sult is that on the Harriman roads the responsibility is always fixed.

The reports of these boards of inquiry, put in the form of a brief bulletin and including the names of the guilty parties, are promptly furnished to the local newspapers and also are posted in the division headquarters. As a result As a result of thus putting the blame where it belongs and making the names public it has been found that the employes generally

are very much more careful to observe all the rules and orders.

At any rate the new policy has made an astonishing reduction in the number of accidents on the Harriman lines. Men who know that their carelessness will certainly be found out and that they will be named as guilty in case of resulting accidents-pilloried publicly, before the eyes of their own friends and neighbors are always on guard.

What is saved by cutting down the number of accidents on a railroad is not a matter which can be accurately figured. But it is certain that the adoption of the Krutschnitt system on all the roads in the United States would result in the saving of millions of dollars.

If railroad managers everywhere would adopt on their own lines all the successful reforms which have been worked out, in piece-meal, on other lines, it is certain that the general efficiency of railroad service would be greatly increased.

Y

OU know how the prices of meat have jumped around during the past year. Time was when one could, for fifteen cents, secure a piece of ham and an egg, cooked by the most expert of "fly" cooks. Then the price jumped to twenty cents and the impetus carried it up until a hungry gentleman could not satisfy his appetite with these delicacies for less than twenty-five cents. In the meanwhile, the same violent waves were disturbing the menus in the big restaurants upstairs. Planked steaks rose in price so violently that only the idle and careless rich continued to order it without looking first at the latest quotations. Oftentimes during the year

Mother Hubbard was not so much disturbed by the fear that she would find no bone in her cupboard as by apprehension over the bill of the butcher from whom she bought the bones.

In the general storm over meat prices, it is pleasant to find one port where all is peaceful and housekeepers throw out the bones to the family dog and wash the breakfast dishes without a dread of the morrow's meat bills to disturb them.

Paris is the name of this blessed place -not Paris, France, nor Paris, Kentucky, but Paris, Texas, a town which boasts of a population of 11,500 and cheap porterhouse steaks all the year round.

At one time Paris was chiefly occupied

with supplying the world with beef. As the center of a big cattle range it was one of the early cow towns of Texas. Then the cattle frontier moved westward and in the rapid development of the Southwest Paris became, instead, the center of a farming country, with a strong leaning toward the production of cotton. In a very few years, the producers of steaks found themselves to be the consumers. It gave them a new point of view of the cattle business. Previously, they had been interested only in the price they could secure for the cattle. Now they became interested in the manner in which their steaks were prepared for market and the price they had to pay for them.

The steaks they had for dinner, they found, came from two sources-from the packing houses or from the local slaughter houses.

The packing house meats were presumably clean and high priced. The slaughter house meats were lower in price and were accepted with confidence by those who had never been around the slaughter houses. Paris people found the only alternative-a municipal abattoir, and that is the reason steaks and pork chops and bacon are cheaper in Paris than in the rival city of Sherman, sixty miles distant, and that much nearer to the nearest big packing house.

Paris had five slaughter houses. The buildings were cheap shacks. never cleaned, from which a disagreeable odor constantly filtered. The butchers were dirty, unkempt negroes whose primitive ideas of sanitation were not improved by their experience in this business. Each of these slaughter houses showed hygienic horrors Upton Sinclair knew nothing of when he wrote "The Jungle." Flies were allowed to swarm in the open doors during the summer time and feast upon the freshly slaughtered meat. Hogs, waiting in the pen, lapped up the blood of their kind which had preceded them to the block. The water which was used to wash down the cows or hogs came from a pool in the hog lot or from a surface well near by. Officials of Paris in describing these conditions now say, with reason, that they believe the same flagrant conditions exist today in hundreds of the smaller cities.

More than two years ago Mayor McCuistion began to call attention to the bad conditions of the slaughter houses. Like most reformers, he preached at first to an indifferent audience.

The little city of Paris paid scant heed to his warnings and apparently was satisfied with the old fashioned way of getting its meat. The butchers continued to haul cows, hogs and calves to the slaughter houses in the same dirty wagons and the same negroes continued to kill.

Deciding finally that he could not awaken public sentiment, Mayor McCuistion called the butchers together and demanded a joint slaughter house, operated under the direction of a competent inspector. Meeting after meeting was held, but petty business jealousies always stood in the way of concerted action. All the time, however, the mayor was working out one idea after another. In this, he was ably assisted by one of the leading meat market proprietors. Hiram Hicks, and the two eventually evolved the abattoir.

Up to this point, the meat consumers of Paris had taken little interest in the warnings of the mayor. The business. men and the housewives, knowing nothing of the dirty methods through which the steaks reached them, could see no reason for a change. Established custom is hard to change, whether it be in the matter of meats or morals.

