USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Sketches and statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 > Part 25
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MARKETS AND MARKET-HOUSES.
is little known abroad for the extensive beef operations of which this city is the theatre. There are no means at hand of comparing the magnitude of the beef business here with that of Chicago or other important beef-packing points ; but there is one remarkable feature of our beef, the quality of it, which has not only no superior, but no rival in the world for excellence.
Christmas-day is the great gala day of the butchers of Cincinnati. The parade of stall-fed meat, on that day, for several years past, has been such as to excite the admiration and astonishment of every stranger in Cincinnati-a class of persons always here in great numbers. The exhibition, this last year, has, however, greatly sur- passed every previous display in this line.
A few days prior to the return of this day of festivity, the noble animals which are to grace the stalls on Christmas eve, are paraded through the streets, decorated in fine style, and escorted through the principal streets with bands of music and attendant crowds, espe- cially of the infantry. They are then taken to slaughter-houses, to be seen no more by the public, until cut up and distributed along the stalls of one of our principal markets.
Christmas falling last year on Tuesday, the exhibition was made at what is termed our middle or Fifth street market-house. This is three hundred and eighty feet long, and of breadth and height proportionate-wider and higher, in fact, in proportion to length, than the eastern market-houses. It comprehends sixty stalls, which, on this occasion, were filled with steaks and ribs alone, so crowded, as to do little more than display half the breadth of the meat, by the pieces overlapping each other, and affording only the platforms beneath the stall and the table, behind which the butcher stands, for the display of the rounds and other parts of the carcass. One hundred and fifty stalls would not have been too many to have been fully occupied by the meat exhibited on that day, in the manner beef is usually hung up here and in the eastern markets.
Sixty-six bullocks, of which probably three-fourths were raised and fed in Kentucky, and the residue in our own State ; one hun- dred and twenty-five sheep, hung up whole at the edges of the stalls ; three hundred and fifty pigs, displayed in rows on platforms ; ten of the finest and fattest bears Missouri could produce, and a buffalo calf, weighing five hundred pounds, caught at Santa Fé, constituted the materials for this Christmas pageant. The whole of the beef was stall-fed, some of it since the cattle had been calves, their
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MARKETS AND MARKET-HOUSES.
average age being four years, and average weight sixteen hundred pounds, ranging from 1388, the lightest, to 1896, the heaviest. This last was four years old, and had taken the premium every year at exhibitions in Kentucky, since it was a calf. The sheep were Bakewell and Southdown, and ranged from ninety to one hundred and ninety pounds to the carcass, dressed and divested of the head, &c. The roasters or pigs would have been considered extraordi- nary anywhere but at Porkopolis, the grand emporium of hogs. Suffice to say, they did no discredit to the rest of the show. Bear meat is a luxury unknown at the East, and is comparatively rare here. It is the ne plus ultra of table enjoyment.
The extraordinary weight of the sheep will afford an idea of their condition for fat. As to the beef, the fat on the flanks measured seven and one-quarter inches, and that on the rump, six and one half inches through. A more distinet idea may be formed by the general reader, as to the thickness of the fat upon the beef, when he learns that two of the loins, on which were five and a half inches of fat, became tainted, because the meat could not cool through in time ; and this, when the thermometer had been at no period higher than thirty-six degrees, and ranging, the principal part of the time, from ten to eighteen degrees above zero. This fact, extraordinary as it appears, can be amply substantiated by proof.
Specimens of these articles were sent by our citizens to friends abroad. The largest sheep was purchased by F. Ringgold, of the St. Charles, and forwarded whole to Philadelphia. Coleman of the Burnet House, forwarded to his brother of the Astor House, New York, nine ribs of beef, weighing one hundred and twenty pounds ; and Richard Bates, a roasting piece of sixty-six pounds, by way of New Year's gift, to David T. Disney, our representative in Con- gress.
The Philadelphians and New Yorkers confessed that they never had seen anything in the line to compare with the specimens sent to those points.
The beef, &c., was hung up on the stalls early upon Christmas eve, and by twelve o'clock next day, the whole stock of beef-weighing 99,000 pounds-was sold out ; two-thirds of it at that hour being either preparing for the Christmas dinner, or already consumed at the Christmas breakfast. It may surprise an eastern epicure to learn that such beef could be afforded to customers for eight cents per pound, the price at which it was retailed, as an average.
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MARKETS AND MARKET-HOUSES.
