"You live on the dead," said the Eastern pundit, reproachfully, out of his yellow turban, to the American who had just ordered a ham-sandwich. "And you eat the living," replied the American, as he handed a little hand-microscope to the pundit and asked him to focus it upon his dinner of dried figs. The pundit looked at the figs through the glass, and behold, they were covered with crawling, wiggling, wriggling, living life! And then did the man from the East throw the microscope out of the window, and say, "Now there are no bugs on these figs!"
That which we behold too closely is apt to be repulsive. Fix your vision upon any of the various functions of life and the whole thing becomes disgusting, especially so if we contemplate the details of existence in others. Personally, of course, we, ourselves, in thought and action are sweet and wholesome—but the others, oh, ah, bah, phew, ouch, or words to that effect!
Armour's remark about the village slaughter-house was getting close home. If bad meat was ever put out, it was from these secret places, managed by one or two men who did things in their own sweet way. Their work was not inspected. They themselves were the sole judges. There were not even employees to see and blackmail them if they failed to walk the chalk-line. They bought up cattle, drove them in at night and killed them. No effort was made to utilize the blood or offal and this putrefying mass advertised itself for miles. Savage dogs and slaughter-houses go together, as all villagers know, and there were various good reasons why visitors didn't go to see the local butcher perform his pleasing obligations.
The first slaughter-houses in Chicago were just like those in any village. They supplied the local market.
At first the offal was simply flung out in a pile. Then, when neighbors complained, holes were dug in the prairie and the by-product buried. About Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two, a decided change in methods occurred. The first thing done was to dry the blood, bones and meat-scrap, and sell this for fertilizer. Next came the scientific treatment of the waste for glues and other products. Chemists were given a hearing, patient and most courteous.
One day Armour beckoned C. H. MacDowell into his private office and said, "I say, Mac, if a man calls who looks like a genius or a fool, wearing long hair, whiskers and spectacles, treat him gently—he's a German and may have something in his head besides dandruff." MacDowell is one of the Big Boys at Armour's. He was a stenographer, like my old Bryant and Stratton chum, Cortelyou, and in fact is very much such a man as Cortelyou. "Mac" is the head of the Armour Fertilizer Works and is distressed because he can't utilize the squeal—so much energy evaporating. It is his business to capitalize waste.
It was the joke of the place that if a German chemist arrived, all business was paralyzed until his secret was seized. Jena, Gottingen and Heidelberg became names to conjure with. Buttons were made from bones, glue from feet, combs and ornaments from horns, curled hair from tails, felt from wool, hair was cured for plaster, and the Armour Fertilizer Works slowly became grounded and founded on a scientific basis, where reliable advice as to growing cotton, rice, yams, potatoes, roses or violets could be had.
"Meat" is the farmer's product. This meat is consumed by the people. One-half of our population are farmers, and all farmers raise cattle, sheep, poultry and hogs. Trade follows the line of least resistance; and the natural thing is for the local butcher to slaughter, and supply his neighborhood. There is only one reason why the people in East Aurora should buy meat of Armour, as they occasionally do, and that is because Armour supplies better meat at a lower price than we can produce it. If Armour is higher in price than our local butcher, we buy of the local man. The local butcher fixes the price, not Armour, and the local farmer fixes the price for the local butcher. Armour always and forever has to face this local competition.
"I am in partnership with the farmer," Philip Armour used to say. "Their interests are mine and their confidence and good-will I must merit, or over goes my calabash."
The success of capital lies in ministering to the people, not in taking advantage of them. And every successful business house is built on the bed-rock of reciprocity, mutuality and co-operation. That legal Latin maxim, "Let the buyer beware," is a legal fiction. It should read, "Let the seller beware," for he who is intent on selling the people a different article from what they want, or at a price beyond its value, will stay in trade about as long as that famous snowball will last in Biloxi.