If you wish to see an exemplification of the law of life, the survival of one by the failure and death of another, go some day to any one of the great abattoirs¹ which to-day on the East River, or in Jersey² City, or elsewhere near the great metropolis³ receive and slay⁴ annually⁵ the thousands and hundreds of thousands of animals that make up a part of the city’s meat supply. And there be sure and see, also, the individual who, as your agent and mine, is vicariously responsible for the awful slaughter⁶. You will find him in a dark, red pit, blood-covered, standing⁷ in a sea of blood, while hour after hour and day after day there passes before him a line of screaming animals, hung by one leg, head down, and rolling steadily⁸ along a rail, which is slanted⁹ to get the benefit of gravity, while he, knife in hand, jabs unweariedly at their throats, the task of cutting their throats so that they may die of bleeding and exhaustion¹⁰ having become a wearisome and commonplace labor¹¹, one which he scarcely notices at all. He is a blood-red slayer¹², this individual, a butcher by trade, big, brawny¹³, muscular, but clothed from head to foot in a

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