WASHINGTON -- The Senate to-day furnished another surprise in the line of radical legislation by passing the Beveridge Meat Inspection bill. Fifteen minutes before it was passed not a Senator would have admitted that the bill had a ghost of a chance to become a law certainly not this session. Its passage is the direct consequence of the disclosures made in Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle."
A Chicago meatpacking plant circa 1900.
The Indiana Senator only introduced the bill three days ago, and it had been referred to the committee on Agriculture without any notion that it would ever see the light of day again. But Beveridge saw his chance to put it on the Agricultural bill as an amendment, and he offered it in his abrupt and incisive way just as the bill was about to be put on its passage. Proctor, who was in charge of the measure, expressed surprise, but in courtesy he could hardly object to the reading of his bill, which was a long one.
The reading had not gone far before it was apparent that the amendment had been drawn with care and was a good piece of work. There were possibly twenty Senators present when the amendment was offered, but in the number were three or four to whom the President had said within the last few days that he would send to Congress and make public the special report by the Commissioner of the Labor Bureau, Charles P. Neill, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury James B. Reynolds, on the condition of things in Chicago unless something were done to correct the evils complained of in the conduct of the packing business.
When the reading clerk had finished the bill the vote was put at once without debate. There was no call for division. The amendment was adopted.
The amendment provides for the inspection at every packing house in the United States in a post mortem examination of all cattle, sheep, swine, and goats slaughtered for human consumption. Every carcass thus prepared at any packing house must bear a tag showing the date and place where it was slaughtered. All carcasses or parts of carcasses found to be unfit to eat are to be destroyed and the penalty for violation or evasion of the law is a fine of $10,000 and imprisonment for two years. The cost of inspection is to be paid by the packing houses. All meat foods found to have been dyed or colored artificially in any manner so as to be unfit for food are also to be destroyed.
The law applies to canned meats and all forms of prepared meats as well as to fresh meat shipped in cold storage.
After Jan. 1, 1907, packers who claim the right under State law to deny the Government inspectors access to their packing houses will be barred from inter-State or foreign commerce. No packer or business firm can alter or fail to use any mark, stamp, or tag used in the inspection on the meats by Government officials. The inspection is to be carried on in the night time as well as day time.
The Secretary of Agriculture authorized to arrange the fees for inspection, which must be uniform throughout the country. No vessel having a cargo of meat for foreign ports shall be allowed to clear until satisfactory evidence is given the port officers that the cargo has been duly inspected and the proper tags and certificates have been given showing that the meat is sound and wholesome.
The disclosures made in Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle," which led to the passage of the measure, astounded President Roosevelt when he read the book. He could not believe they had any foundation of truth. He put Sinclair in the muck-rake class, and it was some time before he was persuaded to regard his book as having any basis. He then sent Mr. Sinclair an invitation to come to Washington and tell him how he got his information.
The author became the President's guest and told him how he had gone and lived in Packingtown with his family, had joined the Socialist societies there, and had got acquainted with men who saw and had a part in the horrible things described in "The Jungle." He told how diseased hogs and cattle were slaughtered at night and the Government Inspectors baffled in tracing the carcasses. He described how the men were unclean in their habits, and took no pains to keep clean in their handling of meats, and how the packing houses were overrun with rats, that were sometimes caught and shoveled into the hoppers to be converted into canned meats.
The President saw that he was dealing with a man who knew what he was talking about, and he told Labor Commissioner Neill and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Reynolds to go to Chicago and make an investigation. They did so, and it is said that they found Sinclair had not exaggerated the actual conditions. Their report in a preliminary form has been in the hands of the President for several days and would have been sent to Congress had not the Beveridge bill been passed.
Several Western Senators at the request of certain packers and livestock men asked the President not to make public the Neill report. To one Senator who so urged him, the President wrote a letter saying that if the Beveridge bill were passed there would be no occasion to make the report public.
EXTRACTS FROM "THE JUNGLE" AS THE PACKERS WOULD HAVE WRITTEN IT
New York Times Magazine 8jul1906
Promptly at the hour appointed Jurgis presented himself at the gate leading to the packing houses.
"Have you been thoroughly sterilized?" asked the gateman.
Jurgis showed his doctor's certificate of sterilization.
