The other day I visited the slaughter-house in our city of Tula. The slaughter-house is built according to a new, perfected method, as it is built in large cities, so that the
animals killed shall suffer as little as possible. This was
on a Friday, two days before Pentecost. There were there
a large number of cattle.
Before that, a long time before, when reading the beautiful
book, Ethics of Diet, I had made up my mind to
visit the slaughter-house, in order with my own eyes to
see the facts of the case, which are mentioned whenever
vegetarianism is mentioned. But I felt uneasy, as one
always feels uneasy when going to see sufferings which
are sure to be there, but which one cannot prevent, and
so I kept putting it off.
But lately I met on the road a butcher, who had been
home and now was going back to Tula. He is not yet an experienced butcher, and his duty consists in stabbing
with a dagger. I asked him whether he did not feel sorry
that he had to kill the animals. And as the answer
always is, so he answered, " Why be sorry ? This has to
be done." But when I told him that eating meat was not
necessary, he agreed with me, and then he also agreed
with me that it was a pity to kill. " What is to be done ?
I have to make a hving," he said. " At first I was afraid
to kill. My father never killed a cliicken in all his life."
The majority of Russians cannot kill ; they feel pity,
which they express by the word " afraid." He, too, had
been afraid, but had stopped. He explained to me that
the busiest day is Friday, when the work lasts until
evening.
Lately, too, I had a talk with a soldier, a butcher, and
he, too, was surprised in the same way at my assertion
that it is a pity to kill ; and, as always, he said that this
was the law ; but later he agreed with me, " Especially
when it is a tame, kind animal. The dear animal comes
up to you, believing you. It is truly a pity !"
One day we returned from Moscow on foot, and some drivers of drays, going from Serpukhov to a forest to get a merchant's timber, gave us a lift. It was Maundy
Thursday. I was riding in the first telega with a strong,
red-faced, coarse driver, who was apparently very drunk.
As we entered a village, we saw that from the last yard
they were pulling a fattened, shorn, pink-coloured pig, to
get it killed. The pig squealed in a desperate voice,
which resembled that of a man. Just as we passed by,
they began to kill the pig. One of the men drew the
knife down its throat. It squealed louder and more penetratingly
than before, tore itself loose, and ran away,
shedding its blood. I am near-sighted and so did not see
all the details ; all I saw was the pink-coloured flesh of
the pig, which resembled that of a man, and I heard the
desperate squeal ; but the driver saw all the details, and
he looked in that direction without taking his eyes off.
The pig was caught and thrown down, and they began to
finish the lolling. When its squeal died down, the driver
drew a deep sigh.
" Is it possible men will not have to answer for this ?" he muttered.
So strong is people's disgust at any kind of a murder;
but by example, by encouraging men's greed, by the assertion
that this is permitted by God, and chiefly by habit,
people have been brought to a complete loss of this
natural feeling.
On Friday I went to Tula, and, upon meeting an acquaintance of mine, a meek, kindly man, I invited him
to go with me.
" Yes, I have heard that it is well arranged, and I
should like to see it, but if they slaughter there, I sha'n't
go in."
" Why not ? It is precisely what I want to see. If
meat is to be eaten, cattle have to be killed."
" No, no, I cannot."
What is remarkable in this case is, that this man is a
hunter and himself kills birds and animals.
We arrived. Even before entering we could smell the
oppressive, detestable, rotten odour of joiner's glue or of
glue paint. The farther we went, the stronger was this
odour. It is a very large, red brick building, with vaults
and high chimneys. We entered through the gate. On
the right was a large fenced yard, about a quarter of a
desyatina in size, —this is the cattle-yard, to which the
cattle for sale are driven two days in the week,— and at
the edge of this space is the janitor's little house ; on the
left were what they call the chambers, that is, rooms
with round gates, concave asphalt floors, and appliances
for hanging up and handhng the carcasses. By the wall
of the little house, and to the right of it, sat six butchers
in aprons, which were covered with blood, with bloodbespattered
sleeves rolled up over muscular arms. They
liad finished their work about half an hour ago, so that on
that day we could see only the empty chambers. In spite
of the gates being opened on two sides, there was in each
chamber an oppressive odour of warm blood ; the floor
was cinnamon-coloured and shining, and in the depressions
of the floor stood coagulated black gore.
One of the butchers told us how they slaughtered, and
showed us the place where this is done. I did not quite
understand him, and formed a false, but very terrible conception
of how they slaughtered, and I thought, as is
often the case, that the reality would produce a lesser effect
upon me than what I had imagined. But I was
mistaken in this.
