INTRODUCTION. cxxxi 



viction of the present Mr. Renick, that since then it has been on the decline. The whole number of 

 cattle corn-fattened in Ohio may not have perceptibly decreased, but the home consumption, including 

 the extensive barrelling, has greatly increased ; but the excess or the number sent to an eastern market 

 from that region has evidently, during the last decade, fallen off, and the cattle of late years are not so 

 heavy nor made so fat as formerly. Mr. Renick gives it as his opinion that cattle can no longer be 

 corn-fed in Ohio for the great length of time and in the profuse manner as formerly, with profit ; 

 indeed, in some of the largest feeding districts of twenty years ago the business has entirely ceased; 

 and he very much questions whether the business can be profitably carried on as a leading one with 

 the farmer in any locality possessing other ordinary modern resources, when the population of that 

 locality exceeds fifty inhabitants to the square mile, exclusive of populous towns, and can then only be 

 done profitably in a limited way. as a secondary or attendant on other pursuits of the farmer, and then 

 in a different manner from that now generally pursued. The construction of the great through rail 

 roads, which tended to diminish the feeding of cattle in Ohio, contributed largely to its wonderful 

 increase in Illinois and other western States, affording them facilities for reaching an eastern market 

 of which they had hitherto been almost deprived the distance the cattle had to travel ptoving actually 

 too great, as the pioneers at first supposed it would, from Ohio; and though the railroads also facilitated 

 the transportation of fat cattle from Ohio, adding but little to the cost, and saving to the drover near or 

 quite one hundred pounds of flesh, on an average, to each animal, yet, by affording quicker and at all 

 times a more certain conveyance for other things as well, particularly the article of whiskey, and the 

 manufacturers of that article being able to pay more for corn than the cattle-feeders could possibly 

 afford to do, they more than counterbalanced the advantages derived therefrom to stock-raising. Hence, 

 in localities favorably situated for the sale of corn, the business of feeding it to cattle has become a 

 comparatively unimportant one. 



Before the era of railroads, to break the long drive, large numbers of stock or store-cattle were 

 annually driven from Illinois and the west into Ohio to be fed there, and when made fat were sent to 

 an eastern market; but that trade has now become almost obsolete. Formerly, too, the driving of 

 stock-cattle from Ohio to Pennsylvania and the east was conducted on an extensive scale, and indeed 

 that trade, during the State s gloomiest pecuniary period, ranked as one among her chief resources, 

 always commanding money in hand, however low the price might be ; but that trade has also ceased, 

 except to a comparatively limited extent from the northern part of the State into that of New York. 



To avoid misapprehension, let us here say, that our remarks thus far with reference to beef-cattle 

 in Ohio apply only to those made fat. or mostly so, on corn, as doubtless the number of grass-fattened, 

 or those that have been but slightly fed on corn, has somewhat increased. Indeed, the whole business 

 of fattening cattle has undergone a great change since the era of railroads. Formerly the great bulk 

 of the corn-fed cattle of the west, nine-tenths of which were from Ohio and Kentucky, chiefly from 

 Ohio, sent to the eastern markets, arrived there between the middle of April and 1st of August, and the 

 markets of New York in particular were chiefly supplied from those sources during that time, and 

 grass-fattened cattle were sent in the fall from Ohio in limited numbers, and no cattle arrived in those 

 markets from the west during the winter or first month of spring; but now they are sent at all seasons 

 of the year, and but few of those are so heavily corn-fed or made so fat as formerly. In a word, there 

 is not near so much consumed in fattening cattle in Ohio now as there was twelve or fifteen years ago ; 

 yet there are, doubtless, more cattle partially fed now than then, but grass is more relied upon to 

 prepare the cattle for market. Nor is there the same occasion to make them so solidly fat as formerly, 

 for the conveyance to market by railroad is a great saving of flesh over the former method of driving. 



It is not to be understood that cattle are better or longer grazed than formerly, for the contrary is- 

 the fact ; but formerly, when the business of feeding cattle on the Scioto river was at its height, say 

 from 1840 to 1850, to make an A No. 1 lot of fat cattle, the best grades were fed some ten to twenty 

 bushels of corn in March and April when they were three years old, and other cattle at the age of four 

 years ; they were then grazed throughout the whole summer and fall in the best manner, then fed from 

 four to five and a half months all the corn they would eat say full half bushel per day each before 



