The slaughterers formerly got the gut fat for the whole of the labor thus de scribed, 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, &e., for manu facturing 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 hogs from the slaughter house to the packers, is itself a large business, employing fully fifty of the largest class of wagons, 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. Another set of hands 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 need ing no repetition. The hog is then cloven into three parts, separating the ham and shoulder ends from the middle. These are again divided into single hams, shoulders, 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 tenderloins, usually two pounds to the hog, are sold to the manufagiurers of sausages.
The hog thus cut up into shoulders, hams, and middlings, undergoes further trimming to get the first two articles in proper shape. The size of the hams and shoulders varies with their appropriate 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 entire shoulder into lard. If the pork is intended to be shipped 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 otherwise, the meat is packed away in 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require for immediate absorption, and the coarse salt remaining in the barrel to renew the pickle whose strength is withdrawn by the meat in process of time.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 ot hogs— the finest and fattest making clear and mess pork, while the residue is put up into prime pork or bacon. The inspec
tion laws require that clear pork shall be put up of the sides with the ribs out. It takes the largest class of hogs to re ceive 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 con tents. Two hundred pounds of meat is required by the inspector, but one hun dred and ninety-six pounds, packed here, it is ascertained, will weigh out more than the former quantity in the eastern or southern markets.
The mess pork is used for the com mercial marine and the United States navy. This last class, again, is put up somewhat differently, by specifications made out for 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 Englanders, in the line of pickled pork, buy nothing short of the best.
Bulk pork is that which is intended for immediate use or for smoking. The for mer class is sent off in flat boats for the lower Mississippi. It forms no important element of the whole, the great mass be ing sent into the smoke houses, each of which will cure a hundred and seventy five thousand to five hundred 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 them selves. The bacon is sold to the iron regions of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio—to the fisheries of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and to the coast or Mississippi region above Now 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.
If there be four hundred and twenty thousand hogs cut up here during the present season, 1847, the product in the manufactured article will be : 150,000 bbls. Pork.