The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry

Margaret Walsh

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780813155296
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813182216
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: History

1

The Significance of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Historians have traditionally discussed the economic development of the Middle West in the mid-nineteenth century in an agrarian context.¹ Though the Jeffersonian image has been updated and qualified by studies of the rapid growth of commercial farming, of the national importance of forest and mineral resources, and of the rise of cities, little systematic research has been conducted on the development of a manufacturing sector. Presumably western industrial enterprises were either missing or trivial.² Any understanding of the rise of industrial America should properly be directed toward New England and the Middle Atlantic states.³

Certainly these two regions formed the nation’s main manufacturing belt. They were responsible for over two-thirds of the country’s value added, employment, and capital (Table 1). They also led, by a large extent, in size of establishments and output per capita (Table 2). But other parts of the United States cannot be ignored in any aggregate analysis. The absolute and relative contributions of the West grew impressively between 1850 and 1870 with marked increases in the 1860s (Tables 1 and 2). By most measures this region expanded at the fastest rate (Table 3), suggesting that the West was already laying the foundations of the Great Lakes’ manufacturing complex which would reach maturity at the end of the century. Indeed, by 1870 the West was responsible for 27 percent of the nation’s value added.⁴

Table 1. Manufacturing in the United States by Region, 1850–1870

Sources: U.S., Congress, Senate, Document 39, Senate Executive Documents, 35 Cong., 2 sess. (1858/59); U.S. Census, 1860, vol. 3, Manufactures; 1870, vol. 2, Wealth and Industry.

¹Regions as defined in the 1860 Census: New England: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut; Middle Atlantic: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia; West: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky; South: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia (for 1870).

²Obtained by subtracting the cost of the materials from the value of the product.

³Manufacturing in the Far West is not shown but is included in the U.S. total.

Table 2. Measures of Manufacturing in the United States by Region, 1850–1870

Sources: U.S., Congress, Senate, Document 39, Senate Executive Documents, 35 Cong., 2 sess. (1858/59); U.S. Census, 1860, vol. 3, Manufactures; 1870, vol. 2, Wealth and Industry.

The region made the most progress toward industrialization in mid-century in the processing branches—lumber planing and sawing, flour and grist milling, brewing, distilling, leather tanning and currying and meat packing (Table 4). These activities have, for the most part, been ignored or dismissed as being merely pre-industrial even though they were of major importance (Table 5). The contributions of lumber processing, which ranked first in 1850 and second in both 1860 and 1870, or that of flour milling, which ranked fourth in both 1850 and 1860 and fifth in 1870, have generally been neglected. These and other agricultural processing industries were much more important to American development than has been assumed, for they directly disseminated an industrial experience and a modern technology to newly settled parts of the country and indirectly stimulated high levels of construction and city growth.⁵

Table 3. Growth of Manufacturing in the United States by Region, 1850–1870 (Percentage Changes)

Sources: U.S., Congress, Senate, Document 39, Senate Executive Documents, 35 Cong., 2 sess. (1858/59); U.S. Census, 1860, vol. 3, Manufactures; 1870, vol. 2, Wealth and Industry.

Table 4. Manufacturing Profile of the West, 1850–1870, for Selected Industries (Value Added in $1,000)

Sources: U.S., Congress, Senate, Document 39, Senate Executive Documents, 35 Cong., 2 sess. (1858/59); U.S. Census, 1860, vol. 3, Manufactures; 1870, vol. 2, Wealth and Industry.

Table 5. Leading Industries in the United States, 1850–1870

Sources: U.S., Congress, Senate, Document 39, Senate Executive Documents, 35 Cong., 2 sess. (1858/59); U.S. Census, 1860, vol. 3, Manufactures; 1870, vol. 2, Wealth and Industry.

