ever
felt so much alive before?
We are in the wild and furry northwest,
In its biggest town, and on top of Its
highest building. Were It not so cold
the Wlnnlpegger, who stands beside us
as srulde. would ask us If it were not like
heaven. We are sure of one thing, the
.tmenher. hv no mean, savor, of tha
other place down bekiw.
Take a look over the city! It stretches
out on all sides for miles. The new shingle
roofs shine brightly under the winter
sun, and we can almost smell the paint
of the suburban additions. Winnipeg Is
grower. Even now. In the winter, the
sound of the hammer la heard all day
long, and buildings are still going up by
the hundreds. The town prides itself on
Its newness, and, Indeed, much of it is
just built Over there at the north are
miles of new houses. At the south build
ings are growing up on the plains, and
light below us. in the heart of the city,
the buslneess blocks have risen from the
ground since last summer. Winnipeg has
erected 111,000.000 worth of buildings this
year. It built about 19.0uC,ooo the year be
fore and I&.000.000 worth In 11. All through
the past five years It has been jumping,
and It Is now leaping ahead like an Aus
tralian kangaroo. In 1900 the new build
ings numbered &58 and in laot there were
erected more than t.000.
A Bnelness Street t'o.r Tears Old.
Turn about and look up Portage avenue.
That street was practically unbuilt four
years ago. It has now millions of dollars'
worth of new business blocks, some of
which would be a credit to any of our
cities of twice the size.
Look at that department store. It is
the largest in the west. It Is as big as
Wanamaker's establishment In New Tork.
and it now has sis stories. It was built
only last year, but the demands of the
trade are such that three stories more will stomach and the crop will all go through morning's wash. The clothes line con
be added next spring. Winnipeg." neeted with a high pole In the rear yard.
Turn abou( and look down Main street. "Pon t you think It la getting a little . Mrs. Neygood, leaning tax out to make
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SHIPMENT.
must be kept on the move to marttet or the
storage capacity soon becomes blocked.
Loading: a Refrigerator Oar.
After undergoing the necessary cooling
process, the half carcasses are packed In re
frigerator cars, which have been previously
supplied with Ice. so that the Inside tem
perature Is not above the freeslng point.
Ordinarily thirty carcasses of beef, approx
imating 800 pounds In weight each, are
packed to the car, but more is loaded if
emergency requires. From one and a half
to two tons of Ice are placed In the car at
the Initial stage. The refrigerator cars are
built much after the same fashion of the
domestlo and market house refrigerators,
so as to retain an even temperature inside
the cars. This evenness of temperature Is
very essential to avoid the sweating proc
ess, as the rise of a few degrees In tem
perature at any stage of the shipment is
likely to seriously damage the frozen meat.
the Metropolis of the Northwest Canadian Wheat District
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further up the street are to be the great
terminals of the Grand Trunk and the
sine, thai snows you now we are grow-
ing. About five years ago we began to
build for all time and eternity. Before
that we had not -realized that Winnipeg
was bound to be the greatest city of the
north and our houses were put up for the
time. Most of them were without cellars
and they had flimsy foundations. Since
then we have raised them and made exca
vations, and we are now building as sub-
stantlally as any town on the continent,
"'6 years ago we had about 60.000 people.
Now we have lOO.OuO, and we are just on
the edge of our beginning. The city will
grow more next year than ever before, and
within ten years, and probably sooner, we
shall equal Minneapolis and St. Paul com
bined." Winnipeg's Trade.
"Look at those wholesale buildings," he
continues. "Did you ever see anything like
It T Most of them started as two and three
story structures, and the business has
grown so that they have had to be pushed
up to six. This Is one of the great mar
kets of western North America, and the
biggest market north of your western
boundary. If you had a pair of long-distance
glasses, which would enable you to
look from the Atlantic to the Pacific, you
could see that there is nothing In the
west that can approach Winnipeg, and
your eye would travel eastward as far
a Toronto before any city of this
class could be seen. If you could look up
and down the great west with an X-ray at
tachment which would enable you to pierce
through the snow down into the soil, you
would know that you are at the eastern
end of the greatest wheat country on earth.
