SOLON ROBINSON, 1842 317 



Making Pork. — Mr. Cornell, 1 (page 33,) says he can- 

 not make pork at $3.50 per cwt., with corn at 50 cents, 

 potatoes 20 cents. But if all should cease making pork 

 under these circumstances, pork would rise and corn 

 would fall. What is the remedy? for we want to know 

 out here in the West, being in just such "a fix." The 

 price of pork at Chicago this winter has been from $1 

 to $2.25. A great portion of the hogs being of the land- 

 pike variety, being great consumers and small porkers, I 

 do not think they have averaged more than $1.50 per 

 cwt. Corn in the same market, 60 pounds to the bushel, 

 25 cents. Oats, 18. Potatoes, I cannot say what at Chi- 

 cago; but here, 40 miles from there, plenty at 12!/o cents; 

 and corn, 16 cents ; oats, 14 cents. Now at these prices, 

 I am confident that every man who has put his grain 

 inside of these long legged, lantern jawed swine, has lost 

 money. But — and here I am "stalled." If it had not 

 been for this immense "waste of grain," could it have 

 been sold, even at these prices? It certainly does appear 

 to me that it would be a beneficial remedy to have a bet- 

 ter breed of hogs more generally diffused through the 

 country. 



And I too am certain that we never shall be wiser by 

 reading of such experiments as Mr. Cornell alludes to; 

 but we should be wiser if several gentlemen would take 

 a lot of pigs and measure and count the cost of every 

 article of food from weaning till butchering time, and 

 give the result to the public, as to the breed, age, cost, 

 weight, &c. 



I suggest to agricultural societies to offer premiums 

 for such detailed experiments. It would be far more 

 beneficial than it would be to publish to the world that 

 Mr. Prentice owned the best bull or the best boar at the 

 fair, while at the same time everybody knew that Mr. 



1 Ezra Cornell, Ithaca, New York; born January 11, 1807; died 

 December 9, 1874. Capitalist. Founder of Cornell University. 

 Interested in agriculture. See Dictionary of American Biography, 

 4:444-46. 



