Never trust anything with boneless in the name (June 10, 1906)
Never trust anything with boneless in the name (June 10, 1906)
Reminder that voluntary transcribers are always welcomed to post transcriptions in comments
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TRANSCRIPTION
A waitress is holding a steaming pile of food on a tray, while Everett sits at a dining table, a frown on his face. Waitress: We didn't have any spring chicken, Mr. True, so I brought some boneless canned- Everett punches the tray out of her hands, throwing the contents up onto the ceiling, knocking his chair and table askew in the process. Everett: Take it away!! TAKE IT AWAY!!!! Do you think I'm a scavenger? None of it for me! I read the papers, I do!!!
Was there something more wrong with canned chicken back in the day? Besides the obvious poor taste?
1906 is the same year The Jungle was published, a story that sparked interest in the quality of the meat industry in America. If your meat was more processed, the worse it would be. Boneless canned chicken is probably just a bunch of meat scraped off the parts nobody wanted to eat, maybe even a few pars from other animals, or humans if there was an accident that day.
Ok his reaction seems justified now
The conflict begins a week earlier when the health department labels 50,000 pounds of canned chicken at the North American company and the A. Booth & Co. as suspicious. The health commissioner does not take long to arrive at a conclusion, noting that when samples were thawed out the smell “was so nauseating it was necessary to drench them with formalin before they could be handled.”
http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/2017/10/october-2-1906-north-american-cold.html?m=1
Fascinating. The manager thought having a bulldog by his desk made him arrest-proof. He also had the cops trapped in an elevator on the way to his office. Truly, the Moriarty of Meatpacking Malfeasance! I'm going to say that if I paid for fresh "spring" (i.e., young, tender birds less than 8 weeks of age) chicken and got canned mystery meat instead, in Upton Sinclair's world, I would push the food away, too.
Formalin, by the way, is a chemical preservative similar in effect to formaldehyde. They're both used to preserve and embalm bodies for burial, scientific research, etc.
If I had to guess...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
Published Feb, 1906.