Away out there are 2J,0uO.0uO acres of
land which will grow bread with little
more than scratching the ground. We have
cultivated as yet but a few garden patches
here and there over It, and our crop has
year was about 100,000.000 bushels. When
It is all under cultivation It will yield nigh
on to a billion. We shall then feed John
Bull. Yea, we shall even fill Uncle Sam's
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BEEF LUGGER LOADED FOR THE
especially where the shipment Is to be
made through or to a warm climate. Ail
refrigerator cars must be re-Iced at least
once In twenty-four hours, and oftener if
the condition of the outside temperature
requires.
All meats are Inspected both before and
after refrigeration by the government in
spectors both for domestlo consumption and
export. Meats for foreign export are re-refrigerated
at the ocean ports for storage In
the cooling rooms of the steamships, meat
shipments being made only on steam pro
pelled vessels. These meats are always re
Inspected at their foreign destinations.
Knorraone Quantities of Ice Used.
All railroads of the United States that
transport refrigerator cars t-ave icing sta
tions at convenient distances, so that the
loaded cars can be re-iced as often as once
In each twenty-four hours. This re-lclng
must be done by the railroad companies. As
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eoldT" at this point I timidly said.
"Well, perhaps so." was the reply, "but
when I begin talking about Winnipeg I
grow so warm that I could stand stars:
naked on the north pole and not feel un
comfortable.
Thereuoon we turned aaaln to look at the
Thereupon we turned again to look at the
city.
On the Red River.
Winnipeg lies on a plain at the eastern
edge of the wheat belt. The country about
It Is dead flat. The Red River of the North
winds its way through the city, and here
flows In and joins the Asslnlbolne. The
houses of the city are spread out like those
of St. Petersburg, and, like Washington,
It has magnificent distances. The main
streets are 13J leet wide, and thoy stretch
on and on out into the country. Every
Jin
residence has a yard about it, and nearly fully as high as in Minneapolis or Toronto,
all have gardens and trees. Even the Store rooms rent from $1,500 to $2,500 a year,
dwellings of the laborers stand alone. They and you can buy a business front for less
have windows on all sides, and in most money in Montreal than right here,
cases the windows are double, to withstand Notice the banks! Winnipeg is one of
the cold. The business blocks, as in all the financial centers of Canada. It has
new cities, are ragged. The sky line goes thirteen Bank buildings, the most of them
up and down like the teeth of a battered branches of the great banks of Canada,
saw, now and then a building rising high They do a big business, and they will corn
over the others. The sky-scrapers are Just pare In their appointments with almost any
beginning to come. The Union bank, from banks of our country. The clearings last
which I make this description. Is the first, week were about $10,000,000. This is just
but there will be others next year, and in double what they were In the same week
time the place will look much like an one year ago, and three times as much as
American metropolis. they were three years before.
' A large part of the new city has. I am ,
told, been built by Americans, The town
was stagnant until Yankee capital and I Residence Section.
Yankees turned their faces this way. It But we fly along up the street In our
then began to boom. Men from Minnesota automobile. The hand of that veteran
Experience
Mrs. Agnes Neygood of Astoria, Long
Island, used to be an acrobat. Before her
marriage she was one of the trapeze per
formers In a circus. She gave up her
career five years ago because she tell In
love with a horseshoer employed by the
show. When he asked her to be his wife
he Insisted she must leave the trapeze for
ever and consented.
They were married and lived happily.
Mrs. Neygood, who had been Mile. Ma
rinzi, "the champion aerial triple somer
sault performer," was hanging out clothes
the ether day from her flat after a hard
READY
a consequence enormous quantities of Ice
are used dally. The quantity per car during
the trip depends on the length of the jour
ney and will run from five to ten tons. The
later built cars are so constructed as to ef
fect a very material saving In the Ice, and
It is believed that for these the maximum of
eight tons of ice will be sufficient for. a
l.OfO-mlle haul. The cars must be re-iced in
transit without being opened, and the filling
is usually done from the tops of the cars,
at the ice windows in either end, or small
icing doors at the side. While vast quanti
ties of artificial ice are used for refrigera
tion, the natural Ice Is preferred because of
its tougher texture and better lasting quali
ties. Loral Snpply of lee.