No expense was spared by our butchers to give effect to this great pageant. The arches of the market-house were illuminated by chandeliers and torches, and lights of various descriptions were spread along the stalls. Over the stalls were oil portraits-in gilt frames-of Washington, Jackson, Taylor, Clay, and other public characters, together with landscape scenes. Most of these were originals, or copies by our best artists. The decorations and other items of special expense these public-spirited men were at, reached in cost one thousand dollars. The open space of the market-house was crowded early and late by the coming and going throng of the thousands whose interest in such an exhibition overcame the dis- couragement of being in the open air at unseasonable hours, as late as midnight, and before day-light in the morning, and the thermometer at fifteen degrees.
We owe this exhibition to the public spirit of Vanaken and Daniel Wunder, John Butcher, J. & W. Gall, Francis and Richard Beresford, among our principal victualers.
No description can convey to a reader the impression which such a spectacle creates. Individuals from various sections of the United States and from Europe, who were here-some of them Englishmen, and familiar with Leadenhall market - acknowledged they had never seen any show of beef at all comparable with this.
BIOGRAPHY .- A. MORRELL, JR.
ABM. MORRELL, JR., son of Judge Morrell, of Albany, New York, was born November 18, 1819, and emigrated to the West at the age of seventeen years, under charge of Thos. G. Gaylord, a relative. He became a partner, in 1839, with Mr. G., in the rolling-mill busi- ness ; which connection subsisted until 1850, when the firm of Morrell & Jordan-in the same line of business-was formed, by the co-partnership of A. M., Junr. and Richard Jordan, of the late firm of Bush & Jordan, of Covington, Kentucky. To the skill, industry, and activity of Mr. Jordan, whose talents as a manager of iron works are unsurpassed anywhere, as well as to the financial and salesman tact of Mr. Morrell, this firm is indebted for its marked success. This establishment has since become, Morrell, Jordan & Phillips, by the introduction of Thomas Phillips, of Cincinnati.
278
THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
THE want of ready and cheap access to foreign markets, led the settlers of the western states, to raising hogs and distilling whisky, as a convenient means of taking corn, their great staple, in these shapes, to market.
To comprehend this subject fully, it may be remarked, that from the year 1791, in which Indian corn was first exported to foreign markets, until 1847, the annual export of that article, never exceeded two millions of bushels, and did not average half that quantity. This, in the comparison with the entire product of the United States, fell short of one per cent., and did not constitute, probably, ten per cent. of what was needed for domestic subsistence. In 1847- the great year of European famine, the export of corn reached, almost, to eighteen millions of bushels. It has sensibly declined from these figures since, although still greatly exceeding the export of years, prior to that date. But the large shipment of 1847 did not constitute more than three per cent., of the entire crop, of 1846, which had been a year of unexampled productiveness. It became, therefore, manifest, that a very small share of this, our most impor- tant cereal product, finds its way outside of the home market, and the farmer must feed his corn to hogs, or distill it, as the only means of disposing of an article so bulky and heavy, to its value, as Indian corn.
The corn raised, in reference to the whisky market, is indepen- dent of that which is fed to hogs ; no price that can be paid by the distillers, affording adequate remuneration to growers of corn, who have to transport it far by land carriage.
Cincinnati, being the business centre of an immense corn-growing and hog raising region, is, in fact, the principal pork market in the United States, and, without even the exceptions of Cork or Belfast, Ireland, the largest in the world.
The business of putting up pork here, for distant markets, is of some twenty-six years' standing ; but it is only since 1833, that it has sprung into much importance.
The following tables furnish a list of hogs put up in Cincinnati each year since, including that of 1833, and in Ohio since 1843. The season begins in November and ends in March. Each year refers to that in which business closed :
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THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
TABLE-A.
Year. No. of Hogs.
Year.
No. of Hogs.
Year.
No. of Hogs.
1833
85,000
1840
95,000
1847
250,000
1834
123,000
1841
160,000
1848
498,160
1845
162,000
1842
220,000
1849
310,000
1836
123,000
1843
250,000
1850
401,755
1837
103,000
1844
240,000
1851
324,529
1838
182,000
1845
213,000
1839
199,000
1846
287,000
TABLE-B.
Year.
Hogs packed in Ohio.
Per cent. in Cin'ti.
Year.
Hogs packed Per cent.
in Ohio.
in Cin'ti.
