Vegetarianism or Flesh Eating
The diet question is not a matter of experiment for a day, or a week, or a month. A mere experiment with a few rats is a poor criterion with which to decide. A system is not built up in one day, or ten days, but back of it for years are the tested materials of which it has been built. We see very little in the journey of the Buffum brothers across the continent. The vegetarian gained more and was stronger at the end of the journey, but it is contended that he was in a little better health. That brief experiment proves little. The mere statement of some flesh-loving physician is of the same order. Dr. Wiley's declaration that the race would deteriorate without meat, rests simply on his supposition. He believes that a certain amount of meat is necessary as both body and brain food, and would not like to trust his progeny to a vegetable diet. Nor is it an argument for meat that the flesh-eating nations have been the world conquerors. That does not rest so much upon the food which they ate as upon the peoples themselves. We certainly had a decided reversal of that theory in the Japanese-Russian war. The Russians are great meat eaters, while the Japanese are almost wholly vegetarian. The result in every way favored Japan, not simply in the matter of the fighting or the conflict itself, but as regards the health of the soldiers and those who survived gunshot wounds. The writer of this article speaks from experience. At times in his life he has eaten largely of animal food. For years he followed a mixed diet. And for nearly half his life he has followed what may be called a vegetarian régime. The only practical exception is that of milk, and eggs very rarely, and milk not in great quantities. In his early years the larger part of his flesh dietary was pork, with occasionally beef, mutton, and fish. Later the pork was abjured. During his pork-eating days he spent most of his life in the open air and in hard manual labor, the most favorable conditions. He suffered greatly from catarrh and catarrhal headache. His blood was corrupt, skin rough and scaly, pimples and small boils in constant evidence. Cuts and abrasions would invariably suppurate, and be long in healing. "Heartburn" and other troublesome dyspeptic symptoms were almost daily companions. A busy life, interesting work and studies, and a varied companionship made life barely endurable. He was led to see the positive harmfulness of pork eating, by his own experience and its effect upon others, and these observations were strengthened by the prohibition of swine's flesh to the Jews in the Levitical law and by reading the "Health Reformer" published at Battle Creek, Michigan. And the question arose, Why did God prohibit the use of swine's flesh as food? It was no arbitrary act on the part of Divine Wisdom. Evidently it was because of the inherent nature of the swine itself. The beast was unhealthy, hence unwholesome, and God forbade it for the physical as well as the spiritual good of His people. Thus the writer reasoned, and pork was banished from the dietary, and beef and mutton took its place. Improvement followed, clear and decided for a time, but it was slow and unsatisfactory. The entire food question was studied in the Biblical, physiological, hygienic, and economic phases. The result was that flesh foods were placed on the retired list, and fruits, grains, nuts, and milk in almost endless variety became the regular bill of fare. As a result, the catarrhal conditions have almost wholly passed away. It is a rare thing indeed to have a cold. Cuts, bruises, abrasions, heal, if given any proper treatment, by first intention, but if given no care rarely or never suppurate. The mind is clearer, the body more vigorous; in fact, there is a decided improvement in every particular. When living on the mixed dietary and working hard, three meals a day was a necessity, and it was not an infrequent thing that there were four or five; but he finds it a very easy thing now to work until noon with nothing, and it is easier to work all day long without food than it was formerly to go without one of the three meals a day. He has demonstrated that one can work longer and harder on a vegetarian diet than he could on a flesh diet. He has seen its demonstration in hundreds and hundreds of cases besides his own. He knows of many children and young people, all the way from five to strong manhood, who have never, or practically never, tasted meat, who present every evidence of health, stanchness, endurance, resistless energy. Children in vegetarian schools will be found to be, other things equal, superior to those who live on the mixed diet. One thing which should commend the vegetarian diet is that it is cheaper. These are days when living has soared high. This is especially true of flesh foods. A cartoon before us represents a lean, bony bovine, composed of skin and bones, hoofs and horns, brought to the beef trust. It is killed and hung up, and then the next scene presents the beef trust inflating it. It is blown up by hot air. The next thing its blued carcass is being sprinkled with chemicals which will give it color. In the next scene it is being treated with embalming fluid by the beef trust. The next is a visit by the government inspectors, who pronounce it "O. K." And in the last scene a little girl comes to a butcher shop and buys of the beef trust some of the treated meat at forty cents a pound. The picture tells an exaggerated story, but there is truth in it nevertheless. Secondly, it is a simple fact that the animal kingdom is becoming more and more diseased. This is brought about to some extent by high breeding, lowering the resistance of the animals to disease germs to some extent; by the herding of a multitude together and easily spreading infection; and doubtless