Cochon!

Enlightenment of the people is one of the functions of the Department of Agriculture. This activity it carries on with results that are often striking.

Last week the Department explained that meat consumption in the U. S. increased from 143.9 Ibs. per capita in 1921 to 149.7 Ibs. in 1922, to 167 Ibs. in 1923--and that five-sixths of the extra meat consumed was pork, pork being now 54% of the meat diet of the world's greatest meat-eating nation.

These facts the Department clarified as follows:

"It is not easy to grasp the real magnitude of the meat producing industry in the United States, but a comparison may help to show how inconceivable it is. ... Suppose we have the 81,532,600 hogs slaughtered last year in a single drove. Allowing four feet as the length of a hog, in single file they would string out for 61,770 miles, or twice around the world at the equator with enough left over to reach from the North Pole to the southern end of South America. This same great drove would stand 21 abreast from New York to San Francisco. A prodigious meat appetite is needed to consume all this pork. . . ."