Butcher shop

“ I CAN'T abear a butcher,
I can't abide his meat,
The ugliest shop of all is his,
The ugliest in the street;
Bakers' are warm, cobblers' dark,
Chemists' burn watery lights;
But oh, the sawdust butcher's shop,
That ugliest of sights! ”

“ Once our travel was entirely blocked by a fight. A butcher in a bloody apron had dashed out of his shop and attacked the driver of a brewer's sledge. A crowd gathered miraculously and cheered on this spectacle; women appeared at all the windows; urchins hooted; mongrel dogs barked. When the butcher had been worsted and chased back into his shop by the maddened brewer we were allowed to pursue our journey. ”

“ All these indications are, it may be easily seen, comparative rather than absolute, and an inexperienced housewife walking into a butcher’s shop will be puzzled to know exactly how red, what tinge of purple, what proportion of fat, and what thickness of gristle she is to be prepared to expect. It is for each woman to decide whether she will choose her own meat or leave it to the butcher’s choosing. At any rate, the butcher will do his part of the bargain better if he clearly understands that his customer knows good meat from second rate, and will not overlook shortcomings in quality or weight. ”

“ I remember one jefe político to whom it occurred that he might start a butcher shop and ruin the business of the only other butcher shop in town, which was kept by a man he happened to dislike. When he had completed his arrangements for the sale of meat, he caused a rumor to circulate among the lower classes to the effect that life would be a gladder, sweeter thing for all concerned if the meat he was now prepared to dispense should find a market both ready and sustained. ”

“ The{18} butchers shut up shop at eleven in the morning and do not open again till six in the evening. Business begins at the shriek of dawn; the first sound I hear in the early gray is the sharpening of the butcher’s knife in the shop opposite. ”

“ In very small villages many offices are combined in one person, and so we find a prominent inhabitant blacksmith, painter, and carpenter, while the baker's shop is a kind of universal provider for the villagers' simple wants. The butcher is the only person who is the man of one occupation, though he, too, goes round to the neighbouring farms to help in the slaughtering of the cattle, and sometimes lends a hand in the salting and storing of the meat. ”

“ Progress has made such methods absurd, unprofitable and impracticable.
But the great machinery of economical production and distribution was not built in a day, or a year, or a decade. Armour and Company’s activities began more than fifty years ago. At first the packing house was only a butcher shop on an enlarged scale, preparing and handling pork products almost exclusively. Cattle were killed for local consumption only, as there was no such thing as cold storage, refrigerator car lines or branch houses for the distribution of fresh meats. ”

“ Shop-keepers improve the opportunity to sell their wares and a lively trade is carried on at the open booths along the walks. One butcher is especially active in booming business, having a fellow in front of his place, a “barker,” we would style him in the States, who bellows in a voice like a foghorn, “Lovely meat! ”

“ On the left side, as I strolled along, I see a big butcher shop, with hull sides of beef, mutton, pork, hams, chickens, etc., hangin’ up. And a long counter, piled full of invitin’ lookin’ pieces ready to roast or brile. The butcher in a clean white apron stood behind the counter. Everything looked good and clean, but I’d hearn of city meat givin’ toe main pizen, and knowin’ Josiah’s fondness for meat vittles—I asked anxiously, “Are you sure the critters this meat come from hadn’t got cow consumption, or hog cholera?”
A friendly female standin’ by said, “Every 229 mite of that is candy.” ”

“ The butcher has more meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part of it. But they have nothing to offer in exchange, except the different productions of their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. ”

“ One dead sheep or a part of one always hangs in his shop. All parts of the animal are sold at the same price, fourpence a pound, and customers do not, as a rule, specify leg or breast or neck, but simply the quantity they require. When the butcher buys four sheep he kills one and hangs it in his shop, and the other three live ones are under the counter eating fodder or playing about among the customers’ legs. The sheep-hawker makes his tour of the town and is all day at it, tramp, tramp, tramp, through mud or dust. ”

“ To get a fair idea of the food we eat to sustain life and to please and satisfy our palates, we need but take a casual glance at any of our modern butcher shops. Although to-day you will not see human limbs on display and for sale, as they were years ago, you will be impressed with the following morsels put there to tempt your appetite: In our modern butcher shops you will find pigs' feet, calves' brains, ox tongues, breasts and legs of lamb, chicken livers, dogs ground to bits and sold as sausages, live and dead fish of all kinds and varieties and innumerable other portions of animal flesh. ”

“ Every village has its tienda or store where you buy the eternal black beans, peppers, rice, tortillas, and where usually an assortment of tinned American meats and fruits can be purchased by those tired of life. But there is nowhere such a thing as a butcher's shop. The cattle range the woods at will, only to be brought in occasionally to be freshly branded with the owner's mark. When one is to be killed it is "rounded up" and driven in to the pueblo. The method of slaughter is stabbing in the region of the heart, just above the left foreleg. ”

“ The trail was blocked, and the butcher came no more. This was a sad thing to us. I know that more than once that morning the Prince went to the door, and looked up sharply toward the point where the mule made his appearance when the trail was open, and that his face expressed uncommon concern when he had settled in his mind that the beef supply was at an end.
It is pretty certain that the two butchers had been waiting for some good excuse to shut up shop with out offending the miners, until their claims s hould
be opened in the spring. ”

“ This was for the best corn-fed western steers, a grade of beef that is found only in the best retail butcher shops of any American city. Yet, with the expense of ocean-refrigerator carriage added, and with other operating costs equal to those of the retail butcher in the States, the commissary found it possible to sell to the consumer, delivered at his kitchen door, porterhouse steaks from this beef at 20 cents, sirloin steaks and roasts at 19 cents, and round steaks at 13 cents a pound. ”

