The Last Process in Dressing Beef, Chicago, Illinois
As soon as the cattle are slaughtered and bled the skins are removed. Skins are an important by-product of the meat-packing business. Special rooms are set apart for preserving them until they are sent to the tanneries to be made into leather. The horns are saved and sent to other rooms where they are made ready to be shipped to button and comb factories. The hoofs are gathered together so that they may be used in the making of glue and mucilage. All the blood is saved. Some of it is used in the manufacture of dyes and chemicals, and some of it for making buttons. The carcass of the beef is then cut into halves and washed. It is the process of washing that you see taking place here. The water is conveyed through the pipe in the center of the picture. A man very carefully scrubs with boiling water all the rough parts of the carcasses, especially the backbones. These carcasses, hung on a portable framework, move then into the cooling room. Here they are frozen. In this form much of the meat is shipped to the retail dealers who cut it up in smaller portions. One of the great packing houses in Chicago slaughters, skins, and dresses the carcasses of 3000 cattle every day. The five leading states in the slaughtering and meat-packing industry are as follows: Illinois, Kansas, New York, Nebraska, and Missouri. The total value of our meat products, according to the census of 1910, was $1,370,568,101. In the month of June, 1915, we shipped abroad almost 50,000,000 pounds of meat. From where do all the cattle come to furnish the amount of beef we produce? Texas leads all our states in the production of cattle. Iowa comes second, Wisconsin third, and Nebraska fourth. Kansas, New York, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, and California follow in this order. Keystone ID: 20252 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.