USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912, Volume II > Part 42
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It was about 1828 that a great boom in the building of steam engines came in this city and region. The reputation of Cincinnati for engines and machinery spread. Cist in 1851, commenting on the fact that between 1846 and 1850 about eighty per cent of the engines and sugar mills put up in Louisiana were manufactured in Cincinnati, prophesied that within a few years every sugar mill or engine made for Texas, Louisiana and Cuba would be built in Cincinnati,
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Cincinnati could deliver machinery in Louisiana ten per cent cheaper than could eastern makers.
Cincinnati for many years was known throughout the land as "Porkopolis," a name perhaps not much coveted by the citizens of the Queen City but justified possibly by the large pork interests centered here for several decades.
Richard Fosdick, in 1810, was the pioneer in this industry. Pessimists had told him that beef and pork could not be satisfactorily cured in this climate, but he disproved their prophesies, and opened up what became a vast industry.
John Shays was engaged in this business here in 1824. Cist writing in 1845 states: "I well recollect cart loads upon cart loads of spare ribs, such as could not be produced anywhere at the east or beyond the Atlantic, drawn to the water's edge and emptied into the Ohio, to get rid of them. Even yet a man may get a market basket filled with tender loins and spare ribs for a dime."
The industry of pork packing grew here very rapidly. In 1826 it had already become so extensive as to be declared larger than that of Baltimore, or perhaps than at any other point anywhere.
Forty thousand hogs were packed here from November, 1826, to February, 1827.
For many years the slaughter houses were chiefly in the valley of Deer Creek, and the waters were in consequence terribly polluted. The houses for packing were scattered about the city. At present the slaughtering and packing estab- lishments are chiefly up the Millcreek valley. Up-to-date processes have done away with much of the offensiveness formerly connected with this business.
In 1843, forty-three per cent of the pork packing of Ohio was done in Cin- cinnati. In 1850-51 this had increased to eighty per cent.
It was now the chief hog market of the world. This fact arose from the situation of Cincinnati in a vast grain raising and hog growing region.
In 1832, the number of hogs packed was 85,000; in 1833, there were 123,000; in 1834, the number was 162,000; 1835, 123,000; 1836, 103,000; 1837, 182,000 ; 1838, 190,000; 1839, 195,000; 1840, 160,000; 1841, 220,000; 1842, 250,000; 1843, 240,000; 1844, 173,000; 1845, 275,000.
In 1850, the number had increased to 324,539. For several years the average was 375,000. During one year, 498,160 were packed.
At that time in this city there were thirty-three large pork and beef packers and ham and beef curers, besides several smaller operators.
Cist, in Cincinnati in 1859, said: "The hogs raised for this market are gen- erally a cross of Irish Grazier, Byfield, Berkshire, Russia and China in such proportions as to unite the qualifications of size, tendency to fat, and beauty of shape to the hams.
"They are driven in at the age of from eleven to eighteen months old, in general, although a few reach greater ages. The hogs run in the woods until within five or six weeks of killing time, when they are turned into corn fields to fatten. If the acorns and beech nuts are abundant, they require less corn, the flesh and fat, although hardened by the corn, is not as firm as when they are turned into the corn fields in a less thriving condition, during years when mast, as it is called, is less abundant.
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"From the eighth to the tenth of November the pork season begins and the hogs are sold by the farmers direct to the packers, when the quantity they own justifies it. Some of these farmers drive, in one season, as high as one thou- sand head of hogs into their fields. From a hundred and fifty to three hundred are more common numbers, however. When less than a hundred are owned, they are bought up by drovers until a sufficient number is gathered for a drove. The hogs are driven into pens adjacent to the respective slaughter houses.
"The slaughter houses of Cincinnati are in the outskirts of the city, ten in number, and fifty by one hundred and thirty feet each in extent, the frames being boarded up with movable lattice work at the sides, which is kept open to admit air in the ordinary temperature but is shut up during the intense cold, which oc- casionally attends the packing season, so that hogs shall be frozen so stiff that they cannot be cut up to advantage. These establishments employ as high as one hundred hands, selected for the business, which requires a degree of strength and activity that always commands high wages.
