Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:12:25.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebellum America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

John Komlos
John Komlos
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History and of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A decline in nutritional status is inferred from data on the height and weight of West Point cadets in the antebellum period. The decline was geographically widespread and affected farmers and blue-collar workers the most; middle-class cadets did not experience a decline in nutritional status until the Civil War. Nutritional status declined because meat output did not keep pace with population growth. Urbanization and the expansion of the industrial labor force increased the demand for food. However, the agricultural labor force grew at a slower pace, and productivity growth in food production was insufficient to redress the imbalance.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 897 - 927
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Komlos, John, “Patterns of Children's Growth in East-Central Europe in the Eighteenth Century,” Annals of Human Biology, 13 (01/02 1986), pp. 33–48;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedWard, W. Peter and Ward, Patricia C., “Infant Birth Weight and Nutrition in Industrializing Montreal,” American Historical Review, 89 (04 1984), pp. 324–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

2 Komlos, John, “Stature and Nutrition in the Habsburg Monarchy: The Standard of Living and Economic Development in the Eighteenth Century,” American Historical Review, 90 (12. 1985), pp. 1149–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3 Sokoloff, Kenneth L. and Villaflor, Georgia C., “Early Achievement of Modern Stature in America,” Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), pp. 1–7;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedSteckel, Richard H., “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity,” this JOURNAL, 46 (09. 1986), pp. 721–42.Google Scholar

4 Fogel, Robert W., “Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality since 1700: Some Preliminary Findings,” in Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E. eds., Long Term Factors in American Economic Growth, National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 51 (Chicago, 1987).Google ScholarMargo, Robert A. and Steckel, Richard H., “Heights of Native-Born Whites during the Antebellum Period,” this JOURNAL, 43 (03 1983), pp. 167–74. Birth weight of babies born in the Philadelphia alms house also declined between 1856 and 1866. I am indebted to Claudia Goldin and to Robert Margo for making these preliminary data available to me.Google ScholarPubMed

5 Gallman, Robert E., “Changes in Total U.S. Agricultural Factor Productivity in the Nineteenth Century,” Agricultural History, 46 (01. 1979), pp. 191–210.Google ScholarGailman, Robert E., “The Pace and Pattern of American Economic Growth,” in Davis, Lance E., Easterlin, Richard A., and Parker, William N. eds., American Economic Growth: An Economist's History of the United States, (New York, 1972), pp. 15–60.Google Scholar

6 National Archives, Washington, D.C., Military Archives Division, Record Group 94, entries 103, 234. There are no blacks in the sample. In the antebellum period about 7.5 percent of the candidates were rejected. Morrison, James Jr, “The Best School in the World”: West Point, the Pre-Civil War Years, 1833–1866 (Kent, 1986), p. 65. Generally, applicants rejected on the basis of the physical examination do not appear on the lists.Google Scholar

7 The physical description of the candidates was recorded upon entrance to the academy, consequently it reflects nutritional status prior to entering the academy.Google Scholar

8 Archive of the West Point Military Academy, Record Group 404, no. 196. Lists relating to economic and social status of cadets' parents; Circumstances of Parents of Cadets, 1842–1910.Google Scholar

9 Similarly, an index number of 99 means that the cadet was 1 percent below the average for his age. In this manner the index of height can be considered without regard to the age of the cadet.Google Scholar

10 For this index average weight for age was used for those born in the 1860s.Google Scholar

11 Sutter, Jean, Izac, René E., and Toan, Tran Ngoc, “L'Evolution de la Taille des Polytechniciens, 1801–1954,” Population, 13 (07/09 1958), pp. 373–406;CrossRefGoogle ScholarVienna, , Austria, , Kriegsarchiv, , Kadettenschule, ; Bowles, Gordon T., New Types of Old Americans at Harvard and at Eastern Women's Colleges (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. 19.Google Scholar

12 Fogel, “Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality.”Google Scholar

13 After all, political connections were needed to gain admission to the school.Google Scholar

14 The 1.4 cm decline refers to all age groups. This number is not reported in the tables presented in the essay, but the evidence is available from the author on request. The data on the recruits are from Fogel, “Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality,” Table A.1.Google Scholar

