8 



®l)c Jfanner'0 illontliln ilisitor. 



being scalded the hogs are tossed by machinery 

 on to a log bench, as many persons getting to 

 work on a hog as can get round it. One cleans 

 out the ear, which work must he done while the 

 hog is reeking 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 stretch- 

 ed open with a stick called a gamhril, and the 

 bog is borne off by three men, two of whom 

 carry the front part on their crossed hands and 

 the other seizes the gamhril by which he carries 

 to the proper place and slings the hog to a hook 

 which suspends him from the floor. Here the 

 animal falls into the bands of the gutter, who 

 tears out the insides, 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 moveable lattice work at the 

 sides which is kept open to admit air in the ord- 

 inary temperature, but is shut up during the in- 

 tense cold which occasionally attends the pack- 

 ing season, so that hogs shall not be frozen so 

 stiff that it cannot be cut up to advantage. 

 These establishments employ each, as high as 

 one hundred hands selected for this business, 

 which requires both strength and activity, and 

 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, &c, 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 the hogs from the slaughter 

 house to the packers, is itself a large business, 

 employing fully fifty of the largest class of wag- 

 ons, 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 piled up in rows as high as possible. 

 These piles are generally close to the scales. 

 Another set of bands carry them to the scales, 

 where they are usually weighed singly for the 

 advantage of the draft. They are taken hence 

 to the blocks, where the head and feet are first 

 struck off, each blow needing no repetition. The 

 hog is then cloven into three parts, separating 

 the bam and shoulder ends from the middle. 

 These are again divided into single hams, shoul- 

 ders, and sides. The leaf is then torn out, and 

 every piece is distributed with the exactness and 

 regularity of machinery, to its appropriate pile. 

 The tender loins, usually two pounds to the liog, 

 are sold to the manufacturer of sausages. 



The bog thus cut up into shoulders, hams, and 

 middlings, undergoes further trimming to gel the 

 first two articles in proper shape. The size of 

 the bams and shoulders varies with their appro- 

 priate markets, and with the price of lard, 

 which, when high, tempts the putter up of pork 

 to trim very close, and indeed to render the en- 

 tire shoulder into lard. If the pork is intended 

 to be s: ipped 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 salt to 

 two hundred pounds weight of meat. If other- 

 wise, the meat is parked away ill 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 bogs to receive this brand. Mess pork — all 

 sides, with two rumps to the barrel. Prime — for 

 this, 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 mar- 

 kets. 



The mess pork is used for the commercial 

 marine ami the United States navy. This last 

 class, again, is put up somewhat differently, by 

 specifications made out lor the purpose. The 

 prime is packed for ship use and the southern 

 markets. The clear pork goes out to the cod 

 and mackerel fisheries. The New Engenders, 

 in the line of pickled pork, buy nothing short of 

 the best. 



Bulk pork is that which is intended for im- 

 mediate use or for smoking. The former class 

 is sent off in fiat boats for the lower Mississippi. 

 It forms no important element of the whole, the 

 great mass being sent into the smoke houses, 

 each of which will cure a hundred and seventy- 

 five thousand to five bundled 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 containing from 

 eight 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 quantities 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 further illustrating the 

 business 1 have been describing, I shall take the 

 operations of the present season, J847-18-I8, al- 

 though the quantity of hogs which will be put 

 up here cannot he ascertained with exactness lor 

 some weeks yet. There is little doubt that an 

 estimate of four hundred and twenty thousand, 

 by far the largest quantity ever yet put up in 

 Cincinnati, will not be beyond the actual fact. 

 This increase partly results from the growing 

 importance of the ciiy as a great hog market, for 

 reasons which will be made apparent in a later 

 page, but more particularly to the vast enlarge- 

 ment in number and improved condition of hogs 

 throughout the West, consequent in this year's 

 unprecedented harvest of corn. What this in- 

 crease is may he inferred from the official regis- 

 ters of the hogs of Ohio, returned to the auditor 

 of State as subject to taxation, being all those of 

 and over six months of age. These were one 

 million seven hundred anil fifty thousand, being 

 an excess of twenty-five per cent., or three hun- 

 dred and fifty thousand hogs, over those of the 

 previous year. Those of Kentucky, whence 

 come most of our largest hogs, as well as a con- 

 siderable share of our supplies in this article, 

 will exhibit a proportionate increase, while the 

 number in Indiana and Illinois must greatly ex- 

 ceed this ratio of progress. 



If there be four hundred and twenty thousand 

 bogs cut up here during the present season, the 

 product in the manufactured article will he — 

 150,000 barrels of pork, 

 21,000,000 pounds of bacon, 

 13,800,000 pounds of lard. 



