Tipping the Butcher

1901

Did you ever buy your own steaks and get the worst in the shop nearly every time? An old friend has had that misfortune, and he is always willing to pay two or three cents more a pound than any other customer. Having listened calmly to his tale of woe, I inquired if he had acquired the practice of tipping the butcher. Tipping the butcher? No! He thought It was a sufficient tip to offer the two or three cents more a pound. "That offer," I tried to explain, "goes to the proprietor direct, or his block man thinks you are trying to make a thief of him by inducing him to hold out for himself the extra price. It will never work.

"Just say to your cutter: 'See here, old chap, I've been dissatisfied with my steaks for some time. Come out and take a drink, and tell me how to select good meat.' He's too busy. Then slip a dime into his hand and say, 'Have a glass of beer when you get out,' or a quarter and say, 'Have a smile with me when you have time.' Repeat this performance and presently your steaks are the delight of home. In the busiest private market in New York it is the rule to tip the butchers. You can get nothing fit to eat without it." — New York Press.

Boy's Finger Valued at $11,000

1919

SUNBURY, Pa. — Placing the value of his son's little finger on the left hand at $11,000, Idres Davies of Shamokin, brought suit against J. J. Martini for the amount. According to Davies, the boy was operating a meat slicer in Martini's place that was unprotected. The boy showed great talent as a violinist and now he will he unable to perform.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 5.

Loading Up Chickens

1920

Some twenty-five tons of real estate in the form of sand and gravel and masquerading as 30 cents a pound chicken almost got into the New York market this week to be sold to the ultimate consumer — or goat, notes the Hamilton (Ont.) Times. The 60,000 pounds of sand and gravel reposed in the crops of 50,000 live chickens which reached the Jersey City yards in eight carloads. They were detected in time. Is this a new or an old wrinkle?

He Gets No Pie or Custard

1919

Such Is Hubby's Plea in Cross-bill for Divorce.

FINDLAY, Ohio — It was all right for the wife of Larson L. Brown to take hubby's pay envelope every Saturday and out of the contents pay a premium on the life insurance of her former husband, but when Mrs. Brown fed Larson side meat and boiled potatoes about 365 meals each year then he balked. This was learned when Brown's cross petition to his wife's petition for a divorce was filed. Brown intimated that a little pie and cup custard would have appeased things.

The Profitable Sausage

1902

For the amount of meat used the sausage is the most profitable legacy of the hog. Fully fifty different kinds of this suspected article are manufactured to suit the taste of many peoples; for Italians, with a dominating measure of garlic; for Germans, hard and fatty; for Frenchmen, dry and well larded; for Americans, well spiced; and all of these several grades.

Whatever meat cannot be used otherwise is consigned to the sausage, although for no other reason than that every diminutive piece is available — ham, head and foot trimmings, and the old remnants from the butcher's block. Potato, flour, spices, and water are mixed with the meat, which has been, finely chopped by rocking-knives, and a steam-driven piston forces the mass into the casings, whereupon it becomes sausage. The casings are the intestines of the hog thoroughly scraped and washed by mechanical process.

The pig's snout does not escape — that would be a gross oversight — so it is trimmed off and sold as a pickling "delicacy" to new Americans with unpronounceable names. — The Century.

Rules For Right Living

1902

For the man or woman, whether young or old, who wishes health, which means happiness, the following simple rules were gathered:

Pin them up where you will see them. But do not let that be all you do. Read them again and again, and, best of all, act upon them.

Eight hours' sleep.
Sleep on your right side.
Keep your bedroom window open all night.
Have a mat to your bedroom door.
Do not have your bedstead against the wall.
No cold water in the morning, but a bath at the temperature of the body.
Exercise before breakfast.
Eat little meat, and see that it is well cooked.
For adults, drink no milk.
Eat plenty of fat to feed the cells which destroy disease germs.
Avoid intoxicants, which destroy those cells.
Daily exercise in the open air.
Allow no pet animals in your living rooms; they are likely to carry about disease germs.
Live in the country if you can.
Watch the three D's — drinking water, damp, drains.
Take frequent and short holidays.
Limit your ambition.
Keep your temper. — New York American.

Note: This article and its advice is from 1902. Please check with your physician or neighborhood scientist before screwing up your life too much.

Current Turkey Models Are Bigger and Heavier

1934

Shifting of styles in turkeys is under way, according to L. E. Cline of the Nevada agricultural extension service, who recently finished a study of the present market for the holiday birds. The 1934 model will be bigger and heavier, Mr. Cline says, reflecting a consumer demand for a different type of bird which has been increasing since last Christmas.