"For the purpose of further illustrating the business thus described, let us take the operations of the active season of 1847-48. There is little doubt that an estimate of five hundred thousand hogs, by far the largest quantity ever yet put up in Cincinnati, is not beyond the actual fact. This increase partly results from the growing importance of the city as a great hog market, for reasons which will be made apparent in a later page, but more particularly to the vast enlargement in number and improved condition of hogs throughout the west, consequent on the season's unprecedented harvest of corn. What that increase was may be inferred from the official registers of the hogs of Ohio, returned to the auditor of state, as subject to taxation, being all those of and over six months in age. These were one million, seven hundred and fifty thousand, being an excess of twenty-five per cent, or three hundred and fifty thousand hogs, over those of the previous year. Those of Kentucky, whence come most of our largest hogs, as well as a considerable share of our supplies in the article, exhibited a proportion- ate increase, while the number in Indiana and Illinois greatly exceed this ratio of progress.
"Of five hundred thousand hogs cut up here during that season the product, in the manufactured article, will be: Barrels of pork, 180,000; pounds of bacon, 25,000,000 ; pounds of lard, 16,500,000.
"The buildings in which the pork is put up are of great extent and capacity, and in every part thoroughly arranged for the business. They generally extend from street to street, so as to enable one set of operations to be carried on with- out interfering with another. There are thirty-six of these establishments, be- side a number of minor importance.
"The stranger here during the packing, and especially the forwarding of the article, becomes bewildered in the attempt to keep up with the eye and the memory, the various and successive processes he has witnessed, in following the several stages of putting the hog into its final marketable shape, and in surveying the apparently interminable rows of drags which at that period occupy the main avenues to the river in continuous lines, going and returning, a mile or more in length, excluding every other use of those streets from daylight to dark. Nor is his wonder lessened when he surveys the immense quantity of hogsheads of
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bacon, barrels of pork, and kegs of lard, for which room can not be found on the pork house floors, extensive as they are, and which are therefore spread over the public landing and block up every vacant space on the sidewalks, the public streets, and even adjacent lots otherwise vacant.
"These are the products, thus far, of the pork houses' operations alone. That is to say, the articles referred to are put up in these establishments, from the hams, shoulders, leaf lard, and a small portion of the jowls-the residue of the carcasses, which are taken to the pork houses, being left to enter elsewhere into other departments of manufacture. The relative proportions, in weight of bacon and lard, rest upon contingencies. An unexpected demand and advance in the price of lard would greatly reduce the disparity, if not invert the proportion of these two articles. A change in the prospects of the value of pickled pork, during the progress of packing, would also reduce or increase the proportion of bar- reled pork to the bacon and lard.
"The lard made here is exported in packages to the Havana market, where, being extensively used, as in the United States, for cooking, it answers the purpose to which butter is applied in this country. It is shipped to the Atlantic markets also, for local use, as well as for export to England and France, either in the shape it leaves this market or in lard oil, large quantities of which are manufactured at the east."
Pork packing has continued to be one of the great industries of Cincinnati; indeed the value of the pack is considerably greater than ever. But the relative proportion has not been maintained. The opening up of the great West, the westward movement of the center of population, the vast increase in corn pro- duction in the West, have caused the tremendous growth of hog raising and pork packing in other places. Today, Chicago is the real Porkopolis, while Kansas City, South Omaha, St. Louis, St. Joseph, Indianapolis, Cudahy, Wis., and St. Paul are ahead of Cincinnati in this respect.
Cist in his "Cincinnati in 1841," states that in 1840 there were two hundred and twenty-seven establishments working in wood. These employed one thousand, five hundred and fifty-seven men. The value of their product for that year was $2,222,857.
There were one hundred and nine iron factories, employing one thousand, two hundred and fifty men, producing $1,728,549.
Of establishments working in other metals there were sixty-one with four hundred and sixty-one hands, producing $658,040.
There were two hundred and twelve shops working in leather, wholly or partly, with eight hundred and eighty. employes, producing $1,068,700.
There were twenty-four shops working in bristles, hair and similar substances, with one hundred and ninety-eight employes, producing $366,400.
Thirty-six establishments wrought in wool, cotton, hemp and linen, with three hundred and fifty-nine employes, producing $411,190.
