An Ohio man decided that pigs would rather live in cleanliness and made plans to raise pigs in his overly posh parlor. This sounds like a project for whiling away the pandemic, especially since the price for dogs has skyrocketed in my area.
Parlor-Bred Pigs
R.K. Rutter of Lexington, Ohio, has leaped into fame at one jump by announcing that hereafter he is going to keep the pig in the parlor. Mr. Rutter is a man with a theory. His idea as he has evolved it is that pigs are naturally lovers of cleanliness, all reports to the contrary notwithstanding.
He will attempt to prove his theory by taking six tiny little porkers and bringing them to bright adult age in his parlor. They will never know the contamination of the muddy slough and the pen. They will be raised as real ladies and gentlemen and then turned loose to choose their future career in the parlor or in the muddy bog.
Mr. Rutter is willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the swine will give the merry “oof oof” to the muddy bog and waddle back to the parlor.
Mr. Rutter says that pigs are set down by the unthinking as being lovers of dirt because usually all their early environment is dirt. The ordinary or garden variety of pig, says Mr. Rutter, has never had an opportunity to show that naturally he is neat and tidy. Pig raisers take it for granted that hogs love mud and dirt and they do not permit them to demonstrate to the contrary.
The six pigs that Mr. Rutter is about to adopt, to demonstrate his parlor raising theory, are to be plucked from the pen before they even get their young eyes open to see the vile dirt lying all about them.
They are to be hurriedly rushed to the parlor, and when for the first time they look about they will see nothing but Turkish rugs and silk sofa cushions and beautiful pictures.
Mr. Rutter is going to surround his merry little guests with only the most attractive environment. Coming to maturity as they will, surrounded always with the gentle environment of a cultures home, Mr. Rutter does not believe that his piggies will, after they are grown up, ever depart from it. He is going to give them a nice hot bath with perfumed toilet soap and Florida water every day. They will have their little bristles brushed with military hair brushes, and their teeth will be diligently scrubbed with an ivory-handled toothbrush.
Each little pig will have his hooves manicured three times a week, and wear pink ribbons on its tail. Any little pig that doesn’t keep its hair parts and its snout clean will be in disgrace and can’t eat at the table for a week.
For recreation, Mr. Rutter will lead the piggies for a walk every afternoon on the graveled path in front of the house. After they are old enough to sit up and notice things intelligently, he is going to take them out in his automobile. Every night Mr. Rutter will gather the little piggies around him and read to them from Bacon, and Barrow, and Swinerton, and other standard and appropriate authors and sing to them such dear old songs as “Higglety Pigglety” and “I Certainly Do Love Ham,” and give little talks from such subjects as “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword” and “Cheer Up, There Are Many Hogs with Only Two Legs.”
For diet the Rutter swine will not be fed in a vulgar trough. They will eat sterilized food from chemically cleaned plates and wear nice little sterilized bibs so as not to spill food on their clean little feet so that visitors might call them dirty little pigs.
And after they are raised to full swine maturity, Mr. Rutter knows that his parlor grown pigs will not go back to the low wallow of their ancestors. They will never loaf around the trough at night ready to swill up anything in sight. They will not be muck rakers or rooters or anything like that. They will look down towards the pens of their relatives and grunt their disapproval and hasten back to the parlor and make a noise like a cake of soap.
Source: The Farmville herald. (Farmville, Va.), 27 March 1908.
