THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



29 



combed and softened, the slivers are car- 

 ried to the spinning room. Here they 

 enter a machine which has a bobbin so 

 placed that as it revolves it twists the 

 sliver and converts it into twine. 



When the bobbins are full they are re- 

 moved and sent to the balling machine. 

 This machine takes the twine from the 

 bobbin and by a peculiar winding oper- 

 ation makes the balls of twine one sees 

 in the harvest field. 



In the whole twine factory, with a ca- 

 pacity of 200 tons a day, there is no 

 dust to be seen, for suction ventilators 

 draw it away and keep the plant, which 

 otherwise would be dustier than an old- 

 fashioned grist-mill, as clean as a pin. 



As the twine is spun and balled, it is 

 initialed by the operatives to show who 

 had charge of the several machines em- 

 ployed in its making. Random balls se- 

 lected by inspectors are unwound on 

 reels, so that every strand may be exam- 

 ined for defects and tested for tensile 

 strength. 



For when a ball of twine goes to the 

 harvest field it must be good or a twine 

 manufacturer's reputation is ruined. If, 

 after all these precautions, a ball that is 

 bad should get into the market, the sys- 

 tem of records kept at the mill will en- 

 able the manufacturer to trace the defec- 

 tive product back to its beginning and 

 tell the bale from which the fiber came, 

 who inspected it, who spun the ball, who 

 wound it, and all. 



It has often been asked why twine 

 manufacturers do not use other fibers 

 instead of going to far-off Yucatan or 

 farther-away Manila. For answer one 

 must go to the cricket and the grasshop- 

 per. Those little creatures can tell why 

 they eat every other sort of fiber known 

 except manila and sisal. One manufac- 

 turer spent more than a million dollars 

 trying to make a flax twine that did not 

 taste good to grasshoppers and crickets. 

 But he found their appetites versatile, 

 and that with them only sisal and manila 

 are taboo. 



Would you measure the size of the 

 world's grain crop? Then, remembering 

 that there are still vast areas in the back- 

 ward regions of the earth that have not 

 yet heard the merry music of the binder, 



you should pause to reflect that the an- 

 nual harvest in the lands where binders 

 do operate requires 150,000 tons of twine, 

 and that each pound of this makes 700 

 feet. A little problem in arithmetic shows 

 that the whole amounts to forty million 

 miles. Think how small an item twine 

 is in the making of our daily bread, and 

 yet the annual use of it calls for enough 

 to make sixteen hundred strands reach- 

 ing around the earth. 



THE DEATH MARCH OE THE ANIMAL ARMY 



Chicago's hold on the slaughtering and 

 packing of meat is only less striking than 

 its supremacy in the harvester and twine 

 industries. One-fourth of all the meat 

 animals that leave the farms and ranches 

 of the United States are bound for the 

 butcher's blocks of the lakeside metrop- 

 olis. 



Would you visualize the vast size of 

 the animal army that annually marches 

 into Chicago to pay the bloody sacrifice 

 that the human appetite requires of it? 

 Then pause and watch it pass by, single 

 file. Here comes the cattle contingent,, 

 two and a half million strong; head to 

 tail the line would reach from Chicago 

 through the North Pole to the Russian 

 coast. Then follow the hogs, seven mil- 

 lion of them — a solid procession of pork 

 long enough to reach from the southern 

 shores of Lake Michigan via Mexico 

 City and Panama to the mouth of "the 

 Amazon River. Even the sheep brigade 

 is not a mean one, for the bell wether of 

 the flock would be coming up to the Chi- 

 cago Drainage Canal when the last one 

 in the line was leaving the Panama Canal. 



The stockyards of the city have a ca- 

 pacity of 75,000 cattle, 300,000 hogs, and 

 125,000 sheep. More than 60,000 people 

 find employment in Packingtown, and a 

 million dollars change hands on the aver- 

 age day in the barter and trade of the 

 stockyard. 



The story of the conversion of the live 

 animal into meat and the hundred and 

 one by-products is too well known for 

 repetition here. No need the pros and 

 cons of costs and profits in the meat in- 

 dustry be considered. But certain it is 

 that when Gustavus Swift and Philip D. 