Just as soon, however, as the city council called an election on a $10,000 bond issue to erect an abattoir, Paris people became interested. The name itself sounded strange and sent half of the town to the dictionary or to his neighbor for the meaning. The purpose was still more novel and soon the town was as engrossed with the proposed bond issue as it had been with the prohibition election six months before. The whole town was divided into proabattoirs and anti-abattoirs.

Opponents of the idea characterized the scheme as a dream and went so far as to call Mayor McCuistion and his friend socialistic. An abattoir for a city of 200,000 might do, but never for a town of barely 12,000.

Anyway on election day Mayor McCuistion won out and the money was voted for the plant. This opposition, it should be said, has been entirely converted. The butchers say that they get their meat delivered to them cheaper than ever before. The people say the meat is better and just as cheap.

Not only had the mayor and the councilmen won out in their fight but they also developed the abattoir idea until it had expanded and had grown into a miniature municipal packing plant.

The slaughtering of animals naturally brought up a caravan of questions. The undesirable parts had to be disposed of; the smell, gases and odors had to be taken care of and the sewage looked after. But to these emergencies the officials were equal.

Naturally, a refrigerating and storage plant first suggested itself and then a reduction and rendering system. Months of inquiry were necessary before the proper machinery and information were secured, but enthusiasm spurred the workers, and exactly twelve months from the day the idea had been broached, the

first municipal abattoir plant in the world was opened.

It was easy enough to select the officials and to apply sanitary rules. The first employee was an inspector, who was familiar with all of the federal government's livestock regulations and quarantine rules. Then a superintendent was employed who had charge of the plant. A foreman of the killing floor and three assistants completed the force.

At the outset, this represented an expenditure of $500 per month in salaries. Insurance, which was very high at first, repairs, etc., brought the maintenance cost per month up to $600.

A tentative price list was finally decided upon. The city agreed to slaughter a beef for one dollar and fifty cents and a hog, sheep, goat or calf for one dollar. This fee included many things. Under the arrangement made then and continued until the present time, the butcher delivers his steer into the stock pens, adjoining the abattoir, and does not see the animal again until the meat is placed on the hook in his market, ready for sale to the public.

Before the steer is allowed to leave the stock pens, the municipal inspector must make a thorough examination. If the steer is diseased, the butcher is orthorough, this examination on the hoof dered to return and take it away. While is superficial, compared to the rigid process through which the meat must go in the killing room. The inspector dons his rubber suit on all butchering days and examines carefully every part of the animal's body.

Five days of cold storage are included in the abattoir fee. The responsibility of the city does not end until the sixth day, when the beef, neatly and sanitarily sacked, is delivered to the owner.

The precautions, which the city takes in handling this meat, are noteworthy. Each negro who works on the killing floor is obliged to put on a freshly steamed white suit daily. The tools are all sterilized. The sacks into which the meat is placed before delivery to the patron must be absolutely fresh.

Despite the small butchering cost, the hide from the beef is not retained by the city, but is returned to the butcher, ready for sale to the wholesale dealer. The

price of a hide alone will pay for slaughtering a half dozen steers, according to the present market price of green hides.

After thirty days' trial, the city discovered that the butchers were paying too much for the slaughtering, so the fee for a beef was reduced from $1.50 to $1.25; that for the smaller animals from one dollar to seventy-five cents. These prices still prevail. The reduction came unsolicited by the butchers. They freely admit that the city is doing the slaughtering for them cheaper than they themselves could ever do it. The difference is roughly estimated at 25 cents on each animal, and the results are far better. At present the city is serving ten regu. lar customers and all of them are satisfied.

The plant has been more than selfsustaining. Its first year ended November 30, 1910, and the closing of the books revealed a profit. The original investment was $10,000. The cost of operation, including interest on bonds, salaries, repairs, insurance, etc., was approximately $7,500. The receipts were more than $9,000 and would have exceeded $12,000 if the plant had been large enough.

The thrift of Mayor McCuistion and

money.

his assistants in allowing nothing to go to waste was largely responsible for the success of the venture the first year. For instance, the horns of the decapitated cow are turned into Around the old fashioned slaughter house these details were laughed at. To some youngster, anxious to make a hunter's horn, the cow's head was given. The tails were discarded as useless and thrown into the lot to decay. Paris is showing rare municipal economy by selling the cows' horns and tails. Even the gases from the rendering tank are used in the furnaces as fuel.

Of course the slaughtering charge is foremost among the sources of revenue. Last year 2,206 beeves were killed, which placed more than $3,000 to the credit of the abattoir. Hogs did not bring in as much money because of the smaller charge. but made a good second with 1,833 killed and $1,800 in money. The revenue from calves was $316 and from sheep and goats, $161.

The plant celebrated its first birthday by shipping a car load of fertilizer to Little Rock. This brings the city $20 per ton. The fertilizer comes from the rendering and reduction plant. Not only are all undesirable parts from the killing room thrown into this vat but also all