The shift is a return to the turkey in greatest demand some time ago, the extension man says, and may be an indication of better economic conditions. In recent years the smaller birds have brought the best prices. Demands from restaurants and cabarets for larger breast meat has been an important factor in the change in consumer requirements.

A premium of one or more cents a pound is now being paid for the heavier turkeys, while for the last two or three years the price was that amount under the sum paid for lighter birds.

This condition always shows a decidedly healthy tone of the market, and if it prevails through the coming marketing season, as indications point, there will be a distinct advantage to the turkey producer.

Most Men Write Poor English

1905

An observant student of daily history as recorded in the newspapers takes now a kindlier view of errors in "newspaper English" than before the recent excitement concerning the vice crusade had arisen.

"I have heard all sorts of excuses about the occasional bad English one sees in newspapers, the hurry with which it is written, and that kind of thing," he says; "but I never gave the arguments much thought until I read the correspondence brought forth from men not hurried and of undoubted education, by the recent discussion. Some of the notes which have thus passed have been practically unintelligible in just these spots where a clear and ambiguous meaning was most vital to the point involved. These epistles must certainly have been studied by their writers — at least there must have been time for such study — but they read as though they were dashed off in a moment. In addition to actual errors, some of them fail utterly to establish their arguments because of the forceful way in which they are expressed."


Eat Meatless Meals

A prosperous physician was lunching at his club the other day at a table adjoining that at which sat one of his patients, says the Chicago Inter Ocean. He ordered English plum pudding as a finish to his meal, and remarked as he attacked it, that he would not eat it except at a noon meal, when he knew he would get no bad results from its richness.

The lady thought it a good time to secure information without the customary fee, and asked a few questions on food. "The habit of placing the heaviest meal of the day at its close is responsible for a deal of digestive trouble, with its train of disease," he said. "It may be old fashioned to dine at noon, but it is healthful, and that counts for everything. It is a practice among many physicians to have a midday dinner and a supper in which no meat figures, but stewed fruit is a feature."

Too Many Horse Hides

1896

The hide of the horse has always been valuable for making ladies' fine shoes and thongs for belt-lacing. It is much finer than the hide of the beef, and when split makes a very fine and soft leather.

A few years ago the market could not get enough of them. That was in the days when a horse was a horse, and worth something, before the electric motor drove him from the street car service. As high as $5 was paid for a good hide, and it was a very poor one that would not bring $2.50. But as the horse got cheaper and the advocate of horseflesh as food was reinforced by the butcher who could palm it off for beef, things slowly began to change. Prices went down steadily, until now it takes a No. 1 hide to bring $1.50, while fair ones go for fifty cents and the poorer ones are thrown away.

The consumption of horseflesh in Europe, particularly in Paris, seems to have increased wonderfully, judging from the heavy importation of hides to this country, while in this country it is said there is not a large city where the horse is not slaughtered for the market and sold either openly or secretly. The meat-canning establishments are also credited with using a great many broken-down animals.

Thus, while the beef hide market has its fluctuations and days of glut and scarcity, the horse hide market is completely stagnated, and there does not seem to be any possible hope for a revival of it. — St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Economy in Small Ways

1896

The little leaks in the household expenses, says the Jenness-Miller Monthly, are the most mischievous. The big ones are prominent enough to compel attention. Do you not, for example, trust all your tradespeople implicitly? You can't afford to do so.

The head servants in the Vanderbilt and Astor, and other wealthy families have among their chief duties that of weighing the household supplies. Dry goods measurements in the large shops are generally very accurate because the employes are under strict orders to be exact. But grocers and butchers will bear watching. Get for yourself or your kitchen priestess a set of measures and some scales, and after you and she have learned to use them, you will be amazed to see how much you have been paying for that you haven't had.

Even in the most reliable shops — so called — the weighing is very lax. Butchers claim that the deficiencies in their weights are all due to the waste in trimming. Very well, order the meat sent untrimmed. You will get fresher meat, and what you trim off will often give you nice bits for the stock pot, suet, etc. Try it and be convinced.

A quick-witted housekeeper says she has earned many a dollar in plumbers' bills by buying a force cup and learning to handle a wrench. Despite washing soda and potash, now and then something unmeltable slips through the sink strainer and clogs the pipe. All the more modern plumbing has a nut at the bottom of the "goose-neck," just below the sink. By setting a pan beneath this, and with a wrench loosening and then removing the cap, the obstruction will generally be found right there. Sometimes the force-cap applied over the strainer in the sink will be sufficient to clear the pipe without taking the cap off the gooseneck. If both fail, no harm will have been done, but one or the other, or both, succeeds often enough to make it worth while to exercise one's ingenuity a bit.

