The “Union Stockyards” were never a pleasant place; but now they were not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping-place of an army of fifteen or twenty thousand human beasts. All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad-tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat-factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering-vats and soap-cauldrons, glue-factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell⁠—there were also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers hung out to dry, and dining-rooms littered with food and black with flies, and toilet-rooms that were open sewers.