"Come along, then," said the gateman. He led Jurgis to the Superintendent's office. The Superintendent eyed Jurgis with approval. The germ-free condition of the young Lithuanian was quite apparent.
"I'll give you a job," he said.
Jurgis was overjoyed. At last he had found work. It was high time. A large part of his money had been spent by him on getting sterilized. Unscrupulous doctors, who often reaped a harvest from the ignorant foreigners who sought work at the stockyards had not failed to fleece poor Jurgis. For a week they had kept him in a glass case and watched him through a gigantic microscope. It had been very expensive.
"You can start right away," said the Superintendent; "report to the foreman of the Fan Room, in the Potted Ham Department."
The Potted Ham Department! Jurgis could hardly believe his ears. He, Jurgis Rawcuss, unskilled, uneducated, and but recently sterilized, was to help make the most carefully prepared, the purest, the most delicious food known to mankind! Impossible! He had never in his most sanguine moments dreamed of such a piece of good luck. What would his wife, patient little Blona, say when he told her that he was to assist in the making of the food of Kings and the inspiration of poets? How pleasant it would be to return home, put his anti-bacteria glove in her little disinfected hand, and shout
the glad news through the hygienic speaking tube running through the vacuum tank and the chloride basin, to her ear. The Potted Ham Department!
In a daze, Jurgis inquired his way until he found himself in the Fan Room. It was a beautiful, spacious room. The walls were papered with pink. A myriad of electric globes shed a soft, dim light. Dreamy music sounded from a raised gallery at the further end of the room. Along the walls were a number of pens, in which sleek pigs were slumbering or lurching contentedly about. Before each pen sat a sterilized man with a large fan, which he moved rhythmically.
Jurgis was told to wait by the door for the foreman. While doing so, he turned to the nearest man and asked the object of the dim light, the music, and the fanning.
"Potted ham must be made from calm pigs," said the man, "otherwise it ain't good enough for the American public, and we have to ship it to Europe."
Here the foreman of the Fan Room came up and handed Jurgis a large fan.
"You must fan rhythmically and slowly," he told the young Lithuanian; "nothing sudden or violent, you know. The pigs arrive here in a very nervous state and they must be soothed before they are fit to be killed. Do you understand?"
Jurgis nodded.
"I'll assign you to 348," continued the foreman; "you're a greenhorn and ought to have an easy job to start with. Three-forty-eight is a calm pig-very calm pig, indeed. He don't need an expert soother."
After a few months of work in the Fan Room, where he fanned rhythmically and well, and always kept himself carefully disinfected, in accordance with the strict rules of the place, Jurgis was delighted one day at getting a germ-proof note, inclosed in a celluloid envelope, and written in ink fatal to animal life, telling him that his salary had been raised, and directing him to report on the next day to the foreman of the Spotting Room.
He did so, and, with twenty-four other men, entered a room filled with the most delicious air that he had ever breathed in his life. Jurgis and his companions then sat on chairs that were arranged in a circle. In front of each was fixed a telescope, connected with an X-ray apparatus, and fitted with magnifying lenses of tremendous power. The twenty-five telescopes all pointed at a small space in the middle of the floor, upon which a little platform revolved slowly. On this platform a ham dropped presently from an opening in the ceiling of the room. Jurgis and his twenty-four fellow-spotters immediately turned on the X-rays, glued their eyes to their telescopes, and minutely examined the ham as it slowly revolved before their gaze. At the end of five minutes of the closest possible scrutiny not one of the spotters had been able to detect the slightest impurity in the ham. It was therefore tipped off the platform and shot through a trap-door to the potting department below. Then the trap-door shut, the opening in the ceiling opened again, and another ham dropped on the revolving platform.
This went on all day. Whenever one of the spotters detected something wrong with a ham, he shouted "Spotted!" at the top of his lungs, whereupon the Head Spotter would immediately scoop up the ham and shunt it down a slide to the European Export Department.
A month in the Spotting Room deeply impressed Jurgis. He began to appreciate the worth of a country that could have such cleanliness in its food-producing plants. His love for the green forests and smiling fields of his native Lithuania began to wane. At last he went before a Magistrate one day and took out naturalization papers. He swelled with pride as he walked homeward. He was one of the Americans!
"They produced George Washington," he said in his simple Lithuanian way, "and they make potted ham."
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