Most of the Ice used in the initial refrige
ration at the South Omaha packing houses
Is obtained In and about Omaha. The pack
ing houses usually cut their own toe and an
and other parts of the west came here to
deal in grain and the cheap lands. They
opened business establishments of various
kinds', and today some of the best of the
city blood has come from across the border.
There are now eight of our threshing ma
chines and farm implement establishments
represented here. There are half . a dozen
land companies backed by big American
capital, and there are Americans who have
sold their millions of acres of Canadian
lands. Others are going Into business, and
others are here ready to take hold of the
best things that come up. The chief build
ing firm is American. It takes contracts
running high Into the millions, and Is con
cerned in the new railways. Tliu biggest
land companies were started with United
States capital, and some of the tailroad
land grants are handled- by them. Jn the
meantime there has been a large influx of
population from Eustern Canada, together
with some from Great Britain. The most
of the life blood of the city, however. Is
American and Canadian, and the two flow
along together in one harmonious stream.
Both seem to have Implicit faith In the fu
ture of the city, and. Indeed, the indica
tions are that their faith is well founded.
By Automobile Tbroagh Winnipeg;.
"But let us go down and have a cup of
beef tea," said the Wlnnlpegger, "and we
shall then take a ride through the city In
an automobile."
Beef tea is more common than whisky as
a winter drink here. It is served at all the
saloons and hotels, and one can have It on
tap. Indeed, It takes the place of soda
water from December till May.
Having finished our tea, we rode through
the main street of the city. This was one
of the old Indian trails, which ran north
SOUth' foIU,wln courae l the Be1
nv.r, paat th, Hudson Bay fort which was
once stationed here. Portage avenue, which
we saw irom me root, cuts u aimosi at
right angles. It 1. also part of an old In-
dlan trail, which extended from here a
thousand miles westward to Edmonton, a
town now reached by three great railroad
gystjtms.
Main street has many old buildings. It
was the nrst business part of Winnipeg,
being a king's highway, and it still contains
the best business properties. Real estate
along it has gone up like a shot within the
past five years, and It is said to now be
of an Acrobat Proves Useful
the rope taut with her precious wash, had
a good hold on the rope. The pulley broke,
and the former trapeze artist was dragged
out of the window. As she swung out
ward she remembered her old-time tricks,
and turned so as to twist the rope about
her right arm. She swung the great aro
of a pendulum, and got a second's footing
on the window ledge opposite.
The window was cloned, and she did
not have time to get a bold before she was
swinging back again, but not within reach
ing distance of her own window, five stories
above the ground.
Realising that each swing would be leas
than the Last, she steered herself with all
feet olA-Uux skill te tag upecUaar pole,
CAR.
TO DUMP ICE INTO RBFRIGER ATOR.
nually store hundreds of thousands of tons.
About Cut-Oft and Seymour lakes stand
huge Inehousas owned by these companies,
and even as far away from the packing
plants as Ashland a great ice storage maga
stne Is maintained.
In some of the smaller towns of the
state the packing companies refrigerate
dressed poultry. The fowls are killed,
plucked and frozen at these smaller sta
tions and shipped first to the blg packing
centers where they are placed In cold
storage to be later distributed to what
ever market demands them. The different
products are shipped In different cars.
Beef and poultry are not ordinarily shipped
In the same refrigerator car. for obvious
reasons, and the same rule will apply In
pork and mutton.
Comparatively Modern Prsetiee.
It was not until about the year M75 that
t's, .. i lys m
essBjsBB is,iswiMewesjerasW)sratr:
sample
Wlnnipegger, Mr. Fred Heubach, is on the
lever, and we are going like mad. He
takes us on toward the river. Daat the Hud-
lon company .tores and offices, by
strathcona's big apartment house.
