250 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. — 
In Louisville, corn, hay, oats, and potatoés are sold by farmers direetly 
to consumers; fruits and vegetables are sold to numerous hucksters, 
whose profits range from 25 to 50 per eent. Their ageucy is counted an 
advantage also, as the farmer can sell owt quickly and save much time. 
THE MEAT SUPPLIES OF GREAT CITIES. 
Counting the cities and villages near New York as parts of the 
great metropolitan center, the problem daily presented to the railroad 
men, the drovers, and butchers is, how are two millions of persons to ob- 
tain their supplies of good, wholesome flesh, when the center of the flesh- 
producing region is 1,000 miles distant and steadily reeeding westward? 
Nor is the victualing of New York alone the extent of the task. Within 
twenty miles of Boston there are 650,000 persons that must depend 
mainly for fesh upon grass and corn farms west of the mountains. 
The people of Philadelphia are fed to a great extent in the same way, 
but the fine farming region north and west of that city dees a great 
deal toward her meat supply. Baltimore and Washington receive their 
beeves from West Virginia, from the Piedmont counties of VirginiA, 
from the northern part of Maryland, and from Ohio, by way of the Bal- 
timore and Ohio Railroad. A careful estimate of the population of the 
eastern cities shows that about four millions of people must receive their 
meat by car transportation, and that three-fourths of such meat mast be 
carried a thousand to twelve hundred miles. 
What is the present method? The Union stock-yards of Chicago are 
an immense gathering ground of animals from [llinois, lowa, Missouri, 
Kansas, and Kentucky. They are owned by a joint-stock company, 
With a capital stock of $1,000,000, the most of which is held by nine of 
the leading railroads that concentrate in that city. 
The premises of the company comprise 345 acres, 120 of which are 
covered by 5U0 pens, ranging from 25 by 35 feet to 85 by 112 feet. 
Fifty additional acres are devoted to hotel and other buildings, leaving 
175 acres tor future use. The pens will easily contain at a time 25,000 
head of cattle, 100,000 hogs, 50,000 sheep, and 350 horses in stalls. 
The whole yard is underlaid with drains that discharge into a 
sewer. Hach of the 500 pens is floored with 3-inch planks, laid a short 
distance apart, on sills raised from the surface of the ground; the yards 
are thereby kept dry. Unlike the plan at Communipaw, of placing 
the hogs and sheep under a single roof, there are 2U acres covered by 
one-story pens for sheep and hogs. ‘These are open a foot or more from 
the roof, and are separated from tbe outside world by a board fence, 
which does not furnish the best protection from storm or cold. 
The yard is divided into four parts by two streets crossing at right 
angles, and these parts are so subdivided that each drove can be sepa- 
rated into companies of fifty by driving the animals a few rods. Hach 
of the principal railroads has 1,000 feet of platform with chutes leading 
into little yards that will hold a car-load, and these again empty into 
other aud larger ones to suit the convenience of the drover. There are 
six barns on the ground, each of which will hold 500 tons of pressed 
hay, and six corn-cribs, each of which is ample fer 6,000 bushels of 
corn on the ear. The yards are supplied with water by an artesian 
well, 1,190 feet deep, and the water is carried from the surface of the 
ground into five immense tanks, set 25 feet above the ground, and then 
is distributed where it is needed. A hotel and bank are on the 
premises. Comparatively few cattle are slaughtered here. Most of 
them are brought in by droves and put into the hands of a, broker who 
Sells them to eastern and southern buyers, always by weight, for which 
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