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,
     Bureau of Animal Industries, Order No. 125:—­

Section 1.  Proprietors of slaughterhouses, canning, salting, packing, or rendering establishments engaged in the slaughtering of cattle, sheep. or swine, or the packing of any of their products, the carcasses or products of which are to become subjects of interstate or foreign commerce, shall make application to the Secretary of Agriculture for inspection of said animals and their products....

Section 15.  Such rejected or condemned animals shall at once be removed by the owners from the pens containing animals which have been inspected and found to be free from disease and fit for human food, and shall be disposed of in accordance with the laws, ordinances, and regulations of the state and municipality in which said rejected