1844
560,000
43
1848
742,212
66
1845
450,000
47
1849
600,316
71
1846
425,000
68
1850
563,645
80
1847
325,000
70
1851
388,556
80
The hogs raised for this market, are generally a cross of Irish Grazier, Byfield, Berkshire, Russia and China, in such proportions as to unite thie 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 eorn ; but 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 8th to the 10th 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 thousand head of hogs into their fields. From a hundred and fifty to three hundred, are more common numbers however. Where 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. As soon as the drover or farmer sells to the paeker, the hogs are put into small pens, where they are crowded as thick as they can stand, and a hand walks over the drove, knocking them on the head successively, with a two pointed hammer adapted to the purpose. They are then dragged out by hooks into the sticking
280
THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
room, where their throats are cut, the blood passing through a drain or sewer below, into large tanks prepared to receive it. The blood is saved, to be sold, together with the hoofs and hair, to the manu- facturers of prussiate of potash and prussian blue. Adjacent to the sticking room, are the scalding troughs, which are heated by steam. These troughs are of one thousand gallons capacity each. After being scalded, the hogs are tossed, by machinery, on to a long bench ; as many persons getting to work on a hog as can get round it. One cleans out the ear, which work must be done while the hog is rcek- mg with steam, others pull off the bristles and hair, which are thrown on the floor, others again scrape the animal. When these operations are through, his hind legs are stretched open with a stick called a gambril, and the hog is borne off by three men, two of whom carry the front part on their crossed hands, and the other seizes the gam- bril. The hog, thus carried to the proper place, is slung to a hook, which suspends him beyond the floor. Here the animal falls into the hands of the gutter, who tears out the inside, stripping at the rate of three hogs to the minute.
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 extent, the frames being boarded up with movable lattice-work at the sides, which is kept open to admit air, in the ordinary tempera- ture, but is shut up during the intense cold, which, occasionally, attends the packing 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 this busi- ness, which requires a degree of strength and activity, that always commands high wages.
The slaughterers formerly got the gut fat for the whole of the labor thus described, wagoning the hogs more than a mile to the pork houses, free of expense to the owners. Every year, however, enhances the value of the perquisites, such as the fat, heart, liver, &c., for food ; and the hoofs, hair, and other parts for manufacturing purposes. For the last two years, from ten to twenty-five cents per hog have been paid as a bonus for the privilege of killing.
The hauling of hogs from the slaughter house to the packers, is itself a large business, employing fully fifty of the largest class of wagons, each loading from sixty to one hundred and ten hogs at a load.
The hogs are taken into the pork houses from the wagons and
281
THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
piled up in rows as high as possible. These piles are generally close to the scales. Another set of hands carry them to the scales, where they are usually weighed singly, for the advantage of the draught. They are taken hence to the blocks, where the head and feet are first struck off, no blow needing its repetition. The hog is then cloven into three parts, separating the ham and shoulder ends from the middle. These are again divided into single hams, shoulders and sides. The leaf lard is then torn out, and every piece distributed with the exactness and regularity of machinery, to its appropriate pile. The tender-loins, usually two pounds to the hog, after affording supplies to families, who consume probably one half of the product, are sold to the manufacturers of sausages.
The hog, thus cut up into shoulders, hams and middlings, under- goes further trimming to get the first two articles in proper shape. The size of the hams and shoulders varies with their appropriate markets, and with the price of lard, which, when high, tempts the pork packer to trim very close, and indeed, to render the entire shoulder into lard. If the pork is intended to be shipped off in bulk, or for the smoke house, it is piled up in vast masses, covered with fine salt in the proportion of fifty pounds of salt to two hundred pounds weight of meat. If otherwise, the meat is packed away in barrels with coarse and fine salt in due proportions-no more of the latter being employed than the meat will require for immediate absorption, and the coarse salt remaining in the barrel to renew the pickle, whose strength is withdrawn by the meat, in process of time.
The different classes of cured pork, packed in barrels, are made up of the different sizes and conditions of hogs-the finest and fattest making clear and mess pork, while the residue is put up into prime pork or bacon. The inspection laws require that clear pork shall be put up of the sides, with the ribs out. It takes the largest class of hogs to receive this brand. Mess pork-all sides, with two rumps to the barrel. For prime-pork of lighter weight will suffice. Two shoulders, two jowls, and sides enough to fill the barrel, make the contents. Two hundred pounds of meat is required by the inspector, but one hundred and ninety-six pounds, packed here, it is ascertained, will weigh out more than the former quantity in the eastern or southern markets.
The mess pork is used for the commercial marine and the United States navy. This last class, again, is put up somewhat differently, by specifications made out for the purpose. The prime is packed
282
THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
for ship use and the southern markets. The clear pork goes out to the cod and mackerel fisheries. The New Englanders, in the line of pickled pork, buy nothing short of the best.
