"Are you aware," I returned, "that half the bank
clearings of Chicago are traceable to the stockyards?"

He answered with a noncommittal grunt.

His was not the attitude of the Detroit man who
wants you to know that Detroit does something more
than make automobiles, or of the Grand Rapids man
who says: "We make lots of things here besides furni-
ture." He was really ashamed of the stockyards, as
a man may, perhaps, be ashamed of the fact that his
father made his money in some business with a smell
to it. And because he felt so deeply on the subject,
I had the half idea of not touching on the stockyards
in this chapter.

However the news that my companion and myself
were there to "do" Chicago was printed in the papers,
and presently the stockyards began to call us up. It
didn't even ask if we were coming. It just asked when.
And as I hesitated, it settled the whole matter then and
there by saying it would call for us in its motor car, at
once.

I may say at the outset that, to quote the phrase of
Mr. Freer of Detroit, the stockyards "has no esthetic
value." It is a place of mud, and railroad tracks, and
cattle cars, and cattle pens, and overhead runways, and
great ugly brick buildings, and men on ponies, and
raucous grunts, and squeals, and smells--place which
causes the heart to sink with a sickening heaviness.

Our first call was at the Welfare Building, where we
were shown some of the things which are being done to

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