.nd th. turn. to u.. riKht. and we fly
past the Manitoba club and on Into the
DrlncU)al readence section. The street.
are gtlll wlde but they wlnd thIi way and
thlLt ,,. tha Asslnlbolne river. Boule-
vardf have been lald out on side, of
the stream In such a way that every resi
dence has a back yard running down to
the water. There are miles of One houses
In this part of Winnipeg, and other miles
have been laid out farther on. Nearly all
the houses aro new, and the largest and
best of them seem to have sprung up, like
the palace of Aladdin, in the space of a
nignt. The chief building materials are
white brick and a cream colored stone
wliioh is found nearby. The city, in fact.
Is a white city, and under the bright sun
shine, which the Winntpeggers say exists
here for thirteen months or more every
year, it looks as neat as a pin.
Leaving the boulevards, we ride through
street after street of brand new cottages.
me iiome. ui wie en-io-uo m.nu poorer
classes of the city. We see, strange to
say, no signs of "To let" and very lew of
"For sale." Winnipeg has almost no tene
ment builujings, end so far I have seen no
two-story flats. Indeed, it is almost Im
possible to rent a dwelling at a reasonable
rate.. and nearly every family is forced to
own Its own house.
In North Winnipeg, beyond the overhead
bridge, which crosses the railroad truck,
hundreds of neat one and two-story cot-
in an Emergency
She was out of practice and struck the
pole harder than she had intended. She
was half stunned, but still she managed to
throw her arms and legs about the pole.
and before losing consciousness slid close
to the ground.
The fall of fifteen feet aroused her, and
she was able to crawl into the house. A
physician was called. He found that no
bones had been broken. Then neighbors
helped the former circus woman up to her
rooms. When her husband returned from
work he found his supper ready for him.
Bis wife was a bit pale, but smiling, and
a lot of friends were these to shake hands
with him because he was mot a widowers
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TAMPING
loe began t we used on a large scale for
the preservation of fresh meats In ship
ment. Though there have been numerous
dry air refrigerators Invented and brought
Into practical use, still refrigeration by
Ice holds its own and it will likely be a
long while before Ice will be discarded for
this purpose. The dry air refrigeration
process seems to be the most popular
for ocean shipments. In these dry air
refrigerators atmospheric air Is compressed
to one-third or one-fourth of Its normal
bulk.
The air so condensed becomes hot,
and is cooled by Injecting atr into the air
compressor, after which it Is still further
reduced in temperature and freed from
moisture by passing It through a range of.
pipes In the cold air of the chamber that
is being refrigerated. Being thus con
veyed to the expanding cylinders, the work
or energy It contains by virtue of its
compression Is expended in moving a pis
crowd of winntpeggers at ease
tages are now going up, and they are oc
cupied or sold as fast as they are built.
The Wheat Trains.
Standing on the bridge going over the
railroad, we are In tho center of the largest
railroad yard of the world belonging to a
single trunk line. At least the Winnipcggers
say so. There are 110 miles of track, cov-
"I"! ,!Ut "J' U
are filled with cars carrying the wheat to
the great elevators at Fort William and
Fort Arthur in order that it may lie taken
down the lakes as soon us navlgutlon opens,
During the season a wheat train goi:s out of
this yard every hour of the day and night,
and altogether a half million bushels of
wheat leave here for Fort William every
twer.ty-four hours. Five bushels of wheat
will make all tho flour a man eats tno year
around, so that, every day, enough wheat
goes over these trucks to feed lOO.UuU men
for one year.
I like these Wlnnipeggers. They are so
puslhng, strenuous, eiitiiuslastlc and happy,
They claim their city has the bust climate
on earth, and they would not exchange tha
bitmg. wlIld8 ot , prajrje for tne hissing
ephyrs of New York. Boston or Washing-
ton. They prepare for the season. Just
now every Wlnnlpegger who can afford It
hos on a gray overcoat made of coon bkins.