Bulk pork is that which is intended for immediate use or for smoking. The former class is sent off in flat-boats for the lower Mississippi. It forms no important element of the whole, the great mass being sent into the smoke-liouses, each of which will cure a hundred and seventy-five thousand to five hundred thousand pounds at a time. Here the bacon, as far as possible, is kept until it is actually wanted for shipment, when it is packed in hogsheads con- taining from eight hundred to nine hundred pounds, the hams, sides, and shoulders put up each by themselves. The bacon is sold to the iron manufacturing regions of Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio-to the fisheries of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, and to the coast or Mississippi region above New Orleans. Large quan- tities are disposed of also, for the consumption of the Atlantic cities. Flat-boats leave here about the first of July, and they all take down more or less bacon for the coast trade.
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 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 Ken- tucky, whence come most of our largest hogs, as well as a consider- able share of our supplies in this article, exhibit a proportionate 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 :-
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THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
Barrels of Pork. 180,000
Pounds of Bacon
25,000,000
Lard 16,500,000
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, sides, 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 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 pack- ing, would also reduce or increase the proportion of barreled pork to the bacon and lard.
The lard made here is exported in packages for the Havana market, where, beside 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.
There is one establishment here, which, beside putting up hams, &c., extensively, is engaged in extracting the grease from the rest of the hog. Its operations have reached, in one season, as high as thirty-six thousand hogs. It has seven large circular tanks-six of capacity to hold each fifteen thousand pounds, and one to hold six thousand pounds-all gross. These receive the entire carcass, with the exception of the hams, and the mass is subjected to steam pro- cess, under a pressure of seventy pounds to the square inch ; the effect of which operation is to reduce the whole to one consistence, and every bone to powder. The fat is drawn off by cocks, and the residuum, a mere earthy substance, as far as made use of, is taken away for manure. Beside the hogs which reach this factory in entire carcasses, the great mass of heads, ribs, back-bones, feet, and other trimmings of the hogs, cut up at different pork-houses, are subjected to the same process, in order to extract every particle of grease. This concern alone turned out, the season referred to, three millions six hundred thousand pounds lard, five-sixths of which, was No. 1. Nothing can surpass the purity and beauty of this lard.
284
THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
which is refined as well as made, under steam processes. Six hundred hogs per day pass through these tanks, one day with another.
We follow now to the manufacture of lard oil, which is accom- plished by divesting the lard of one of its constituent parts-stearine. There are probably thirty lard oil factories here, on a scale of more or less importance. The largest of these, whose operations are probably more extensive than any other in the United States, has manufactured, heretofore, into lard oil and stearine, one hundred and forty thousand pounds monthly, all the year round. .
Eleven million pounds of lard were run into lard oil that year, two-sevenths of which aggregate made stearine ; the residue, lard oil, or in other words, twenty-four thousand barrels of lard oil, of forty to forty-two gallons each. The oil is exported to the Atlantic cities and foreign countries. Much the larger share of this, is of inferior lard, made of mast-fed and still-fed hogs, and the material, to a great extent, comes from a distance, making no part of these tables. Lard oil, beside being sold for what it actually is, enters largely, in the eastern cities, into the adulteration of sperm oil, and in France, serves to reduce the cost of olive oil. The skill of the French chemists enables them to incorporate from sixty-five to seventy per cent. of lard oil with that of the olive. The presence of lard oil can be detected, however, by a deposit of stearine ; small portions of which always remain with that article, and may be found at the bottom of the bottle.
We now come to the star candles, made of the stearine expressed from the lard in manufacture of lard oil. The stearine is subjected to hydraulic pressure, by which three-eighths of it is discharged as an impure oleine. This last is employed in the manufacture of soap. Three million pounds of stearine, at least, have been made, in one year, into star candles and soap in these factories, and they are pre- pared to manufacture thirty thousand pounds star candles per day. The manufacture of 1847-48, embracing stearine from foreign lard, probably reached one-half that quantity.
From the slaughterers, the offal capable of producing grease, goes to another description of grease extractors; where are also taken hogs dying of disease or by accident, and meat that is spoiling through unfavorable weather or want of care. The grease tried out here, enters into the soap manufacture. Lard grease is computed to form eighty per cent. of all the fat used in the making of soap. Of
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THE HOG AND ITS PRODUCTS.
the ordinary soap one hundred thousand pounds are made weekly, equal, at four cents per pound, to two hundred thousand dollars per annum. This is exclusive of the finer soaps, and of soft soap, which are probably worth twenty-five per cent. more.
Glue, to an inconsiderable amount, is made of the hoofs of the hogs.
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