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Cincinnati’s Hog Geography C incinnati’s emergence as the pork packing capital of the world was not preordained, but the city had a number of advantages over its prospective competitors, including a good location near the Little Miami, Great Miami and Ohio rivers. The Miami Valley was also settled quite rapidly in the early 19th century, which provided the city with thousands of productive farms in its immediate vicinity. The opening of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States in 1817, and the construction of the Miami and Erie Canal in 1825, also gave local businesses ready access to capital and credit, and cemented the city’s superior transportation connections. Finally, Cincinnati had a large and easily accessible public landing, which encouraged river commerce.
High Prices and Byproducts Above Top– Although the Miami and Erie Canal did not transport many pigs (it was cheaper to drive them “on the hoof ” into the city) it was a key transportation connection that helped fuel Cincinnati’s rise as a porkpacking capital. Image courtesy of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Above Bottom– Pig driving in Cincinnati and on board a river steamer. Image courtesy of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Right– Charles Cist from Queen City Heritage, Winter 1990 Below– Since the city did not have any sort of sewer system until the 1860s, almost all of Cincinnati’s early slaughterhouses clustered around the Deer Creek on the far east side, at the foot of Mt. Adams. This map shows how by the 1840s they had migrated northward, around the Miami and Erie Canal. Each red dot represents a commercial pork packer or merchant. From Williams’ Cincinnati Guide and General Business Directory, 1848. Graphic by Jamie Albert.
With access to funding and transit, Cincinnati merchants and packers were able to pay higher prices for hogs, making the city more attractive as a market for local farmers. By the 1840s these advantages would be compounded even more with emergence of the “byproduct” industry. More than fifty businesses took the non-edible parts of every pig and turned them into lamp oil, candles, soap, industrial lubricants, fabric dye and a variety of other products. These ancillary industries meant that Cincinnati packers were able to pay two to three cents more per pound for live pigs. For a farmer with 50 pigs, that could mean an extra $250-$300 per year, a huge margin in the 19th century. Once they were driven into Cincinnati, most hogs would immediately go the slaughterhouses, which were clustered on the southeastern side of the city, along the Deer Creek. Proprietors actually paid for the privilege of slaughtering the pigs, because they kept the lard, blood and hairs, which they sold to the byproduct manufacturers. After slaughter they were taken to the packinghouses, where they were butchered and packed into various edible products.
Almost all of these businesses were separate and independent in the decades before the Civil War, with scores of different slaughterhouses, meatpackers, lard oil manufacturers, and candle and soap makers. The diversity and small scale of these businesses is one of the reasons cities like Cincinnati offered so much opportunity in antebellum America. Running a business was very risky, and bankruptcies were common. But for white men, the barrier to entry was low, and hard work, savvy decision making, good connections and little bit of luck could lead to stability and security. By the 1850s this was beginning to change. Larger firms began to build big, integrated packinghouses, where the slaughtering and packing was done under one roof, and hundreds of hogs were processed every day.
“The putting up of Pork has been so important a branch of business in our city, for five and twenty years, as to have constituted its largest item of manufacture, and acquired for it the soubriquet of Porkopolis … there are few things which make a more vivid impression on the visitor, who see Cincinnati for the first time, than the magnitude and extent of the various buildings connected with this business; many of them with four stories, extensive fronts, and reaching in depth from street to street.” – Charles Cist, from The Cincinnati Miscellany, 1846
Pork Packers and Merchants – Cincinnati 1848