146
AGRICUbTUKE ON THE RHINE.
to the slaughter-house after that age the better for the
farmer. The luxurious calculations of our markets, in
which fat and quality of meat are distinguished by highly
remunerating prices, are unknown in Germany. And
here it will be well to say something about the butcher’s
shop and his trade, as a matter of essential interest to the
agriculturist.
Like the grain-farmer the stock-feeder finds his market
especially in the large towns. In the villages the pig,
slaughtered at home, and made up into hams, bacon, and
sausages of all flavours and sizes, meets him in every
house, and keeps down his price. What the pig may
have cost in milk, potatoes, and refuse, is often as little
calculated, as the price of the rye-bread that we have
shown is purchased at a great expense of labour. This
waste of labour in growing corn is, however, a still more
formidable diminisher of the butcher’s gains than the
pig ; for it prevents the husbandman from earning in any
other manner, and he has consequently little to spend in
meat. The slaughtering of horned cattle in a village is
therefore a rare occurrence, and seldom takes place until
the larders of the better kind are ascertained to be
sufficiently emptied to ensure a ready demand for
meat. We must not, however, suppose the German
peasant to be ill-fed : his dish of potatoes is usually
savoured with a piece of bacon, and the same condiment
is introduced into the pancake—a favourite dish, and,
when so flavoured, digestible for those who work much
abroad, as peasants, male and female, often do. Sunday
brings meat, soup, and the grand family-dish, the un-
salted boiled beef, or “ rindfleisch of which, as the
staple article of the slaughter-house, we must first speak.
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
147
The price of meat is reckoned from that of “ rind-
fleisch,” as the price of corn of all kinds is calculated from
that of rye, as the standard. Little as the butcher has
to do in the village, and easily as he can evade all pre-
scriptive price by substituting inferior quality where good
beasts are not well paid for, the black board, with its
lines for the price of enumerated articles sold by him,
still marks the butcher’s shop, and affords a kind of
assurance to the credulous peasant that he shall not be
worse treated than his neighbour. The excise of meat
is continued in the Prussian towns by the authorities,
because it affords a means of estimating the slaugh-
tering-tax, which is still levied in place of the pro-
perty-tax in many places. It is as popular, however,
amongst the citizens as the famed excise of bread used to
be amongst the housewives of London during the war,
when no other resource was supposed practicable against
the enormities of bakers and mealmen.
The fixing a price for articles of food deprives the poor
of the possibility of selecting a less costly joint wrhen cir-
cumstances are adverse. On the other hand, as the
poor have no means of bribing the butcher to begin a
new cut when they come, and to cause him to leave any
stump that may lie upon his block for the smart cookmaid
or housekeeper of a richer neighbour, it operates as an
excuse for oppression in many ways. Not only must the
butcher’s customers take the cut as they find it, if he
chooses to make them follow in their turn, but he claims
the exclusive command of a certain market, without inter-
ference, as a recompense for the supposed curtailment of
his profits by the excise. The licence to open a butcher's
shop is therefore not easily obtained. The price of meat