The Gold Beetles: Their Food 



Initely, like the labourers in the meat-fac- 

 tories, and if the staiT consisted of a hundred 

 disembowellers, a very modest figure com- 

 pared with that of the ham-boners, the total 

 number of victims, in a ten hours' day, would 

 be thirty-six thousand. No Chicago can- 

 nery ever achieved such an output. 



The speed of the assassination is even 

 more remarkable when we consider the diffi- 

 culties of the attack. The Carabus has 

 nothing like the endless chain which seizes the 

 Pig by one leg, hoists it up and swings it 

 along to the butcher's knife; he has nothing 

 like the sliding plank which brings the Bul- 

 lock's forehead beneath the slaughterer's 

 mallet; he has to fall upon his prey, over- 

 power it and steer clear of its tusks and 

 claws. Moreover, what he disembowels he 

 eats on the spot. What a massacre it would 

 be if the insect had nothing to do but kill ! 



What do we learn from the Chicago 

 slaughter-houses and the Gold-beetle's feast- 

 ing? This: the man of lofty morals is now- 

 adays a rather rare exception. Under the 

 skin of the civilized being we nearly always 

 find the ancestor, the savage contemporary 

 with the Cave-bear. True humanity does 

 not yet exist; it is being very gradually 

 281 