These are the products thus far of the pork 

 houses' operations alone. That is to say, the ar- 

 ticles thus referred to are put up in these estab- 

 lishments, from the hams, shoulders, sides, leaf 

 lard, and a small portion of ihe jowls — the resi- 

 due of the carcases, which are taken to the pork 

 houses, leaving them lo enter elsewhere into 

 other departments of manufacture. The relative 

 proportions in weight of bacon and lard rest up- 

 on probabilities. 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 

 packing, would also reduce or increase the pro- 

 portion of barrelled pork to the bacon and lard. 



The lard made here is exported in packages 

 for the Havana market, where, besides being ex- 

 tensively used, as in the United States, for cook- 

 ing, it answers the purpose to which butter is 

 applied in this country. It is shipped to the At- 

 lantic markets also, for local use as well as for 

 export to England and France, either in the 

 shape it leaves this market Of in lard oil, large 

 quantities of- which are manufactured at the 

 East. 



There is one establishment here, which, be- 

 sides pulling up hams, &c, extensively, is en- 

 gaged in extracting the grease from Ihe rest of 

 Ihe hog. This will probably the present year 

 operate upon thirty thousand liogs. It has seven 

 large circular tanks — six of capacity lo hold each 

 fifteen thousand pounds, and one to hold six 

 thousand pounds — all gross. These receive ihe* ' 

 eulire carcase will) the exception of the hams, 

 and the mass is subjected to steam process iir-.. 

 tier a pressure of seventy pounds to ihe square 

 inch, ihe effect of which operation is lo reduce.! 

 Ihe whole to one consistence, and every hone to 

 ponder, The fat is drawn off by cocks, and the 

 residuum, a mere earlhy subsiance, as far as 

 made use of, is taken away for manure. He- 

 sides the hogs which reach this factory in entire 

 carcases, the great mass of heads, ribs, back 

 bones, tail pieces, feet, and other trimmings of" 

 the hogs, cut up at different pork bouses, are 

 subjected to the same process, in order to ex- I 

 tract every particle of grease. This concern 

 alone will turn out this season three million six- 

 himdred thousand pounds lard, five-sixihs of 

 which is No. 1. Nothing can surpass the purity > 

 and beauty of this lard, which is refined as well 

 as made under steam processes. Six hundred, 

 hogs per day pass through these tanks one day 

 with another. 



I come now to the manufacture of lard oil, 

 which is accomplished by divesting the lard of 

 one. of its constituent parts — siearine. There 

 are probably thirty laid 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 Slates," 

 has manufactured heretofore into lard oil and 

 stearine, one hundred and forty thousand pounds 

 monthly all ihe year round. The great increase 

 of hogs for the present season will probably en-' 

 large that business ibis year fifty per cent. 



Eleven million pounds of lard will be run in- 

 to lard oil this year, two-sevenths of which ag- 

 gregate will make stearine, Ihe residue lard u\,\ 

 or in oilier words, Iwenty-four thousand barrels 

 of lard oil, of forty to forty-two gallons each.- 

 The oil is exported lo the Atlantic cilies and for- 

 eign countries. Much the larger share of this is 

 of inferior lard made of mast-fed and still-fed 

 bogs, and the material, to a great extent, comes 

 from a distance, making no pari of these tables. 

 Lard oil, besides being sold for what it actually 

 is, enters largely in ihe eastern cities into the 

 adulteration of sperm oil, and in France serves 

 lo re luce ihe cosl of (dive oil. The skill of the»- 

 French chemists enables them to incorporate 

 from sixty live 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 stear- , 

 hie, small portions of which always remain with 

 that article, and will be found at the bottom of 

 the bollle. 



I now come to the star candles, made of the 

 siearine expressed bom the lard in the manufac- 

 ture of lard oil. The siearine is subjected to 

 hydraulic pressure, by which three-eighths of it 

 is discharged as an impure oleiue. This last is 

 employed in the manufacture, of soap. Three 

 million pounds of siearine at leasl, have been 

 made, ill one year, inlo star candles and soap in 

 these factories, and they are prepared lo manu- 

 facture six thousand pull nils candles per average • 

 day throughout the whole year. The manufac- 

 ture of this year will probably approach that , 

 amount, as Ihe present supply promises the raw 

 material in abundance. 



From ihe slaughterers the offal capable of 

 producing grease goes to another description of 

 grease extractors, where are also taken hogs dy- 

 ing of disease or by accident, and meat that is 

 spoiling through unfavorable weather or want of 

 care. The grease tried out here goes into the 

 soap manufacture. Lard grease is computed 

 to form eighty per cent, of all the fat used iu ihe 

 making of soap. Of the ordinary sonp one linn- . 

 (bed thousand pounds are made weekly, equal 

 at four cents per pound lo 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. 



At the rear of these operations comes bristle 

 dressing for the Atlantic markets. This busi- 