15 Komlos, “Patterns of Children's Growth”; Floud, Roderick and Wachter, Kenneth W., “Poverty and Physical Stature, Evidence on the Standard of Living of London Boys, 1770–1870,” Social Science History, 6 (FaIl 1982), PP. 422–52.Google Scholar

16 Data available from the author upon request.Google Scholar

17 Bowles, New Types of Old Americans, p. 20. Only 10 percent of the Harvard fathers were manual workers.Google Scholar

18 They were apparently asked to rank themselves with strong pressure to choose the moderate designation in order to forestall the criticism that the school was an elitist institution. I am indebted to Peter Karsten for this suggestion.Google Scholar

19 In the 1820s and 1830s Civil War army recruits born in rural areas were also taller (by 2.2 cm) than urban-born recruits. Margo and Steckel, “Height of Native-Born Whites,” p. 169.Google Scholar

20 The pattern of stature by residence, that is, the state from which the cadet was appointed, is very similar to the pattern of stature by birthplace. Averages for the whole period (1820–1870) by residence and birthplace did not diverge from one another by more than 0.2 percent in any region. Evidence available from the author on request.Google Scholar

21 Tennessee was the only state and the South the only region whose cadets maintained an index of stature above 100.0 throughout the antebellum period. Cadets of all states showed some signs of deterioration in stature, but those born in Tennessee appear to have withstood the stresses of the period most successfully.Google Scholar

22 Bowles, New Types of Old Americans, p. 25.Google Scholar

23 Easterlin, Richard A., “Population Issues in American Economic History: A Survey and Critique,” in Gallman, Robert E. ed., Research in Economic History, supplement 1, (1977), pp.131–58.Google Scholar

24 Rosenberg, Charles, The Cholera Years: The United States, 1832, 1849, 1866 (Chicago, 1962), p. 90.Google Scholar

25 In New York City, for instance, only 4 percent of the population contracted the disease in 1849. Of those who did, 40 percent died.Google Scholar

26 Fogel, “Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality”;Google ScholarMcMahon, Sarah, “Provisions Laid Up for the Family: Toward a History of Diet in New England, 1650–1850,” Historical Methods, 14 (Winter 1981), pp. 22–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Rosenberg, The Cholera Years, p. 1.Google Scholar

28 Williams, Greer, The Plague Killers: Untold Stories of Three Great Campaigns Against Disease (New York, 1969), pp. 94, 122.Google Scholar

29 It is possible that not many first-generation Americans would have been nominated to WestPoint, given the political connections needed for appointment to the academy. Morrison, The Best School, p. 62.Google Scholar

30 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975), vol. I, pp. 12, 14, 15, 105.Google Scholar

31 At least in Philadelphia the labor force participation of female heads of households declined to some extent during the antebellum period. Goldin, Claudia, “The Economic Status of Women in the Early Republic: Quantitative Evidence,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 16 (Winter, 1986), pp. 375–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 The decline was somewhat more pronounced if the caloric intake is converted to adult male equivalent. Evidence is available upon request.Google Scholar

33 The decline relative to 1840 was not caused by an unusually good harvest in 1840, since the 1840 Harvest appears to have been average for the period. Gallman, Robert E., “A Note on the Patent Office Crop Estimates, 1841–1848,” this JOURNAL, 23 (06 1963), pp. 185–95.Google Scholar

34 Lebergott, Stanley, The Americans: An Economic Record, (New York, 1984), P. 66; Historical Statistics of the United States, vol. 1, pp. 12, 14, 15.Google Scholar

35 Gailman, Robert E., “The Agricultural Sector and the Pace of Economic Growth: U.S. Experience in the Nineteenth Century,” in Klingaman, David C. and Vedder, Richard K., eds., Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History (Athens, 1975), pp. 35–76, esp. p. 42. Gallman estimates that labor productivity in grain and cotton production rose at a rate of 0.3 percent per annum. This is far below the rate that would have been needed to maintain food intake at the level of the 1820s. In the 1840s value added per gainful worker actually declined by 5 percent, and the rate of growth between 1839 and 1869 was 0.6 percent per annum.Google ScholarGallman, Robert E., “Commodity Output, 1839–1889,” National. Bureau of Economic Research, Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 24, (Princeton, 1960), pp. 13–67.Google Scholar

