cxxvi 



INTRODUCTION. 



the supply of pork will be quite equal to the demand. In the New England and middle States pork, 

 up to the present winter, (1864 65,) has rarely commanded a price at which marketable grain can be 

 fed to swine with a profit. Under the best system of feeding, it requires seven bushels of Indian corn 

 to make one hundred pounds of pork ; and, as the freight from the west is much less on the hundred 

 pounds of pork than it is on the seven bushels of corn, (say 420 pounds,) and as hitherto the Atlantic 

 cities have been the principal market, it is more profitable for the western farmers to feed their grain 

 to pigs than it is for the farmers of the middle and New England States. In other words, the farmers 

 of these States are subjected to a more severe competition from the west in the production of pork than 

 in the production of grain. During the present winter grain has been so high in the west that there 

 has been less difference in favor of the western farmer in fattening pork, as compared with the eastern 

 farmer, and the result has been a much higher price in the Atlantic States than ever before known. 

 For the first time in many years it has been quite profitable to fatten pigs on marketable grain in the 

 middle and New England States. The fact is an interesting one, as sustaining the views expressed in 

 the former part of this article in regard to the difficulties under which the farmers of the Atlantic States 

 labor in the production of beef, pork, wool, and other articles on which, in proportion to value, the 

 freight is comparatively light, and, as a consequence, the difficulty of making manure and increasing the 

 fertility of the soil. 



VALUE OP LIVE STOCK. 



Value of live stock in the United States in I860. 



The aggregate value of live stock in the States and Territories in 1850 was $545,180,516, and in 

 1860 $1,089,329,915, showing an increase of $545,149,399, or over one hundred per cent. 



