Hogs by Rail: A Farm Family Goes to Porkopolis, 1854

From the Diary of Ruth Ellison, Age 16

1November 20, 1854, our farm near Xenia. Tomorrow Father, my brother Thomas and I take our forty hogs to Cincinnati. Grandfather says that when he sold hogs in 1834, he and two hired boys drove them on foot down the dirt road for about a week, and the hogs grew thin on the way. Buyers pay by the pound, so he lost money with every mile. Now the Little Miami Railroad runs through Xenia, and our hogs will ride in cars and reach the city the same day.

2November 21, Cincinnati. We left Xenia at seven and were in the city before eleven. Father sold the hogs to a packer near the canal. People call this city Porkopolis, because it packs more pork than any other. Packing goes on only from about November to March, while the cold keeps the meat from spoiling before it is salted. Inside, the long room was cold and loud. Each hog moved along a table past a line of men, and each man made only one cut before pushing it on to the next. Father said a farmer butchering at home needs most of a day for what this line does in minutes. The leftover fat goes to soap and candle makers. The packer told Father that in summer many of his men look for work on the docks or in the brickyards.

3Afterward we crossed a bridge over the canal into Over-the-Rhine, named for the many German families who live there. The signs over the bakeries and shops were in German. Thomas talked with a young man from Bavaria who came in 1849 and now earns wages in a furniture shop a few streets away. Thomas wants to find city work too, though Father says a wage can stop when a shop closes.

4November 22. At the Public Landing, steamboats were loading barrels of pork for New Orleans, while others unloaded sugar from Louisiana and coffee that had come up the river from New Orleans. At the telegraph office, Father read that morning's hog prices from New York. With our hog money we bought calico cloth, coffee, sugar, a steel plow blade and a portrait of the three of us made at a daguerreotype studio. Grandmother still spins and weaves wool, but I will sew my new dress from factory cloth.

5November 22, night, home again on the evening train. Father counted what was left of our money twice. He said our hogs fetched a good price this year, but if prices in the East fall, every family on this road will feel it by spring.