Hogs and Hominy 151 



freight rates and the business that could be done. So many 

 hundreds of thousands of hogs carried to the packers in 

 Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, or Chicago to be butchered 

 and processed, and so many million pounds of ham, bacon, 

 sausage and lard carried to the hungry and rapidly spreading 

 cities in the East, meant dividends. 



The coal carried by the Beech Creek Railroad bought a 

 Duke of Marlborough for Commodore Vanderbilt's great 

 granddaughter. The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Rail- 

 roads which Calvin Brice sold to W. H. Vanderbilt at a price 

 so exorbitant that people said the rails must be made of nickel 

 plate, was a farmers' road. It carried hogs and steers and tanks 

 of grain. So did the Illinois Central, which paid for the flam- 

 boyant society career of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, and set up the 

 Harrimans in Newport. 



The dividends paid by midwestern roads bought private cars 

 for the officers of the roads, yachts, race horses, political careers, 

 collections of old masters. Not inappropriately William H. 

 Vanderbilt had a marked preference for the paintings of Rosa 

 Bonheur. They paid for presentations at Court, titles and 

 coronets. 



Beneath and supporting much of the panoply of the Gilt 

 and Plush Era was the American pig. 



On their way to market those pigs made money for the 

 midwest. They built towns where none had been, and they 

 raised towns to the status of cities. They put up barns and 

 houses. They bridged rivers, paved town and county roads, 

 endowed universities and churches. They gave farmers' sons 

 and daughters college educations. 



The magazine Fortune gives the story of one farmer in the 

 corn belt which is typical of many more in that area. Fortune's 

 farmer is Benjamin Ray Summy, of Lansing, Minnesota. Mr. 

 Summy came to Lansing in 1889, when he was eighteen years 

 old. 



He bought his first eighty acres with a $100 down payment, 



