PIGS. The want of ready and cheap access to foreign markets, led the western farmers to raising hogs and distilling whiskey as a convenient means of taking corn, the great staple, in these shapes to market. Mr Cist, of Ohio, in a communica tion published in the patent office report for 1847, from which this article is con densed, shows how small a proportion of the corn crop finds its way into the market as meal or grain.
The corn raised in reference to the whiskey market is independent of that which is fed to hogs, no price that can be paid by the distillers affording ade quate remuneration to growers of corn who have to transport it far by land car riage.
Cincinnati being the business centre of an immense corn growing and hog rais ing region, is in fact the principal pork market in the United States, and without even the exceptions of Cork or Belfast, Ireland, the largest in the world.
The business of putting up pork here for distant markets, is of some twenty six years' standing, but it is only since 1833, that it has sprung into much im portance.
The following table furnishes a list of hogs put up each year since 1840, and the prices at which the market opened. The season begins in November and ends in March. Each year refers to that in which business closed.
The hogs packed in Ohio in 1844 were 560,000 1845 " 450,000 1846 " 425,000 1847 " 325,000 Of which aggregate Cincinnati packed in 1844 43 per cent.
1845 47 " 1846 68 Cl 1847 70 " The entire packing of the west for three years may be divided as follows : The hogs raised for this market are generally a cross of Irish Grazier, Byfield, Berkshire, Russia, and China, in such proportions as to unite the qualifications of size, tendency to fat and beauty of shape to the hams. They are driven in at the age of from eleven to eighteen months old, in general, although a few reach greater ages. The hogs run in the woods until within five or six weeks of killing time, when they are turned into the corn fields to fatten. If the acorns and beach-nuts are abundant, they re quire less corn, but the flesh and fat, although hardened by the corn, is not as firm as when they are turned into the corn fields in a less thriving condition, during years when mast as it is called is less abundant.
From the 8th to the 10th of November the pork season begins, and the hogs are sold by the farmers direct to the packers, when the quantity they own justifies it.
Some of these farmers drive m one sea son as high as one thousand head of hogs into their fields. The hogs are driven into pens adjacent to the respec tive slaughter houses. As soon as the drover or farmer sells to the packer, the hogs are put into small pens, where they are crowded as thick as they can stand, and a hand walks over the drove knock ing them on the head successively, with a two pointed hammer adapted to the purpose. They are then dragged out by hooks into the sticking room, where their throats are cut, the blood passing through a drain or sewer below into large tanks prepared to receive it. The blood is saved to be sold together with the hoofs and hair, to the manufacturers of prussiate of potash and prussian blue. Adjacent to the sticking room are the scalding troughs, which are heated by steam. These troughs are of one thou sand gallons capacity each. After being scalded, the hogs are tossed by machin ery on to a long bench, as many persons getting to work on a hog as can get round it. One cleans out the ear, which work must be 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 stretched open with a stick called a gambril, and the hog is borne off by three men, two of whom carry the front part on their crossed bands, and the other seizes the gambril, 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 hands 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 mova ble lattice work at the sides, which is kept open to admit air in the ordinary temperature, but is shut up during the intense cold which occasionally attends the packing season, so that hogs shall not be frozen so stiff that they cannot be cut up to advantage.