The next time I came to the slaughter-house in time
It was on Friday before Pentecost. It was a hot June
day. The odour of glue and of blood was even more oppressive
and more noticeable in the morning, than during
my first visit. The work was at white heat. The dusty square
was all full of cattle, and the cattle were driven
into all the stalls near the chambers.
In the street in front of the building stood carts with
steers, heifers, and cows tied to the cart stakes and shafts.
Butchers' carts, drawn by good horses, loaded with live
calves with dangling heads, drove up and unloaded ; and
similar carts with upturned and shaking legs of the carcasses
of steers, with their heads, bright red lungs and
dark red livers drove away from the slaughter-house.
Near the fence stood the mounts of the cattle-dealers.
The cattle-dealers themselves, in their long coats, with
whips and knouts in their hands, walked up and down in
the yard, either marking one man's cattle with tar paint,
or haggling, or attending to the transfer of bulls and
steers from the square to the stalls, from which the cattle
entered the chambers. These men were obviously all
absorbed in money operations and calculations, and the
thought that it is good or bad to kill these animals was
as far from them as the thought as to what was the chemical
composition of the blood with which the floor of the
chambers was covered.
No butchers could be seen in the yards : they were all
working in the chambers. During this day about one
hundred steers were killed. I entered a chamber and
stopped at the door. I stopped, both because the chamber
was crowded with the carcasses which were being
shifted, and because the blood ran underfoot and dripped
from above, and all the butchers who were there were
smeared in it, and, upon entering inside, I should certainly
have been smeared with blood. They were taking
down one carcass, which was suspended ; another was being
moved to the door ; a third, a dead ox, was lying with
his white legs turned up, and a butcher with his strong
fist was ripping the stretched-out hide.
Through the door opposite to the one where I was
standing they were at that time taking in a large, red,
fattened ox. Two men were pulling him. And they
had barely brought him in, when I saw a butcher raise
a dagger ov'er his head and strike him. The ox dropped
down on his belly, as though he had been knocked off all
his four legs at once, immediately rolled over on one side,
and began to kick with his legs and with his whole back.
One of the butchers immediately threw himself on the
fore part of the ox, from the end opposite his kicking
legs, took hold of his horns, bent his head to the ground,
and from beneath the head there spirted the dark red
blood, under the current of which a boy besmeared in
blood placed a tin basin. All the time while they were
doing this, the ox kept jerking his head, as though trying
to get up, and kicked with all his four legs in the air.
The basin filled rapidly, but the ox was still alive and,
painfully contracting and expanding his belly, kicked
with his fore legs and hind legs, so that the butchers had
to get out of his way. When one basin was filled, the
boy carried it on his head to the albumen plant, while
another boy set down another basin, which also began to
fill up. But the ox kept contracting and expanding his
belly and jerked with his hind legs. When the blood
stopped flowing, the butcher raised the head of the ox
and began to flay him. The ox continued kicking. The
head was bared and began to look red with white veins,
and assumed the position given to it by the butchers ; on
both sides of it hung the hide. The ox continued to kick.
Then another butcher caught the ox by a leg, which he
broke and cut off. Convulsions ran up and down the
belly and the other legs. The other legs, too, were cut
off, and they were thrown where all the legs belonging to
one owner were thrown. Then the carcass was pulled up
to a block and tackle and was stretched out, and there
all motion stopped.
Thus I stood at the door and looked at a second, a
third, a fourth ox. With all of them the same happened:
the same flayed head with pinched tongue and the same
kicking back. The only difference was that the butcher
did not always strike in the right place to make the ox
fall. It happened that the butcher made a mistake, and
the ox jumped up, bellowed, and, shedding blood, tried to
get away. But then he was pulled under a beam and
struck a second time, after which he fell.
I later walked up from the side of the door, through
which they brought in the oxen. Here I saw the same,
only at closer range, and, therefore, more clearly. I saw
here, above all else, what I had not seen through the
other door,—how they compelled the oxen to walk
through this door. Every time when they took an ox
out of the stall and pulled him by a rope, which was
attached to his horns, the ox, scenting the blood, became
stubborn and bellowed, and sometimes jerked back. It
was impossible for two men to pull him in by force, and
so a butcher every time went behind and took the ox by
the tail, which he twisted until the gristle cracked and
the tail broke, and the ox moved on.
The oxen of one owner were all finished, and they
brought up the cattle of another. The first from this lot
of the other owner was a bull. He was a fine-looking,
thoroughbred black bull, with white spots on his body
and white legs,—a young, muscular, energetic animal.
