As a specimen of the amazing activity which characterizes all the details of packing, cutting, &c., here it may be stated, that two hands, in one of our pork houses, in less than thirteen hours, cut up eight hundred and fifty hogs, averaging over two hundred pounds each, two others placing them on the blocks for the purpose. All these hogs were weighed singly on the scales, in the course of eleven hours. Another hand trimmed the hams (seventeen hundred pieces), in Cincinnati style, as fast as they were separated from the carcases. The hogs were thus cut up and disposed of at the rate of more than one to the minute.
Those who are cognizant to the import ance of the domestic market will not be surprised to learn by the table of our ex-. ports of pork to foreign countries, the small proportion it forms to the quantity packed. The following is the export table for seven years More than three-fourths of these ex-,. ports is to British Colonies in America; and to the West India Islands.
Few persons at the east can realize the size, and especially the fatness, to which hogs arrive in the west, under the pro fuse feeding they receive.
The following are specimens of hogs and lots of hogs killed in Cincinnati this season and the last : Hogs. Avernp weight—lbs.
720 5 640 22 4g3 52 ... 377 50 . 375 Of these were nine—one litter—weighing respectively 816, 444, 454, 452, 456, 516, 526, 532.
Flogs. Average weight—lb& 320 325 657 305 Few if any of these hogs were over nineteen mouths old. The last lot is ex traordinary — combining quantity and weight, even for the west. They were all raised in one neighborhood in _Madi son county, Kentucky, by Messrs. Cald well, Campbell, Ross, and Gentry, the oldest being nineteen months in age. The value of these manufacturing op erations to Cincinnati consists in the vast amount of labor they require and create, and the circumstance that the great mass of that labor furnishes employment to thousands, at precisely the very season when their regular avocations cannot be pursued. Thus there are perhaps fifteen
hundred coopers engaged in and outside of the city, making lard kegs, pork bar rels, and bacon hogsheads : the city coopers at a period when they are not needed on stock barrels and other coop erage, and the country coopers, whose main occupation is farming, during a season when the farms require no labor at their hands. Then there is another large body of hands, also agriculturists, at the proper season, engaged getting out staves and heading, and cutting hoop poles for the same business. Vast quan tities of boxes of various descriptions arc made for packing bacon, for the Havana and European markets. Lard is also packed to a great extent for export in tin cases or boxes the making of which fur ' nishes extensive occupation to the tin plate workers.
It' we take into view farther that the slaughtering, the wagoning, the pork house labor, the rendering grease and lard oil, the stearine and soap factories, bristle dressing, and other kindred em ployments, supply abundant occupation to men, who in the spring are engaged in the manutlicture and hauling of bricks, quarrying and hauling stone, cellar dig ging and walling, brick-laying, plaster ing, and street paving, with other em ployments, which in their very nature cease on the approach of winter, we can readily appreciate the importance of a business which supplies labor to the in dustry of probably six thousand indivi duals, who but for its existence would be earning little or nothing one-third of the year.
The United States census of 1640 gives 26,301,293, as the existing number of hogs of that date. The principal increase since is in the west owing to the abund ance of corn there, and that quantity may be now safely enlarged to forty-five mil lions. This is about the number assigned to entire Europe in 1839, by McGregor, in his Commercial Dictionary, and there is probably no material increase there since, judging by the slow advance in that section of the world in productions of any kind.