The House of Morrell; with a foreword by William ... - University Library

FOREWORD
FOR MORE THAN A GENERATION MEAT PACKING HAS BEEN ONE OF THE
largest industries in the United States. A close rival of the motor
vehicle industry for first place during the days of Presidents Coolidge
and Hoover, meat packing in 1939 ranked second to motor
vehicles in the cost of materials, third in the value of its products,
and eighth in the number of wage earners employed. Within the
brief space of three score years from 1870 to
1930, American inventive
genius, enterprise and capital substituted the modern assembly
line for archaic handicraft methods, allowing meat packing to
achieve a position of preeminence on the American economic scene.
The westward expansion of the meat packing industry followed
the trail
of the pioneers across the Alleghenies and down the Ohio.
As early as
1818 Cincinnati began packing hogs, the "Queen City"
of Ohio being credited by contemporaries as the town which "originated
and perfected the system which packs fifteen bushels of corn
into a pig and packs that pig into a barrel, and sends him over the
mountains and over the ocean to
feed mankind." In 1833, the same
year the Black Hawk Purchase was first invaded by the Iowa pioneers,
De Bow's Review described Cincinnati as
place in all the world."
the "most hoggish
Until 1850 Cincinnati bore the sobriquet, "Porkopolis," its strategic
rail, river and canal connections, its banking facilities and ample
labor supply, combining to make it an ideal meat packing center. In
the meantime such towns as Louisville, Alton and Saint Louis took
up the industry because of their nearness to the supply and their ad-