Southern planter - The W&M Digital Archive

1859.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 415
oease, in sonic measure, their meat-eating
habits, and adopt a diet of roots, erreals,
legumens, and culinary vegetables. Btwi
butter and cheese must be given up, in a
great measure, or continue to grow more
and more expensive to the consumer, as the
great pasturage of these old States nre con-
verted into grain fields or gardens to produce
vegetables for the use of the cities and
the constantly increasing, densely populated
rural and manufacturing districts, or to furnish
the immense demand for milk, which
the growing cities create, and which the
railways have extended in a radius of a hundred
miles inland, so that farmers cannot af-
ford to manufacture their milk which was formerly
otherwise worthless, into butter and
cheese, at the old, or even the present
prices. This milk business also has another
important effect upon the production of animal
food, because it induces an almost en-
tire destruction of calves throughout all the
region devoted to the production of milk
for city use. A great portion of these
calves, too, are destroyed while so young
butter, cheese, and meat) and all other animal
products.
As the ureal is populating with almost
fabulous rapidity, and towns, and cities, and
manufacturing villages are growing there
as well as here ; and as a large number of
persons are, and will continue to be,
;ed in railway building, mining, and other
non-agricultural employments, it is a matter
of interest to cattle-raisers and consumers
to know whether this increase of population
carries with it such a corresponding increase
of food-producing animals as will enable the
West to continue to supply the great demand
of the East, even at the present
prices. This may be guessed at by the
guessing population of the Eastern States,
and " reckoned'' over by the producers of
the West. The table embraces Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Missouri
DOMESTIC ANIMALS
11
Mules*
that they are absolutely unfit for human ^ eat Cattle
food, though largely consumed by a low Swine,
grade of the foreign population of cities ;; Sheep.
but the amount of sustenance in a calf only
1840.
1.804,092
4,307,952
11,720,209
5,197,906
IN THE NEW STATES.
1S50. Increase.
2,116,160
5,280,433
13,843,041
8,435,658
312,068
972,481
2,116,832
3,237,752
^ow, to make up the decrease of animals
J
two or three days old is of course very jn th e oJd Stateg> these new ones ought to
small, as the weight is light and the meat' show an i ncrease very considerably in ex-
innutritious. This destruction of the very| cess f tne increase of population; instead
seed of cows as well as beeves, in the very j f wn ich, the population appears to have
extensive regions furnishing milk to the in- increased 35 per cent, while the increase in
habitants of towns and cities^ necessitates a; these two great food-producing classes, the
continual and annually increasing draft upon^y^ race an(j sw ine? does not exceed 20
the newer lands of the Northwest. per C2nt.
Let us first look at the actual decrease of i Now,
animals in New England, New York, New t shows
if we look at one more table, which
the exports of animal products, and
Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, how they have gradually increased during
DOMESTIC ANIMALS IN THE OLD STATES.
1840. 1850. Decrease.
Horses and
Mules, 1,612,883 1,529,189 83,694
Neat Cattle, 6,172,569 6,033,841 89,728
Swine, 6,897,396 4,909,334 1,988,012
Sheep, 11,872,622 5,450,678 6,221,950
the last twenty years, w T e think that no one
can fail to see the cause of an increased
price of meats.
Exports of animal products and bread-
stuffs :
This shows a very large decrease, but
Period of
1836-'40 inclusive,
1842-'46
nothing to be compared with what will ke'Jg^^g
shown at the next census ; while the popu-
Amount.
I