Texas City Runs Its Own Abattoir

1910

PARIS, Texas — The first and only municipal abattoir and animal reduction plant in the United States is in this city, and has been in successful operation for several months. It marks the beginning of a new era in municipal ownership of industries that directly concern the welfare of the people.

It is said that the idea is practical for all cities and that it would work to particular advantage in towns of 10,000 to 100,000 population. If generally adopted it may lead to a solution of the problem of the high cost of meat and other food products.

In Paris, with an estimated population of 15,000, the municipal sanitary department found it very difficult to supervise the several separate slaughter houses maintained by the butchers. The health of the people was constantly menaced by the unsanitary conditions under which the animals were slaughtered and the meats handled.

These private slaughter houses were rudely constructed and most of them were in some swamp or thicket. During the summer flies were about the premises in untold millions. They covered the slaughtered animals. The odor was terrific, and, indeed, the whole surroundings were such that it appeared to all that the meat slaughtered under such conditions was not at all fit for food.

Mayor McCuistion and other members of his administration tried to induce the butchers to form a stock company and build an abattoir and reduction plant, operating it themselves, and allowing the city to furnish an inspector only, but this could not be accomplished.

The city then determined to establish its own abattoir and to provide rules and regulations that would insure the slaughtering of only healthy and well-conditioned animals and the delivery to the people of meat in perfect sanitary condition. The proposition was agitated and met with general favor on the part of the public. An issue of $10,000 of bonds was voted for the construction of the plant. It was equipped with sanitary arrangements and is modern and complete in every respect.

Mayor McCuistion says: "The new plant is being operated to the entire satisfaction of every butcher and every resident of the city, so far as I have been able to hear. We are greatly delighted with the success that has crowned our efforts in this work, and we believe that the establishment of this plant has marked a distinct era in the general sanitation of our city."

Farm, Orchard, and Garden - 1903

March 8, 1903

By J.S. Trigg, Rockford, Iowa

Rice feeds ten persons, taking the world at large, where wheat feeds one.

The losses by reason of hog cholera last year in the state of Indiana are placed at near $6,000,000.

The American farmer is getting the daily paper habit as a result of rural delivery, and it is a good thing for him.

Steam transports having a capacity of 900,000 bushels of wheat each will soon be plying between the Pacific coast and Japan.

The modern harvesting machines are now in use by twenty-nine different nations of the earth and represent in their ability to harvest the crops of the world the labor of 20,000,000 men.

We do not know that the time will ever come when the lion shall eat straw like the ox, but the time has come when the hog will eat hay — alfalfa hay — like an old cow. It is a staple winter ration for Kansas hogs.

An export dealer in butter stated recently that he would rather handle butter which scored 92 and which would remain at that scoring until disposed of than to handle an extra grade at 93 and have it drop to 92 before it could be sold.

A second cutting of timber land — oak, hickory, maple and basswood — of twenty-eight years' growth yields about eighteen cords to the acre, worth net to the owner about $72. This fact explains why forestry is not profitable in a commercial sense.

A farmers' mutual insurance company of a county in a Western state paid $2,375 on thirty-nine losses during the year. Of this amount $2,284.84 was for losses caused by lightning, stock killed, while only $129.75 was paid out for fire losses. This goes to show that lightning in these days of barbed wire fences is a very destructive agent.

The stockmen of the West are bitterly opposed to the proposed packing house trust, believing such a combination will have the cattlemen completely at its mercy in the matter of fixing prices. This opposition is so marked and emphatic that with its threats to establish packing houses of its own it may defeat the proposed packing house merger.

Years ago when black walnut was plentiful and cheap it was used largely for the construction of the wooden bridges by the pioneers because of the ease with which it could be worked and its well-known durability. Such a bridge built fifty years ago in the state of Indiana, 150 feet long, contains timber valued at present at $15,000, which would more than twice pay for a steel bridge to take its place.

We are asked whether the production of cucumbers for pickles is a profitable business, what the yield is and what the profits. In such cases as we have known the crop will yield a gross return of from $40 to $70 per acre. There are two difficulties in the way of this crop — one to protect the vines from insect pests, the other to secure necessary help to gather the crop, which has to be done every two or three days during the season.

If one starts out as a breeder of registered cattle of any breed, he must produce animals of such a grade of excellence that his yearling males will bring him at least $100 each. If he cannot do this, he had better confine his efforts to the production of beef or milk and let others breed for the market. Not every man is cut out for a breeder. There must be individual excellence as well as pedigree, and some men cannot combine these qualities.