The fur Is long and It stands out like the
bristles on a hot hog. This doubles the
size of the wearer. It makes him lnnlr
at leaat a foot broader, and. as it is long,
at iea,t six Inches taller. He adds to his
height by a fur cap which can be pulled
down over the ears. This makes him still
bigger. Indeed, the town just now is peo- landic church In the world being la WlanU
pled with furry giants, who are breathing Dig
out smoke, for the frost congeals the air There are also many Russians here, an4
from the nostrils, so that it rises like the a Russian church. The Cathollo population,
vapor of an incipient volcano. The women is large, and the French Canadians all be
here also dress In furs. Their cheeks are long to that denomination. There is a,
blushing under Jack Frost's amorous kisses, Trapplst monastery outside the city and e
and the ozone of the atmosphere paints Trapplst nunnery. Almost every d' nomi
thelr eyes bright. They look too sweet to nation of Protestants has Its meeting
be the wives and daughters of the giants house; the Jews have a synagogue, the Sal-
beside them.
but we doubt not the fact
when they open their mouths and begin
to talk about great Winnipeg.
. Winnipeg Is at the gateway of the New
Canada. The tens of thousands if immi
grants who are now arriving come through
here, and one sees on the streets natives
from every region of Christendom. There
are Germans, Austrians, Greeks, Swedes
and Norwegians, many of them dressed In
the costumes of the land from which they
came. Now and then one sees an English-
guao. and It is hard to throw a sloue wllo
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ICE INTO BOX.
ton which forms part of the machinery.
From the piston the air now cooled a
much as 60 to 100 degrees, or even 200 de
grees, according to the degree of compres
sion to which It has been subjected, is dis
tributed through the cold chamber by suit
able pipes. Other processes of dry refrige
ration have been successfully applied In
which the temperature of the air is lowered
by passing through pipes coolwd externally.
Instead of by lnjocting water into the tubes;
containing It.
Both of these processes of dry air re
frigeration have been applied with Indiffer
ent success to refrigerator cars, but later
inventions along these lines. It Is thought
by competent students of refrigeration,
will solve the refrigerator car question
by the elimination of Ice altogether. These
features of dry air cooling are used In a
modified form by many of the cooling;
rooms in the packing houses and In com
mercial cold storage houses.
baxl camti.
out striking an American. At the same
time, the moat of the population Is made up
of Anglo-Saxon Canadians, and altogether
looks not unlike those to be seen la tit,
Paul or Chicago.
On one side of the Red liver, reached by
a bridge, is the town of St. Boniface, where
there are several thousand French Cana
dians, and there are also Russians, Italians
and Syrians.
The Icelanders of Winnipeg.
Soma distance from here, on the shore of
Lake Winnipeg, there Is a colony of Ice-
landers, many of whom have moved into
the city. Some of them are lawyers, others
are teachers and not a few have iulermar
ried with the Canadians.
These Icelanders were among the first of
the western Canadian immigrants. They
were brought here years ago when it wag
thought that none but those accustomed to
the cold of the Arctic zone could withstand
the weather. The Dominion government
sent commissioners to Iceland, and they
brought back a colony of fifteen or twenty
thousand souls and shipped them out to
Lake Winnipeg. The Icelanders settled on
Us banks, and for a time made most o
their living by fishing, much of their catch
being through holes In the Ice In Uie winter,
They are now well scattered over the coun-
try. Many of the girls have gone lata
service and not a few are waiters at tha
hotels. Indeed, my favorite hash slinger
at the Empire, where I am slopping in
Winnipeg, Is a pretty Icelander with cheeks
of flume, hair of Ore and eyes of heavenly
blue. These people, are orderly. They take
to education and religion, the largest loo
vatlon army Is waging its warfare against
dissipation and sin and the Young
Men's Christian association has Its
own building and is doing excellent
work. Indued, the whole city worships the
Lord under one religion or( another. It Is
a God-fearing, order-loving. Sabbath-observing
and chnrch-golng municipality. It
is so good that there are no Sunday news-
papers. The street cars are not allowed to
run on the Sabbath, and the only publlo
places open are the hotels and ohurohes.
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