CHAPTER XXIV. 



HOG MARKETS AND PORK PACKING PAST AND 



PRESENT. 



During the first half of the nineteenth century, Cincinnati 

 was the leading pork-packing center of this continent, and this 

 position was maintained until 1863, at which time Chicago 

 took the lead. One by one, other western cities have crowded 

 ahead of Cincinnati until now her rank is fifteenth in the list 

 of American hog-packing cities. That Cincinnati's supremacy 

 was not a permanent one was due to the fact that until the 

 West was settled, live-stock conditions were very unstable, 

 and the logical packing center in 1850 was found to be too far 

 to the east of the center of hog production as it existed twenty 

 years later. With the settling of the cornbelt and the rapid 

 extension of the hog's domain to the westward, Chicago was 

 enabled, by virtue of her location and direct railway connections 

 with the heart of the cornbelt, to gain and hold supremacy as a 

 pork-packing center. The evolution of the gigantic pork- 

 packing business of the United States may be told in brief by 

 first reviewing the growth and development of the business at 

 Cincinnati, and then following it to Chicago at the close of the 

 Civil War. 



Early packing at Cincinnati. In 1833 Cincinnati packed 

 85,000 hogs. Five years later the number packed in the year 

 had risen to 182,000 head. In 1843 no less than 250,000 hogs 

 were consumed by the numerous packing establishments then 

 doing a thriving business at Cincinnati, and the town was dubbed 

 "Porkopolis," which name was formerly in general use, but is 

 now nearly obsolete. Cincinnati slaughtered 360,000 hogs for 

 packing purposes in 1853, and in 1863 the highest mark was 

 reached, the number that year being 608,457. The demands of 

 the army were largely accountable for the large number packed 

 during the last mentioned year. Prior to the Civil War, Cin- 

 cinnati was the center of the finest hog-raising region in the 

 world, including the states of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. 

 It was in this favorable environment and under the stimulus 

 afforded by a large, near-by market that the Poland-China 

 breed originated during the period mentioned. Although Chicago 



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