A large purchase of Belgian hares by an Eastern canning factory was logically followed by a large shipment of choice selected boned turkey from the cannery soon after. After all, it's what you think you are eating rather than what you really eat, evidenced by the serving of fried cat for squirrel as a joke at a party, the participants at the feast pleased and satisfied, only to undergo a serious digestive disturbance later when informed of what they had really eaten.

With the exception of the peach, orange, grape, nectarine and apricot, it may be said that nearly all our other fruits thrive best where there are the least extremes of temperature, where neither excessive heat, cold, moisture nor aridity prevails. The climatic conditions which prevail in Nova Scotia, lower Canada, northern New York, northern Michigan, Washington and Oregon, whore it would be difficult to mature a crop of corn, furnish the apple its very best conditions, also the pear, cherry and all the small fruits.

Those Ravenous Eskimos

1916

They Eat and Digest Food That Would Kill an Ordinary Man

We bear much of American dyspepsia, but there is one native race of America that is certainly not troubled in this respect. The Eskimo defies all the laws of hygiene and thrives. He eats until he is satisfied, but is said never to be satisfied while a shred of his feast remains unconsumed. His capacity is limited by the supply and by that only.

The Eskimo cannot make any mistake about the manner of cooking his food, since, as a rule, he does not cook it. Nor, so far as the blubber or fat of the arctic annual is concerned, is the Eskimo concerned about his manner of eating it. Indeed, he may be said not to eat it at all. He cuts it into long strips an inch wide and an inch thick and then lowers the strip down his throat as one might lower a rope into a well.

Despite all this the Eskimo does not suffer from indigestion. He can make a good meal off the flesh and skin of the walrus, provision so hard and gritty that in cutting up the animal the knife must be continually sharpened. The teeth of a little Eskimo child will, it is said by those in a position to know, meet in a bit of walrus skin as the teeth of an American child would meet in the flesh of an apple, although the hide of the walrus is from a half an inch to an inch in thickness and bears considerable resemblance to the hide of an elephant. The Eskimo child will bite it and digest it and never know what dyspepsia means. — Harper's Weekly.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

Comment: I don't know, do you suppose this article is true? The part about lowering the meat down their throat like lowering a rope down a well. After all, if the children have such good biting abilities, they're obviously adept at using their teeth. So why would the adults simply partake of big strips of meat by lowering it down their throats?

Man's Theory: Kill the Pig Before It Squeals

1906

To Make Perfect Pork

Method of Slaughtering Which Insures Wholesome Meat

A Kansas City man has discovered a novel method of preparing pork for the market in a way that will give to the people a meat which is perfectly wholesome. The theory is advanced that when a pig is sent to slaughter every squeal emitted in the process of slaughter is an audible announcement of a nervous reaction that affects every fiber of its body, producing such changes as will he detrimental to any one partaking of the flesh. The plan proposed is to drive the porker up an incline into a small pen. Just as he steps in the pen the platform tilts and runs him down a chute. At the end of this chute there is a bucket of slop or mash, or any other pig delicacy. The animal pokes his snout into the bucket when his whole head is caught in a trap and nitrous oxide renders him unconscious before he has time to let out even a little squeal. While the pig is in this state it is slaughtered, There is no excitement, no squeal and consequently no thermic changes.

—Denton Journal, Denton, Maryland, January 6, 1906, page 4.

Hooray, Butcherin' Hez Cum! (poetry)

1912

HOORAY, BUTCHERIN' HEZ CUM!

Murder, hear them hogs a-squealin'!
Butcherin' at last hez cum.
Oh, jist watch the folks a-hustlin'
An' the sassage grinder hum!

There the hog goes in the scald trough.
Off his bristles quickly fly.
Now they're cuttin' him to pieces
As he hangs on stretcher high.

Zip -- the sassage grinder's goin',
Hiss -- the lard's a-billin' too.
Puddin's cookin' in the kittle,
Oh, smell that hog liver stew!

Let's go run the sassage stuffer.
O you sassage ten foot long,
Slick as grease an', oh, so bully,
Spiced with garlic middlin' strong!

See the purty hams an' bacon
An' the lard as white as snow --
But, hello, they're callin' dinner!
Hurry up: we've got to go!

Fur they're havin' sassage, puddin',
Ponhos, pig tongue an pig feet,
An' the folks at the fust table
Allus git the most to eat.

C. M. BARNITZ.

—Bedford Gazette, Bedford, Pennsylvania, January 12, 1912, page 6.