Of establishments working in paints, drugs, chemicals, etc. there were eighteen, with one hundred and fourteen employes, with a product of $458,250.
Fifty-one establishments worked in earth, with three hundred employes, producing $238,300.
GRAND CENTRAL DEPOT, THIRD AND CENTRAL AVENUE, 1906
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Forty-seven establishments worked in paper, with five hundred and twelve employes, producing $669,600.
One hundred and seventy work-shops dealt in food, with fifteen hundred and sixty-seven hands, with an outcome of $5,269,627.
Fifty-nine shops represented the fine arts and science, with one hundred and thirty-nine employes, producing $179,100.
Three hundred and thirty-two establishments represented building enterprises, employing one thousand, five hundred and sixty-eight men, with a product of $953,267.
There were also two hundred and fifty-nine miscellaneous establishments, with one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-three employes, producing $3,- 208,790.
There was a total of manufacturing employes of ten thousand, six hundred and forty-seven. The whole product was $17,432,670. The investment was $14,541,842.
Mr. Cist declared "Manufacturing is decidedly our heaviest interest, in a pe- cuniary and political sense, and inferior to few others in a moral one."
There were more than fifty steam engines in use. There were also five in Newport and Covington.
The iron foundries were among the chief industries. There were eight bell and brass foundries.
There were four manufactories for mathematical and philosophical instru- ments.
Stoves and hollow-ware were among the successful enterprises.
In 1835 one hundred steam engines were built here, two hundred and forty cotton gins, twenty sugar mills, and twenty-two steamboats.
In that year the combined products of Cincinnati, Newport and Covington amounted to five hundred millions of dollars.
A writer in the Western Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal of January, 1836, said that Cincinnati had "but few if any overgrown manufacturing estab- lishments, but a large number of small ones, confined to individual enterprise and personal superintendence. These are distributed among all classes of the population, and produce a great variety of articles which minister to the wants and comforts and luxuries of the people in almost every part of the Mississippi valley. In truth, with the exception of Pittsburgh, there is no city in the west or south that, in its manufactures and manufacturing capacity, bears any ap- proach to Cincinnati and her associate towns."
The investment at that time in commercial houses, in foreign trade and com- mission business was 5,200,000.
The capital in retail dry goods, hardware, groceries and other stores was $12,877,000.
The investment in the lumber business was $133,000.
October 22, 1839, the Chamber of Commerce had been established. Its monthly meeting place was the rooms of the Young Men's Mercantile Library.
There were in 1841 seven insurance companies; the Cincinnati Insurance Company, the Firemen's Insurance Company, Washington Insurance Company, Vol. II-22
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the Fire Department's Insurance Company, Canal Insurance Company, the Man- ufacturers' Insurance Company, and the Equitable Insurance Company.
At that time the Miami canal, which had been completed to Dayton in 1828, had been continued to Piqua, and was being continued to Defiance. There it was to meet the Wabash canal. By this means there would be water connection with Lake Erie.
The White Water canal, then almost. completed and twenty-five miles in length, joined Cincinnati at Harrison with the White Water canal of Indiana.
There were several locks being built to open the Licking river to navigation.
The Little Miami railroad was also in operation and formed a means of com- munication with the interior.
There were five important turnpikes, the Cincinnati and Hainilton, the Har- rison, the Lebanon and Springfield, the Cincinnati and Wooster and the Coving- ton, Georgetown and Lexington turnpike.
One thousand, one hundred and twenty-five miles of canal railroad and turn- pikes centering in Cincinnati had been built or were being constructed.
In 1840 the bookmaking industry in this city had reached large proportions, almost a million volumes, valued at a quarter of a million dollars having been published in Cincinnati in that year.
Cist, in 1841, made a contrast between the appearance of Pittsburgh and the Cincinnati of that day dwelling upon the vast volumes of smoke hanging over the former city. "How different is all this from Cincinnati where the manufactures, with the exception of a few, are either set in motion by the water of the canal, or are in the literal sense manufactures,-works of the hand. These last embrace the principal share of the productive industry of our mechanics and are carried on in the upper stories, or in the rear shops of the warerooms, in which they are exposed for sale, in a variety and to an extent which can only be realized by a visit to the interior of those establishments." How unlike the Cincinnati of today, smoking like the forge of Vulcan !