1. Rank shown in parentheses for 1860 and 1870.

Within the Middle West, processors, using the rich lumber and mineral resources of the Great Lakes area and the increasing farm outputs of the prairies, initially catered to neighborhood markets in their small mills and shops. These entrepreneurs gradually built up their capital and sales expertise and shipped increasing outputs by water or by rail outside the region to national and even international markets. Older manufacturing centers in the Northeast did not pose a strong competitive threat because the cost of freighting low-value bulky commodities over long distances made western processing more profitable, particularly at transshipment points. Even when interregional rail links eased and speeded the flow of raw materials from west to east, improved handling facilities, economies of scale, and business reorganization assured the western manufacturers of their importance both to regional development and to national outputs.⁶

Meat packing was a prominent branch among these midwestern processing industries.⁷ Though its output was not as valuable as that of other agricultural-based activities like flour milling or liquors, its contribution must not be underrated. The census coverage of this industry is defective. Difficulties of distinguishing between manufacturing and commerce and the seasonal nature of packing were responsible for the omission of many establishments from the tabulations. Value-added figures would better reflect the extent of the industry if they were raised by at least 25 percent.⁸ A more reliable quantitative description is available, however, in the annual statistics generated by local commercial bodies. While these lack a comparative framework they do indicate not only an upward but a fluctuating growth in pork packing in the Middle West throughout the nineteenth century (Table 6).⁹

This growth is significant for any understanding of midwestern or even national economic history because the details of its dimensions, shape, and style provide information on the process of change in a developing region and in an industry which has been essentially regarded as pre-modern. Analysis of the market conditions of supply and demand, of the steady improvements in transportation, and of the critical role of small merchant capitalists demonstrates the main features of the evolving industry. Progress might be gradual and piecemeal rather than swift and dramatic, but in the space of a generation, between the early 1840s and the mid-1870s, meat packing was transformed from its pioneer commercial status to the threshold of a genuine manufacturing activity.

The simple mercantile orientation of meat packing in the late colonial and early national eras was transferred across the Appalachians in the wake of the expanding westward frontier. In the opening decades of the 1800s innumerable farmer-packers either killed animals and cured meat for their own use during the winter months or took their surpluses in the form of “dead” meat or livestock to local market towns on the Ohio-Mississippi River system. Here merchants would assemble cargoes of meat for dispatch downriver as part of their all-purpose trading. Their functions were seldom clearly defined because the meat business was both seasonal and erratic. Depending on such imponderables as the weather, the size of the hog crop, the supply of salt, the anticipated demand, and the availability of finance, packers might buy livestock directly from the farmer or the drover, might purchase meat from the farmer, might slaughter, pack, and cure, or only undertake the two latter tasks, and then might sell the meat on their own account or on commission. The limited qualitative and quantitative evidence available suggests an active and growing interest in packing in the 1820s and 1830s which was focused on Cincinnati but spread out along navigable water routes as far as western Illinois.¹⁰

Table 6. Pork Packing in the Midwest, 1847–1877 (No. of Hogs)

Sources: Cincinnati Prices Current, 1845–1877; Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, Annual Reports, 1847–1878.

Table 7. Population Growth in the Midwest, 1840–1870

Source: Ninth Census, 1870, A Compendium (Washington, D.C., 1872), 8–9.

As population continued to move west in the mid-nineteenth century the close but uncertain relationship of packing with the atomistic rural agrarian economy becomes easier to define. Family-sized food-producing farm units underpinned the structure of the Middle West. The rapid expansion of population and farms brought a growth in the numbers of livestock and also improvements in their quality (Tables 7 and 8).¹¹ There was thus an increasing supply of animals for processing. But farmers were sufficiently profit-oriented to react to market forces, here in the shape of two- to three-year fluctuations in the corn-hog cycle. They would cut hog production when corn was in short supply and commanded a high price, and would increase hog production when corn was plentiful and cheap. Numerous individual assessments of how to measure the vagaries of the market in fact meant that the hog crop oscillated throughout the period. Packers could never be certain about the size and quality of raw materials, let alone their price.¹²

Table 8. Hogs Raised in the Midwest, 1840–1880 (1,000s)

Sources: U.S. Census, 1840, 1850, 1860, 187...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Maps
• Preface
• 1 The Significance of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
• 2 Supply, Process, Markets: The Dominance of Seasonal Elements in the Pioneer Years
• 3 Railroads and the Challenge to River Dominance in the Antebellum Years
• 4 Changing Patterns of Urban Concentration in the Civil War Period
• 5 The Emergence of a Permanent Industry
• 6 The Dimensions of Midwestern Pork Packing
• Appendix. The Sample of Midwestern Pork Packers Used for Biographical Illustrations
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index