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.