So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and
borne aloft.

At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek;
the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back.
The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for
once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of
the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the
room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another,
until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and
kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous
to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to
hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high
squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a
momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up
to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men
would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand
with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears
starting in their eyes.

Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were
going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors
made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and
one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long
line of hogs, with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at
last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of
boiling water.

It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was
porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet