History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 89

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666

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four thousand five hundred dollars; two small woollen and cotton factories, four thousand one hundred dollars ; two boot and shoe-tree makers, one thousand one hundred dollars; two plane-stock, hit, and screw-makers, eleven thousand one hundred and forty-five dollars; two comb factories, one thousand six hundred dollars; one looking- glass and picture-frame maker, two thousand dollars; one sieve-maker, three thousand four hundred dollars; one chemical laboratory, two thousand four hundred dollars; six book binderies, eleven thousand nine hundred and seventy-one dollars; seven silversmiths, eight thousand six hundred dollars; ten bakeries, twenty-nine thousand four hundred dollars; one paper mill, twenty-two thou- sand dollars; twenty two smiths, forty-eight thousand dol- lars; five hundred carpenters, one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars; thirty painters, thirteen thousand nine hundred dollars ; thirty-five tailors and clothiers, one hun- dred and seventy-two thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars; one cotton spinning establishment and brass foundry, twenty-two thousand dollars; one mattress fac- tory, one thousand dollars; one white lead factory, three thousand six hundred and seventy-two dollars ; four stone- cutting works, eleven thousand one hundred dollars; one hundred and ten bricklayers, stone masons, and plas- terers, thirty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty dollars ; and one distillery.

In all the manufactories of the city about two thousand one hundred and ninety hands were employed, and the total product for the year had a reported value of one million six hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars. There was also an estimated product of one hundred thousand dollars' value from the sugar refinery, the three copper-plate engravers, one miniature and three por- trait painters, one cotton and wool carder, two steam saw-mills, four carpet and stocking weavers, one powder mill, two crockery and stoneware factories, one wood carver, forty milliners, two brush-makers, one "wheat-fan" factory, one pump and bell maker, one sad- dle-tree maker, four other chemical laboratories, one sash maker, two blacksmiths otherwise unreported, two piano-makers, one organ builder, five shoemakers, two tailors, one distiller, two upholsterers, one cutter, nine confectioners, two gunsmiths, three lime burners, and two bakers. The amount of sixty-eight thousand dollars could also rightfully be added for the Pugh & Teeter glass- works at Moscow, Dewalt's paper mills at Mill Grove, and three cotton and spinning establishments-all out of the city, but owned and managed in Cincinnati. The total product of the manufactures of the city for the year was figured up to one million eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

ENGINE BUILDING.

About 1828 a great stimulus to steam-engine building was given in Cincinnati and to all the manufacturing centres in the Ohio valley. During this industrial "boom" were started the Hamilton foundry and steam- engine factory, Goodloe & Borden's, and West & Stone's steam-engine works. Fox's well-known steam-mill was also started about this time.

The Queen City early acquired a great reputation for

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its engines and its machinery generally. Between 1846 and 1850, of three hundred and fifty-five engines and sugar-mills erected in Louisiana, two hundred and eighty- one, or about eighty per cent. of the whole, were of Cin- cinnati manufacture. Mr. Cist expressed the opinion, in his Cincinnati in 1851, that probably within two or three years not a sugar-mill or engine would be constructed for the States of Texas or Louisianna, or for Cuba, except in Cincinnati. These machines, manufactured here, could be delivered in New Orleans ten per cent. cheaper than the machinery of eastern manufacturers.

It is pretty well known that one of the earliest steam fire-engines-indeed, the first of such machines that was at the same time light enough to be moved readily (al- though it weighed twelve tons, and required four horses to drag it to a fire) and prompt in its performance, was made in Cincinnati, 1852-3, by Mr. A. B. Latta, with the result of revolutionizing the entire fire service, as will be seen more fully in our chapter on that depart- ment. This pioneer engine is thus described in The Great Industries of the United States, page 755-6:

The first of these engines built by Cincinnati was peculiar in the method of its construction. It had a square fire-box, like that of a lo- comotive boiler, with a furnace open at the top, upon which was placed the chimney. The upper part of the furnace was occupied by a contin- uous coil of tubes opening into the steam-chamber above, while the lower end was carried through the fire-box, and connected with a force-pump, by which the water was to be forced continually through the tubes throughout the entire coil. When the fire was commenced the tubes were empty, but when they became sufficiently heated, the force-pump was worked by hand and water was forced into them, gen- erating steam, which was almost instantly produced from the contact of the water with the hot pipes. Until sufficient steam was generated to work the engine regularly, the force-pump was continuously operated by hand, and a supply of water kept up. By this means the time oc- cupied in generating steam was only five or ten minutes; but the objec- tions to this heating the pipes empty and then introducing water into them are too well known to be insisted upon.

The engines built upon this pattern were complicated and heavy, but were efficacious, and led to their introduction in other cities, and also to a quite general establishment in cities of a paid fire department in place of the voluntary one, which had theretofore prevailed. The lightest steam fire-engine constructed upon this method weighed about ten thousand pounds. It was carried to New York upon exhibition, and upon a trial there threw, in 1858, about three hundred and seventy-five gallons a minute, playing about two hundred and thirty-seven feet through a nozzle measuring an inch and a quarter, and getting its supply through a hydrant. The same engine is said to have played in Cincin- nati two hundred and ten feet through a thousand feet of hose, getting its supply from a cistern.

THE PORK BUSINESS.

As this is the industry for which Cincinnati has been chiefly famous, an entire and somewhat elaborate section will be given to it here. We have already noted the ad- vent of Richard Fosdick, the first local packer, in 1810. He was warned beforehand that beef and pork could not be so cured as to keep sound in this climate; but he courageously made the experiment, and succeeded. There were "millions in it" for himself and his long line of successors,

Another account says that Mr. John Shays was the progenitor of the business here, and that it was begun about the year 1824. He was still packing in 1827. Mr. Cist says :

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 in the Ohio, to get rid of them. Even yet [this was written in 1845] a man may get a market-basket filled with tenderloins and spare-ribs for a dime.

By 1826 the business of pork-packing was here equal to or greater than that of Baltimore, and it was thought might not at that time be excelled anywhere in the world. Within the three months between the middle of Novem- ber, 1826, and the middle of February, 1827, forty thou- sand hogs were packed in the city, of which three-fourths were slaughtered here. It was remarked that less beef was packed and exported than should be.

Mrs. Trollope came to Cincinnati two or three years after this. The porcine aspects of the city of course did not escape her notice ; and in her book, published after her return to England, she made the following amusing entry :

It seems hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple com- modity is not pretty; but I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs. The immense quantity of business done in this line would hardly be believed by those who had not witnessed it. I never saw a newspaper without remarking such advertisements as the following :

" Wanted, immediately, four thousand fat hogs."

"For sale, two thousand barrels of prime pork."

But the annoyance came nearer than this. If I determined upon a walk up Main street, the chances were five hundred to one against my reaching the shady side without brushing by a snout fresh dripping from the kennel. When we had screwed our courage to the enterprise of mounting a certain noble-looking sugar-loaf hill that promised pure air and a fine view, we found the brook we had to cross at its foot red with the stream from a pig slaughter-house; while our noses, instead of meeting " the thyme that loves the green hill's breast," were greeted by odors that I will not describe, and which I heartily hope my readers cannot imagine; our feet, that on leaving the city had expected to press the flowery sod, literally got entangled in pigs' tails and jaw bones ; and thus the prettiest walk in the neighborhood was interdicted forever.

At that time, and for many years afterwards, the slaughter-houses were mainly in the Deer creek valley, in the eastern part of the city; and its waters were in consequence very greatly polluted, the nearness of the mouth of that stream to the water-works thus relating the pork business closely to the water supply of Cincinnati. The packing-houses were more scattered about the city; and for some years one of them on Court street, near the market, was occupied by the courts and county of- fices, after the burning of the old court house and pend- ing the much-delayed building of the new. Nowadays the establishments for both slaughtering and packing are nearly all up the valley of Mill creek; and improved ma- chinery and processes enable them to conduct their ope- rations with much less offense to the public than was the case of old.

The older slaughter-houses will be further noticed be- low. It will be entertaining here to record the observa tions of the poet Charles Fenno Hoffman, in his account of a Winter in the West. He was here in 1834. It is seldom that such elegant, even dainty English is ex- pended upon so prosaic a subject. Mr. Hoffman says :

The most remarkable, however, of all the establishments of Cincin- nati are those immense slaughter-houses where the business of butcher- ing and packing pork is carried on. The number of hogs annually slaughtered is said to exceed one hundred and twenty thousand; and the capital employed in the business is estimated at two millions of dol- lars. Some of the establishments cover several acres of ground; and one of the packing-houses, built of brick and three stories high, is more than a hundred feet long and proportionably wide. The minute divis-

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ion of labor and the fearful celerity of execution in these swinish work- shops would equally delight a pasha and a political economist; for it is the mode in which the business is conducted, rather than its extent, which gives dignity to hog killing in Cincinnati and imparts a tragic interest to the last moments of the doomed porkers that might inspire the savage genius of a Maturin or a Monk Lewis. Imagine a long, narrow edifice, divided into various compartments, each communicating with the other and each furnished with some peculiar and appropriate engine of destruction. In one you see a gory block and gleaming axe; a seething caldron nearly fills another. The walls of a third bristle with hooks newly sharpened for impalement; while a fourth is shrouded in darkness, that leaves you to conjure up images still more dire. There are forty ministers of fate distributed throughout these gloomy abodes, each with his particular office assigned him. And here, when the fearful carnival comes on, and the deep forests of Ohio have con- tributed their thousands of unoffending victims, the gauntlet of death is run by those selected for immolation. The scene commences in the shadowy cell whose gloom we have not yet been allowed to penetrate. Fifty unhappy porkers are here incarcerated at once together, with bodies wedged so closely that they are incapacitated from all move- ment. And now the grim executioner-like him that battled with the monster that wooed Andromeda-leaps with his iron mace upon their backs and rains his ruthless blows around him. The unresisting vie- tims fall on every side; but scarcely does one touch the ground before he is seized by a greedy hook protruded through an orifice below. His throat is severed instantly in the adjacent cell, and the quivering body is hurried onward, as if the hands of the Furies tossed it through the frightful suite of chambers. The mallet, the knife, the axe, the boiling cauldron, the remorseless scraping-iron, have each done their work; and the fated porker, that was one minute before grunting in the full enjoyment of bristling hoghood, now cadaverous and "chopfallen," hangs a stark and naked effigy among his immolated brethren.

In 1843, forty-three per cent. of all the pork packing which was done in Ohio was accomplished in Cin- cinnati, and the percentage rapidly increased for a few years until it amounted in 1850-I to eighty per cent., or four-fifths of the entire pork business of the State. It was now by far the principal hog market in the United States, and, without excepting even Cork and Belfast, Ireland, then also great centres of this industry, the greatest in the world. Its favorable situation as the chief place of business for an extensive grain growing and hog raising region was proving the key to untold wealth.

The following is a comparative statement of the number of hogs packed here from 1832 to 1845, when the business first became important enough to demand statistics. (It will be understood that the years named respectively designate the first part of the pork year for which returns were made, as 1832 stands for the season of 1832-3, etc.) 1832, 85,000; 1833, 123,000; 1834, 162,000; 1835, 123,- 000; 1836, 103,000; 1837, 182,000; 1838, 190,000 ; 1839, 95,000; 1849, 160,000 ; 1841, 220,000; 1842, 250,- 000; 1843, 240,000; 1844, 173,000; 1845, 275,000. In 1850-I the number was 324,539. During four years about this time the yearly average was 375,000-one year as many as 498, 160 had been packed. There were in the city thirty-three large pork and beef packers and ham and beef curers, besides a number of small packers. A paragraph from Sir Charles Lyell's Book of Travels in North America relates in part to these gentlemen. Sir Charles was here in 1845.

The pork aristocracy of Cincinnati does not mean those innumerable pigs which walk about the streets, as if they owned the town, but a class of rich merchants who have made their fortunes by killing annu- ally, salting, and exporting, about two hundred thousand swine. There arc, besides these, other wealthy proprietors, who have speculated suc- cessfully in land, which often rises rapidly in value as the population in-

creases. The general civilization and refinement of the citizens is far greater than might have been looked for in a State founded so recently, owing to the great number of families which have come directly from the highly educated part of New England, and have settled here.

As to the free hogs before mentioned, which roam about the hand- some streets, they belong to no one in particular, and any citizen is at liberty to take them up, fatten, and kill them. When they increase too fast the town council interferes and sells off some of their number. It is a favorite amusement of the boys to ride upon the pigs, and we were shown one sagacious old hog, who was in the habit of lying down as soon as a boy came in sight.

Mr. Cist's volume on Cincinnati in 1859 has some valuable remarks on the pork industry, which we tran- scribe at some length :

The hogs raised for this market are generally 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 the 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.

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 sea- son, as high as one thousand head of hogs into their fields. From a hundred and fifty to three hundred are more common numbers, how- ever. 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, are ten in number, and fifty by one hundred and thirty feet each in ex- tent, 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 occasionally attends the pack- ing season, so that hogs shall not be frozen so stiff that they cannot be cut up to advantage. These establishments employ each 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 farther 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 that 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 onc million seven hundred and fifty thousand, being an excess of twenty-five per cent., or three hun- dred 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 propor- tionate increase, while the number in Indiana and Illinois greatly cx- cecd 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 strect to strect, so as to enable one set of operations to be carried on without interfering with another. There arc thirty-six of these establishments, beside a number of minor im- portance.

The stranger here during the packing, and especially the forwarding season of the article, becomes bewildered in the attempt to keep up with the eye and the memory, the various and successive processes he

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO. .

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 hogs- heads of 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 va- cant 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 thus 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 pro- portion 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 barreled pork to the bacon and lard.

The lard made here is exported in packages to the Havana market, where, besides 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.

The years 1874 to 1877, inclusive, will long be remem- bered as constituting a period of great depression in the pork trade, caused by the high price of hogs and the low price of the manufactured products. The last year, that of 1876-7, was especially disastrous, on account of the remorseless speculation, which held firmly the shrinkage in prices and caused immense losses, and also from the general depression and shrinkage of the year. Mess pork, for example, which sold at $45.00 per barrel in war- time, was sold at times during the late panic for $12.75@ 13.00, and in the year cited actually ran down to $7.50@ 7.75. There was a measurable recovery of the market in 1877-8, and by this time the great interest of Cincinnati is again in a fair way of return to its traditional prosperity. Colonel Sidney D. Maxwell, however, secretary of the Pork-packers' association of Cincinnati, in his report to the annual meeting of that body, October 4, 1880, said:

The past year, to the pork-packers of Cincinnati, while free from dis- aster, has not fulfilled the expectations which were early entertained. Stimulated by the marked improvements which were manifest in nearly all departments of business, the prospects of a year of general pros- perity in the country and large wants in the Old World, hogs were pur- chased throughout the West at prices largely in excess of the preceding year. In Cincinnati the average price paid for the winter hogs was $4.36 per one hundred pounds gross, compared with $2.83.8 in 1878-79, an increase of fifty-three per cent. The season had scarcely reached a conclusion before the consequences of thus largely adding to the aggre- gate cost of the product was manifest. There were foreign exports without a parallel, but there was also to be slaughtered during the year an enormous crop of hogs. The season, generally, save towards the the close, was unsatisfactory to the packers. The closing months of the year brought a very favorable turn to affairs, but this occurred after most of the product had changed hands. It is true that the packers, generally, have come through with fair returns for the season's work, but it is traceable more to favorable purchases of the product, made at periods when prices were below what the winter prices for hogs would have warranted, than to anything that was favorable about the actual packing of the year.

The latest return of this industry made by Colonel Maxwell, at hand when this chapter goes to press, is a verbal report made by him to the chamber of commerce March 1, 1881, that the number of hogs packed in Cin-

cinnati from November 1, 1880, to that date-the season of 1880-1-was 522,425, a decrease of 12,314 from the returns of the previous season.

MANUFACTURING IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY- FIVE.

Over fifty steam engines were now in successful oper- ation here, besides four or five in Newport and Coving- ton, and all together were moving an immense amount of machinery. During the year there were built in Cin- cinnati more than one hundred steam engines, about two hundred and forty cotton-gins, over twenty sugar mills, and twenty-two steamboats, many of them of the largest size. The value of the productive industries of the three places-virtually one for the purposes of manufacturing -was roundly estimated at half a billion of dollars. The contributor "B. D."-probably Benjamin Drake- of an article on Cincinnati to the Western Monthly Mag- azine and Literary Journal for January, 1836, said that the city had then "but few, if any, overgrown manufac- turing establishments, but a large number of small oues, confided to individual enterprise and personal superin- tendence. 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 approach to Cincinnati and her associate towns."

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 89

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co. Number of Pages: 666

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666