They began to pull him ; he dropped his head and absolutely
refused to move. But the butcher who was walking
behind took hold of his tail, as a machinist puts his
hand on the throttle, and twisted it ; the cartilage cracked,
and the bull rushed ahead, knocking the men who were
pulling at the rope off their feet, and again stood stubbornly
still, looking askance with his white, bloodshot
eyes. But again the tail cracked, and the bull rushed
forward and was where he was wanted. The butcher
walked up, took his aim, and struck him. But the stroke
did not fall in the right place. The bull jumped up,
tossed his head, bellowed, and, all covered with blood, tore
himself loose and rushed back. All the people at the
doors started back ; but the accustomed butchers, with
a daring which was the result of the , briskly took
hold of the rope and again of the tail, and again the bull
found himself in the chamber, where his head was pulled
under the beam, from which he no longer tore himself
away. The butcher briskly looked for the spot where
the hair scatters in the form of a star, and, having found
it, in spite of the blood, struck him, and the beautiful
animal, which was full of life, came down with a crash
and kicked with its head and legs, while they let off the
blood and flayed the head.
" Accursed devil, he did not even fall the right way,"
growled the butcher as he cut the hide from his head.
Five minutes later the red, instead of black, head, without
the hide, with glassy, fixed eyes, which but five minutes
before had glistened with such a beautiful colour, was suspended
on the beam.
Then I entered the division where they butcher the
smaller animals. It is a very large and long chamber,
with an asphalt floor and with tables with backs, on
which they butcher sheep and calves. Here the work
was all finished ; in the long chamber, which was saturated
with the odour of blood, there were only two
butchers. One was blowing into the leg of a dead
wether and patting the blown-up belly ; the other, a
young lad, with a blood-bespattered apron, was smoking
a bent cigarette. There was no one else in the gloomy,
long chamber, which was saturated with the oppressive
odour. Immediately after me there came in one who
looked like an ex-soldier, who brought a black yearling
lamb, with spots on his neck, which he put down on one
of the tables, as though on a bed. The soldier, apparently an acquaintance of theirs, greeted them and asked them
when their master gave them days off. The young lad
with the cigarette walked up with a knife, which he
sharpened at the edge of the table, and answered that
they had their holidays free. The Hve plump lamb was
lying quietly as though dead, only briskly wagging his
short tail and breathing more frequently than usual.
The soldier lightly, without effort, held down his head,
which was rising up ; the young lad, continuing the conversation,
took the lamb's head with his left hand and
quickly drew the knife down his throat. The lamb
shivered, and the little tail became arched and stopped
wagging. While waiting for the blood to run off, the
young lad puffed at the cigarette, which had nearly gone
out. The blood began to flow, and the lamb began to be
convulsed. The conversation was continued without the
least interruption.
And those hens and chickens, which every day in a
thousand kitchens, with heads cut off, shedding blood,
jump about comically and terribly, flapping their wings ?
And behold, a tender, refined lady wiU devour the
corpses of these animals with the full conviction of her
righteousness, asserting two propositions, which mutually
exclude one another:
The first, that she is so delicate—and of this she is
assured by her doctor—that she is unable to live on
vegetable food alone, but that her weak organism demands
animal food ; and the second, that she is so sensitive
that she not only cannot cause any sufferings to any
animal, but cannot even bear the sight of them.
And yet, this poor lady is weak for the very reason, and
for no other, that she has been taught to subsist on food
which is improper for man ; and she cannot help but
cause the animals suffering, because she devours them.We cannot pretend that we do not know this. We are
not ostriches, and we cannot believe that, if we do not look,
there will not be what we do not wish to see. This is
the more impossible, when we do not wish to see what
we wish to eat. And, above all else, if it were only indispensable
! But let us assume that it is not indispensable,
but necessary for some purpose. It is not.^ It is good
only for bringing out animal sensations, breeding lust,
fornication, drunkenness. This is constantly confirmed
by the fact that good, uncorrupted young men, especially
women and girls, feel, without knowing how one thing
follows from the other, that virtue is not compatible with
beefsteak, and as soon as they wish to be good, they give
up animal food.
What, then, do I wish to say ? Is it this, that men, to
be moral, must stop eating meat ? Not at all.
What I wanted to say is, that for a good life a certain
order of good acts is indispensable ; that if the striving
after the good hfe is serious in a man, it wiU inevitably
assume one certain order, and that in this order the first
virtue for a man to work on is abstinence, self-possession.
And in striving after abstinence, a man will inevitablyfollow one certain order, and in this order the first subject
will be abstinence in food, fasting. But in fasting, if he
seriously and sincerely seeks a good life, the first from
which a man will abstain will always be the use of
animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation
of the passions, which this food produces, its use is
directly immoral, since it demands an act which is contrary
to our moral sense,— murder,—and is provoked
only by the desire and craving for good eating.
LEO TOLSTOY