“ I thought I'd die the time he started them butcher shops for Fan's pa, though. He hadn't never learnt the difference between a rib roast 'n a soup bone, 'n he had to keep a printed paper hung up inside o' the ice chest so's he'd know which kind of a piece he got out to sell; but he talked so nice an' smooth all the time he was a gettin' it out, an' tole each customer that the piece they asked fer was the 'choicest part of the animal,' but that mighty few folks had sense enough to know it—oh, it was funny! ”

“ In this savage ‘market’ pretty much the same line of goods appears as is found in modern ‘markets,’ except that, instead of the quartered corpses of sheep and bullocks, there hang the shoulders, thighs, and gory heads of men. The butcher is represented as standing beside the chopping-block in the act of cutting up the leg of a man. A child’s head and other fragments of the human body are piled up on another block, and behind these on pegs are ranged the more pretentious wares of the establishment. ”

“ Practical butchers, who are also feeders, have proved by test that they can ship their beef cattle hundreds of miles to the big packer, have them slaughtered, dressed and returned at less cost than they can do their own killing. This is possible because the utilization of every scrap of the animals in valuable by-products, and the saving in labor by wholesale slaughtering and handling, pay all expenses, including the freight both ways, and leave a margin for the butcher besides. ”

“ Such shops as these are actually in a state of siege by the flies; there is, however, no remedy for the butcher but patience; his customers always wash their meat before it is cooked, so he never fails to sell even with all these disadvantages. ”

“ Now, some of the poorer folk cannot afford to pay for butchers' meat, they are contented with horseflesh, which is not yet rationed, and are willing to sell their ration cards. You can well afford to buy one or two of them, and in that manner secure extra allowances of beef or mutton."
That plan was adopted, and for a time everything went on satisfactorily. On a few occasions I joined the queue outside our butcher's in the Rue de Penthièvre, and waited an hour or two to secure our share of meat, We were not over-crowded in that part of Paris. ”

“ I have observed that the old ones pass all the carcasses, which, trailing to the ground, are hanging before the butchers’ shops, as if they were on a sort of parole d'honneur not to touch them; the middle-aged ones wistfully eye this meat, yet jog on also, while the piglings, who (so like mankind) have more appetite than judgment, can rarely resist taking a nibble; yet, no sooner does the dead calf begin again to move, than from the window immediately above out pops the head of a butcher, who, drinking his coffee, whip in hand, inflicts a prompt punishment, sounding quite equal to the offence. ”

“ I really should, for it reminds me of my boyish days, if it was only when I had Montfauçon for a slaughter-house and broken-down horses for cattle. It is droll, but if I had the means, a butcher's is the trade in which I should set up, for I like it. To go on a good nag to buy cattle at fairs,—to return home to one's own fireside, to warm yourself if cold, or dry yourself if wet,—to find your housekeeper, or a good, jolly, plump wife, cheerful and pleasant, with a parcel of children to feel in your pockets to see if you have brought them home anything! ”

“ A first-class butcher in a wealthy neighbourhood, only buys the best meat and the prime joints; but a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, with a low-class trade, finds a ready sale for coarser inferior meat, and in some town slums it seems as though every animal had at least 6 heads and a corresponding number of internal arrangements. ”

“ Someone must arrange, replenish and clean the counters and supply customer services.' Operating without butchers would mean that 'their work would be done by others unskilled in the trade,' and 'would involve an increase in workload in preparing for the night work and cleaning the next morning.' 215 F.Supp., at 846. ”

“ The sidewalks, lined with gaudy windows wheedling dollars from the passers-by and noisy with street hawkers, passionately supply last-minute gew-gaws for the tired men and women who have had to shop late because they had no money to shop early–sidewalks smooth and wide and sturdy to the tramp of millions of feet–not over a lifetime ago were narrow strips of wood, raised on stilts, with enough room underneath for children to play and for rats to hold continuous convention. ”

“ Whether or not the concentration of these huge meat works into two or three centres is likely to benefit the leather trade is a debatable point. The flaying, trimming, and curing of hides in these establishments are certainly superior to the work done by the average butcher, while, owing to the large numbers of cattle slaughtered, the hides can be closely selected. ”

“ One night, after we had returned from the field, the overseer sent for me by his little son, and when I came to his house, he asked me if I understood the trade of a butcher—I told him I was not a butcher by trade, but that I had often assisted my master and others to kill hogs and cattle, and that I could dress a hog, or a bullock, as well as most people. ”

“ Although the consumption of butchers' meat was not so great in the Middle Ages as it is now, the trade of a butcher, to which extraordinary privileges were attached, was nevertheless one of the industries which realised the greatest profits. ”

“ Fully one-fifth of them are sold to the butchers, the major portion for human consumption, and the remainder to feed, and, in many cases, to disease pigs. Every now and then we hear through the newspapers that some unprincipled butcher is fined for exposing diseased or tainted meat for sale in Newgate Market ”

“ These can always be obtained much cheaper than new ones, and you can get good fixtures which will answer the purpose, but they must be neat, clean and in good repair. If you intend to do your own butchering, our advice is that you make arrangements with some butcher who has a slaughter house, and where you can 223 do your butchering, and pay him a certain amount for each animal slaughtered. ”

“ They are managed by a Syndicat or Guild of Butchers, who confer with the Minister of the Interior on all matters affecting the trade, and who are consulted when any new regulations are contemplated for its government. They are, likewise, under the vigilant superintendence of the police. Every butcher must be licensed: which proves him at once to be a slave, for we don't license butchers in England - we only license apothecaries, attorneys, post-masters, publicans, hawkers, retailers of tobacco, snuff, pepper, and vinegar - and one or two other little trades, not worth mentioning. ”