The Third Cartoon
The third cartoon represents the lard rendering and pork-salting process. On the right are the open kettles placed over a furnace heated by a wood fire. In these the leaf fat, cut into small pieces, is place and rendered. The process, during which a man stirs the contents of the kettles continuously, requires three hours. The lard is then dipped, cracklings and all, into a double-cylinder iron screw press. The inner cylinder had its sides thickly perforated with small holes, and itself nearly fills the outer one. A wooden piston fitted to the inner cylinder is driven down upon its contents by a powerful screw. The lard as it runs from the press is pumped into large iron coolers and allowed to settle, after which it is drawn off into wooden tierces of about three hundred pounds capacity each, and branded "choice kettle lard," and is now ready for market. The cake of lean meat and fibre in the cylinder, called "crackling," becomes for hogs or poultry, or material for the manufacture of artificial guano for fertilizing purposes.
A little further to the right in the cartoon are seen the tops of two great iron tanks, into one of which a man is forking some scraps of meat. These tanks are sixteen feet high by six feet in diameter. Four of them are used in such an establishment as the cartoons represent. Their bases rest upon the first-story floor, and their tops rise a couple of feet above the floor of the second story at a point conveniently near to the men who clean the entrails. The fat obtained by these men (it averages about seven pounds to each hog) is washed in two changes of running water, drained dry, and then thrown into the steam-tank, and subjected for nine or ten hours to a pressure of fifty pounds of steam to the square inch. After this steam is taken off, the lard pumped into tanks where after settling, it is drawn into tierces, and branded "steam lard," ready for the market. Some houses steam the entrail fat, the heads, and the trimmings separately; others mix them; and others still render leaf fat and other kinds together by steam. "Choice steam lard" is made from steaming the entire fat product of the hog. When the fat-yielding parts are steamed separately they are designated by the name of the part used, except that the yield of trimmings is called "head lard."
The Curing Department
This department is represented by the left-hand side of the third cartoon. Often two stories of the cellar are devoted, in large establishments, to this process. These rooms are cold and damp, the floors covered with salt. The meat comes down the chute the men rub it with salt, and lay it in piles about three feet high, after the manner of masonry. In a few days it is overhauled, resalted, re-piled, and so on, repeatedly, making the stacks each time a little higher, until they at last reach the height of ten feet. Hams are sugar cured by first lying twenty-four hours treated to a small amount of saltpetre, after which they are put in a mixture of brine and molasses, which is renewed in ten days.
The styles in which this meat is put up would require much space to describe. The mode is adapted to the market for which it is destined. English meats are salted and put up in boxes of about four hundred pounds each. Then there is scarcely any end of the uses to which the pork product is applied. From the cracklings, soap and a fertilizer are made; from steamed lard are made lard-oil, glycerin, and stearine, the latter forming material for candles; the hoofs are used by glue makers; the hair is spread thinly on the earth for several months, then gathered up, washed, combed, and twisted into ropes, thus forming the curled hair used in mattresses.
In 1850, when park packing began to assume an importance as a separate branch of business, the whole number of hogs cut in the United States, west of the mountains, was 500,000 head; in the year ending March 1, 1873, these states packed over five and half million hogs. The seven principal packing points for this year, and the number of hogs packed, were:
| Cincinnati, Ohio | 626,305 |
| Chicago, Illinois | 1,425,079 |
| St. Louis, Missouri | 538,000 |
| Milwaukee, Wisconsin | 303,500 |
| Louisville, Kentucky | 302,246 |
| Indianapolis, Indiana | 196,317 |
| Kansas City, Missouri | 180,922 |
| --------- | |
| Total of seven cities | 3,572,369 |
These figures are from the standard packing, and so not include summer packing, which would perhaps add ten per cent. to the amount. Hitherto, the pork market has been chiefly in this country and in Europe. Now the eyes of the dealers are expectantly turning westward, looking for a demand which they believe will be sure to come at no far-off day from the Celestial Empire. Chinamen learn to relish pork in California, and going home they bear testimony of its qualities to the teeming millions of China.
The entire process of slaughtering, cutting, curing, and packing in an establishment killing fifteen hundred average hogs a daily requires about one hundred and fifty hands. Thus one man prepares ten hogs, or about one and a half tons of pork, lard, and the like, for market each working-day, which will be about one thousand hogs to each hand during the season.
from Harpers Weekly, September 6, 1873