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meat, but buy it dead. Those butchers who supply the nobility
and gentry, with scarcely any exceptions, buy country-killed meat
in preference to London-killed; and, during nine months in the
year, there are hundreds of first-class butchers who will never buy
anything else but country-killed—for this reason, that if they gave
their customers London-killed, they would have but few customers
left. Butchers who kill their own beasts will tell you they prefer
country-killed for their own eating. Anyone can ask himself this
question : can it be possible for meat to eat better when the animal
has been journeying about entirely out of its element ? Any
butcher will tell you that, after beasts, sheep, lambs, or calves have
left their element, and have been brought to London, and kept on
the best of food, they pine and lose weight the longer they are kept;
thereby, evidently, the animal cannot be in a healthy state."
And now we ask, what are the arguments on the other side of
the question ? It is said that the poor purchase the offal saved in
the private slaughter-house which would otherwise be wasted. To
that I ask, why should the offal be wasted in the abattoir ? Or it is
said that the interests of the public would suffer by the price of
meat being thereby increased. But I beg to say, this is not an
argument. It is a mere assertion, and it is an assertion unsupported
by any evidence. On the contrary, we know that when there is a
combination of work of any kind in one large building, the work is
done cheaper than when it is divided and subdivided out amongst
many smaller ones. And what is more to the purpose, all the facts
are against the idea of the abattoir being a means of increasing the
price of food. My own firm conviction is it would decrease it. I
know well that this has heen the result on the Continent. A letter
from Dr. Littlejohn, the Medical Officer of Health for Edinburgh, is
before me. " Here," he says, " there are no private slaughter-houses,
but one large public abattoir." And what is his experience about
price ?
" Meat," he says, " is decidedly cheaper in consequence of the
unusual facilities afforded in the abattoir," besides which, as Dr.
Littlejohn says, " The public, but especially the poor, are benefited,
not only in the cheapening of the food, but also in securing to them
that they get value for their money, in the form of sound wholesome
food. Without a public abattoir, in which all animals used for
food must be brought for inspection, and to be slaughtered, there