At that same time, Mr. Cist argued for the use of coal as against wood, then the chief fuel. He declared coal easier to transport and convenient both to re- ceive and to store ; he said it "is much cheaper, coal being twelve and a half cents a bushel and wood $3.50 a cord; it is safer both in burning by day and keeping alive at night ; it requires less care ; it is more easily rekindled of mornings after having been covered at night." His fellow citizens were convinced, and we have a smoky Cincinnati.
Mr. Cist quotes from Horace Greeley, who had visited Cincinnati in 1850 and who said in the New York Tribune: "It requires no keenness of observation to perceive that Cincinnati is destined to become the focus and mart for the grandest circle of manufacturing thrift on this continent. Her delightful cli- mate, her unequaled and ever-increasing facilities for cheap and rapid com- mercial intercourse with all parts of the country and the world, her enterprising and energetic population, her own elastic and exulting growth, are all elements which predict and insure her electric progress to giant greatness. I doubt if there is another spot on the earth where food, fuel, cotton, timber, iron can all be concentrated so cheaply,-that is at so moderate a cost of human labor in pro- ducing and bringing them together,-as here. Such fatness of soil, such a
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wealth of mineral treasure-coal, iron, salt, and the finest clays for all purposes of use-and all cropping out from the steep, facile banks of placid though not sluggish navigable rivers. How many Californias could equal, in permanent worth, this valley of the Ohio?"
Between 1840 and 1850 the growth in manufacturing had been vast. In 1840 the number of employes engaged in manufacturing had been 8,040, and the product of their labors had been for the year $16,366,443. In 1850 the same class of workers numbered 28,527, producing $46,789,279.
There were 4,695 hands at work in the foundries. There were 2,450 in the pork, beef and ham curing factories. There were 1,310 in the tobacco estab- lishments. There were 1,158 in furniture factories. There were 1,760 in the manufacture of boots and shoes. There were 2,320 carpenters and builders.
The imports in pork in bulk for 1850-51 were 14,348,204 pounds. Those of corn were 443,746 bushels. The imports of flour were 434,359 barrels, and of whiskey 199,248 barrels. 102,391 heads of hogs were brought in.
The exports of pork and bacon in bulk were 4,742,405. The exports of whiskey were 188,873 barrels and of flour 347,471 barrels.
The industry of raising strawberries had increased rapidly, and in 1848 the product of this kind was 7,000 bushels.
The culture of grapes was also receiving much attention. Mr. Longworth, Mr. F. H. Yeatman and Mr. Buchanan were notable among those who were engaged in grape production. There were 300 vineyards within twenty miles of the city, covering 900 acres and producing 120,000 gallons of wine.
Cist commented at length upon the suburban development. He noted that improved roads, omnibuses, stages and railway cars were binding outlying vil- lages to the city.
In 1851 the chair factory of C. D. Johnston in this city was the largest of its kind in the world. The daily product of whiskey in the city and vicinity was 1,145 barrels. The annual product was valued at $2,857,900.
Nicholas Longworth had one hundred and fifteen acres in grapes. His wine cellar was forty-four feet by one hundred and thirty-five in size, and was four and a half stories high.
The wine industry employed five hundred persons and produced annually $150,000.
In 1850 the Cincinnati Type Foundry produced $70,000 annually and em- ployed one hundred men. All kinds of type were made here.
Messrs. Guilford and Jones also employed twenty-one hands in the manu- facture of type.
An important manufacture was oil cloth, the production of which had begun in 1834.
William Chambers, a noted publisher of Edinburg, visited Cincinnati in 1853, and commented in a book which he wrote about America: "Like all travelers from England who visit the factories of the United States, I was struck with the originality of many of the mechanical contrivances which came under my notice in Cincinnati. Under the enlightenment of universal education and the impulse of a great and growing demand, the American mind would seem to be ever on the rack of invention to discover fresh applications of inanimate power.