there are other causes. At any rate, we know that disease is spreading among the meat-producing animals. A clipping before us tells us that not long ago homeless men in Germany sought, with decayed smoked herring from a market garbage pile, to add to a frugal meal of bread and soup; fifty died, and many others were seriously ill. The decided difference between fresh vegetables and decayed vegetables would have been noted immediately, but in the gradual deterioration of animal foods this was not understood. The "Daily Drovers' Telegram" of December 16, last year, gave the number of animals which were inspected before slaughter as 53,000,000 (we give round numbers only); 7,800,000 cattle, 2,200,000 calves, 29,900,000 hogs, 13,000,000 sheep, 45,000 goats. Most of these were inspected after slaughter, and of these there were condemned for disease, or other unwholesome conditions, 117,000 entire carcasses, and 1,010,000 parts of carcasses, making a total of 1,127,000 carcasses and parts condemned. Tuberculosis was the cause of by far the greater part of these condemnations, nearly 47 per cent of condemnations of adult cattle, and over 96 per cent of condemnation of hogs, being due to this disease, and the total was 7½ per cent greater than during the preceding year. There was condemned in meat and meat products under official inspection over 21,000,000 pounds, and the provisions of the meat inspection law do not apply to animals slaughtered by farmers on the farm, or to retail butchers and dealers. The "Journal of the American Medical Association" says that charges have been made by competent and unbiased observers that the federal meat inspection laws are administered in the interest of the packers rather than for the protection of the public, and that meat that would not be accepted at the ports of entry of Europe is passed by the federal meat inspectors for home consumption. Statement of One Who Knows
Before us lies a letter from a large cattle dealer, a butcher in the Middle West, an old correspondent and friend, whose name we withhold, but one in whom we have perfect confidence. He says: "The general public no doubt rests secure in the belief that all meat passed by the inspectors is good and wholesome, when, as a matter of fact, the larger per cent of it is just passed, especially in the hogs. It is so rare for a hog to be free from tuberculosis that a government inspector told the writer a few years ago that if they condemned every hog that showed signs of tuberculosis, there would be no pork in the market. He further said, 'A hog has to be about rotten with tuberculosis before we condemn him entirely.' This information was given to the writer as he introduced himself as a butcher who had found some signs of disease in about twenty per cent of the cattle he had slaughtered. "Twenty-seven years ago the writer started to ride the range as a cowboy, when the country was open from Montana to Texas, and the cattle roamed over the prairies by the millions. Had I then run across an animal with the 'big jaw' such as we commonly see every day now in the stock-yards, it would undoubtedly have made a strong impression on me. It is therefore my opinion that the big jaw is comparatively a modern development of disease, and is on the increase. "There are men nowadays who make a specialty of buying young cattle with the big jaw who ship them to their feed lots, arrest the outward growth of the disease with medicine, fatten the stock, and return them to market. Fat animals, however, with the big jaw are slaughtered, and infected parts cut out, and the rest sold over the block the same as any meat. I have seen a whole car-load of this kind, with the big jaw so far developed as to give the appearance of a double-headed beast, going to the slaughter-house, being hustled and jostled together until the blood and pus was streaming down their necks and bodies. If the general public think that butchers and stockmen can see these sights and then sit down and eat beefsteak by the pound, they are mistaken. Some can, but a good many others do not. "About a year ago the president of the stock-yards and a wholesale butcher sat down to dinner at the writer's table. There was a yearling roast for dinner. The writer said, 'Gentlemen, I can recommend this.' The wholesale butcher, who was the picture of health, said, 'Excuse me, I never eat meat.' The other cattle dealer said, 'Just a little, a very little.' "The question may arise in some minds, Why are we allowed to buy meat that may have come from some diseased animal? Why is not every diseased animal destroyed?—Because the law of supply and demand as measured by dollars is far too powerful; and it may be added, in justice to the government inspectors, that they know it is impossible to be overexacting in their inspection without injuring materially a vast industry. The general public has to bear all the loss, as the packing industry exacts its toll regardless of quantity or price, and is little interested in the condemnation of diseased animals, for as in the case of hogs, they only pay for those passed after slaughter. And in the case of cattle, they discount the chance of loss by their own expert inspection when buying."11 This truthful letter from an experienced man speaks for itself. We present a better thing to our readers, vegetarianism. The vegetables, grains, fruits, nuts, which God has given us in great abundance and variety, meet all the needs of the human family. And we can see in the ox and the horse both the strength and intelligence which come from vegetarian eating. The Christian can find ever a higher motive. Animal food feeds the animal in man; vegetarian food fosters and aids truest spirituality. In the words of an old motto: 'Eat ye that which is good. Custom will make it most delightful.'