orms the
southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the square mile of
packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer
a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth
stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured
into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the
cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were
feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its depths.
Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and
make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth
have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk
about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to
stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the
creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on fire
and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and put
it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to gather
this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took the
cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered it
themselves. The banks of "Bubbly Creek" are plastered thick with hairs,
and this also the packers gather and clean.

And there were things even stranger than this, according to the gossip
of the men. The packers had secret mains, through which they stole
billions of gallons of the city's water. The newspapers had been full of
this scandal--once there had even been an investigation, and an actual
uncovering of the pipes; but nobody had been punished, and the thing
went right on. And then there was the condemned meat industry, with its
endless horrors. The people of Chicago saw the government inspectors
in Packingtown, and they all took that to mean that they were protected
from diseased meat; they did not understand that these hundred and
sixty-three inspectors had been appointed at the request of the packers,
and that they were paid by the United States government to certify
that all the diseased meat was kept in the state. They had no authority
beyond that; for the inspection of meat to be sold in the city and state
the whole force in Packingtown consisted of three henchmen of the local
political machine!*

(*Rules and Regulations for the Inspection of Livestock and
Their Products. United States Department of Agriculture,