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Almost everywhere may be seen something new in the arts. As regards car- pentry machinery, one of the heads of an establishment said, with some con- fidence, that the Americans were fifty years in advance of Great Britain. Pos- sibly this was too bold an assertion; but it must be admitted that all kinds of American cutting tools are of a superior description, and it is very desirable that they should be examined in a candid spirit by English manufacturers. In mill machinery the Americans have effected some surprising improvements. At one of the machine manufactories in Cincinnati is shown an article to which I may draw the attention of English country gentlemen. It is a portable flour mill, oc- cupying a cube of only four feet; and yet, by means of various adaptations, capable of grinding with a power of three horses from fourteen to sixteen bush- els per hour, the flour produced being of so superior a quality that it has carried off various prizes at the agricultural shows. With a mill of this kind, attached to the ordinary thrashing machines, any farmer could grind his own wheat, and be able to send it to market as finely dressed as if it came from a professional miller. As many as five hundred of these portable and cheap mills are dis- posed of every year all over the southern and western states. Surely it would be worth while for English agricultural societies to procure specimens of these mills, as well as of farm implements generally, from America. A little of the money usually devoted to the over fattening of oxen would not, I think, be ill employed for such a purpose."
In 1859, Cist said that manufacturing and industrial products had more than doubled since 1851. In 1859 these values were $112,254,400. Raw material was represented by $58,000,000 of this sum, while $54,000,000 represented labor and interest on capital.
The pork and beef packing industry produced $6,300,000.
The castings from the foundries represented more than $6,000,000.
The value, of ready made clothing was $15,000,000, this industry being the largest business in Cincinnati.
The product in whiskey was valued at $5,318,730.
The wine business produced values of $500,000.
Boots and shoes represented $1,750,450.
Alcohol and spirits of wine were valued at $2,260,000.
The product in ale and beer was $1,500,000.
The year 1857 was one of wide spread financial panic, and there was a marked decrease in Cincinnati of both imports and exports, but there were very few total failures of business houses in Cincinnati. The imports of 1857-58 were $74,348,758. The exports were $47,497,095.
Cist in 1859 declared Cincinnati second only to Philadelphia in manufactures.
Cist catalogues at great length nearly two hundred of the industries of the city, with the number of hands employed and the value of their products. These range over almost the whole list of employments and manufactures for human needs and the gratification of the tastes.
It is noticeable that Cincinnati had a place in early photography. Cist noted in 1844 "Winter's Chemical Diorama .- Our townsman, R. Winter, has returned from the east with his chemical pictures, which he has been exhibiting for the last thirteen months in Boston, New York and Baltimore, with distinguished suc-
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cess. He is now among his early friends, who feel proud that the defiance to produce such pictures as Daguerre's, which was publicly made by Maffel and Lonati, who exhibited them here, was taken up and successfully accomplished by a Cincinnati artist. Nothing can be more perfect than the agency of light and shade, to give life and vraisemblance to these pictures. They are four in number. The Milan Cathedral at Midnight Mass, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, Belshazzar's Feast and the Destruction of Jerusalem. These are all fine, each having its appropriate excellences; but the rich, yet har- monious coloring in the two last has an incomparable effect, which must strike every observer. But the pen cannot adequately describe the triumphs of the pencil; the eye alone must be the judge."
In 1859 the railway lines connecting this city with other places were the Little Miami, the Marietta and Cincinnati, the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton, the Cincinnati and Indiana, and the Ohio and Mississippi.
There was connection with three thousand, two hundred and thirty-two miles of railroad. There were also in process of construction four thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine miles of connecting lines.
It was in 1846 that the Little Miami Railroad, to Springfield, was opened. This event, of course, marks one of the great epochs of the city's life, as it was its first railway. Thirty-five miles of this road had been graded in 1841. Con- tracts had been made for further grading. In 1843 thirty miles of the railroad were ready for use. There was then in possession of the company one eight- wheeled locomotive, two passenger cars and eight freight cars. Cincinnati manu- facturers had constructed all these. July 17, 1844, the railroad was opened to Xenia. This was a distance of sixty-eight miles. August 10, 1846, the first train ran from Cincinnati to Springfield. The cost of construction to this date had been two million, two hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars. In 1848 connec- tion with Sandusky was finished.
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