Cincinnati In The Early 1800s

Beginning in the early 1800s, Cincinnati was not just a fast-growing metropolis, it was an industrial powerhouse. Its location along the Ohio River made it the ideal spot for manufacturing and transportation of goods in the Midwest, which sparked a long period of population growth from 1800 - 1850. Fueled by the burgeoning meatpacking industry, Cincinnati was dubbed “Porkopolis,” and supplied much of the central and Northeastern United States with meat, primarily pork products; despite this, the urban expansion didn’t last. The growth of the U.S. railroad network and a shift away from water-based transportation meant meatpacking moved to Chicago, leaving Cincinnati a shell of the city it could have been. This paper will examine the rise and

Despite Cincinnati’s distant location from its counterparts in the Northeast, by 1800 it was the largest and fastest growing city in the Midwest, fueled in large part by the meatpacking industry. Cincinnati’s wealthy packers, many of whom started their careers in more developed cities like Boston and New York, facilitated money coming in from the Northeast through contacts from back home, which gave Cincinnati a large head start compared to other midwestern cities and jump-started its meatpacking industry in the early 19th century. In addition to large amounts of capital, the northerners facilitated Cincinnati’s superior banking facilities and promoted the growth of meatpacking plants in the area, as meatpacking was traditionally conducted on a cash basis. From an economic perspective, these businessmen were vital to the city's growth. Their banks made the city more attractive to potential investors, and their unparalleled market savvy spilled over into other sectors making the city a better place to live. As a result, immigrants from all over came to Cincinnati to work in the plants and factories. Using the city's burgeoning working-class population, these financiers and businessmen from the East were in an unparalleled position to take over the industry, with Cincinnati becoming the leading Midwestern meatpacking city during the early

Steamboat traffic on the Ohio River peaked in 1852 at 8,000 steamboat arrivals and departures, up from 5,000 just eight years earlier. Demand continued to increase from markets in the South and Northeast at the same time as rail networks in the U.S. started expanding, which meant that packing plants near railroads would have access to many more pigs, more frequently. The advent of the refrigerated rail car during this time transformed the meatpacking industry completely. Refrigeration meant that meat could be shipped long distances without spoiling and that hogs could be killed in one place and shipped, instead of being herded to the area of consumption before being killed. “The invention of the refrigerator car revolutionized the entire industry and made it possible to place in the world's markets fresh dressed meats prepared at points thousands of miles distant.” This encouraged the growth of large packing centers with rail access like Chicago to expand their operations, as refrigeration was most widely available for trains, not boats. Refrigeration meant that instead of shipping cured or salted meat to its destination, fresh, unsalted cuts of meat could be processed and shipped from a plant thousands of miles