21,000,000 lbs. Bacon.
13,800,000 " Lard.
These are the products thus far of the pork houses' operations alone. That is to say, the articles thus referred to are put up in these establishments, from the hams, shoulders, sides, leaf lard, and a small portion of the jowls—the residue of the caresses, which are taken to the pork houses, leaving them to enter elsewhere into other departments of manufacture. The relative proportions in weight of bacon and lard rest upon 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 proportion of be/Tiled pork to the bacon and lard.
The lard made here is exported in packages for the Havana market, where, besides being extensively used, as in the United States, for cooking, it answers the purpose to which butter is applied in this country. It is shipped to the Atlan tic markets also, for local use as well as for export to England and France, either in the shape it leaves this market, or in lard oil, large quantities of which are manufactured at the east.
There is one establishment there, which, besides putting up hams, &e., extensive ly, is engaged in extracting the grease from the rest of the hog. This will pro bably the present year, 1847, operate upon thirty thousand hogs. It has seven large circular tanks—six of capacity to hold each fifteen thousand pounds, and one to hold six thousand pounds—all gross. These receive the entire carcase with the exception of the hams, and the mass is subjected to steam process under a pres sure of seventy pounds to the square inch, the effect of which operation is to reduce the whole to one consistence, and every bone to powder. The fat is drawn off by cocks, and the residuum, a mere earthy substance, as far as made use of, is taken away for manure. Besides 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 houses, are subjected to the seine process, in order to extract every particle of grease. This concern alone will turn
out this season three million six hundred thousand pounds lard, five-sixths 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.
The manufacture of lard oil is accom plished by divesting the lard of one of its constituent parts—stearine. There are probably thirty lard oil factories here on a scale of more or less importance. The largest of these, whose operations are probably more extensive than may other in the United States, has manufac tured heretofore into lard oil and stearine, one hundred and forty thousand pounds monthly all the year round. The great increase of hogs for the present season will probably enlarge that business this year fifty per cent.
Eleven million pounds of lard will be run into lard oil this year, two-sevenths of which aggregate will make stetuine, the residue lard oil, or in other words, twenty-four thousand barrels of lard oil, of forty to forty-two gallons each. The oil is exported to the Atlantic cities and foreign countries. Much the larger share of this is of inferior lard, made of mast fed and still fed hogs, and the material, to a great extent, comes from a distance, making no part of these tables. Lard oil, besides being sold for what it actually is, enters largely in the eastern cities into the adulteration of sperm oil, and in France serves to reduce the cost of olive oil. The skill of the French chemists enables them to incorporate from sixty five to seventy per cent. of lard oil with that of the olive. The presence of lard oil can be detected, however, by a de posit of stearine, small portions of which always remain with that article, and will be found at the bottom of the bottle.