36 The impression is propagated in the literature that labor productivity increased considerably during the first half of the century. One finds in Stanley Lebergott's textbook, for instance, that the number of man-hours required to produce 100 bushels of wheat declined from 373 to 233. The Americans, p. 301. He quotes McElroy, Robert, Hecht, Reuben, and Gavett, Earle, “Labor Used to Produce Field Crops, Estimates by States,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Statistical Bulletin, No. 346 (May 1964), p. 3. This publication, in turn,Google Scholar relies on Cooper, Martin, Barton, Glenn, and Brodell, Albert, “Progress of Farm Mechanization,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publications, No. 630 (10. 1947) p. 3. The latter study, however, focuses mainly on the twentieth century, and its authors do not divulge their sources and methods for the nineteenth century, merely stating that “yields for 1800 and 1840 are estimates by the authors.” This assertion might suffice if one's interest in the nineteenth century is peripheral, but the evidence is insufficient to understand the dynamics of antebellum agricultural development. Hence Gallman's productivity estimate appears to be the most plausible.Google Scholar

37 Lebergott, The Americans, p. 66. Of course, this assertion is not strictly correct because some members of the agricultural labor force did not produce nutrients.Google Scholar

38 Gallman, “The Agricultural Sector and the Pace of Economic Growth,” p. 47.Google Scholar

39 Kidder, Frank, The Architect's and Builder's Pocketbook (New York, 1900), p. 721. White adults also weighed less than they do today. The average weight of men in Boston at the time of the Civil War was 141.5 pounds, 25 pounds below the standard of the 1950s. (In contrast, however, adult male slaves weighed about 157 pounds, much closer to modern standards.)Google ScholarMargo, Robert A. and Steckel, Richard H., “The Height of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health,” Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), pp. 516–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Center for Health Statistics, “NCHS Growth Charts, 1976,” Monthly Vital Statistics Report, 25, No. 3, supplement (June 22, 1976) (HRA 76–1120). The average weight at ages 18–24 of white women born in the 1950s was 138 pounds. “Weight and Height of Adults 18–74 Years of Age: United States, 1971–74,” U.S. Department of Health Education, and Welfare Publication No. (PHS) 79–1659 (May 1979) p. 24; “Weight by Height and Age for Adults 18 to 74 Years: United States, 1971–74,” U.S Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Publication No. (PHS) 79–1656 (Sep. 1979) p. 18. Sixteen- year-old black boys weighed about as much as 20-year-old cadets at West Point a hundred years earlier.Google ScholarEveleth, Phyllis, Bowers, Evelyn, and Schall, Joan, “Secular Change in Growth of Philadelphia Black Adolescents,” Human Biology, 51 (05 1979), pp. 213–28. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's height and weight standards for men 172cm (without clothing), medium frame, aged 25–59 in 1983 was 138–150 pounds. Taking the mean of this range would make our 20-year-old cadets about 14 pounds below today's norm. The British weight standard in 1966 was 140 pounds. This would be 9 pounds above the mean of the 19-year-old cadets and at the 26 centile of the British weight distribution.Google ScholarPubMed

41 In the category of farmers 174.4 vs. 173.5cm and among urban residents 172.1 vs. 171.2 cm. Margo and Steckel, “Height of Native-Born Whites,” p. 169.Google Scholar

42 However, the neglected items could not have been important because the estimates are reasonably close to the ones made for the 1880s and thereafter. The lower-bound estimates actually appear to be a couple of hundred calories too high.Google Scholar

43 I am indebted to James Tanner of the Institute of Child Health, University of London, for this Suggestion.Google Scholar

44 The divergence of consumption and production per adult male equivalent after 1870 provides a clue to why the stature of West Point cadets diverged from that of regular recruits after the Civil War. While the stature of cadets increased, that of regular soldiers did not. The export and import of nutrients may help to explain this pattern insofar as the origin and destination of the flow of nutrients through international trade affected the various elements of the population differently. While food exports were composed of such products as corn, ham, and bacon, eaten generally by the population, nutrient imports were made up of such products as sugar and exotic fruit, whose consumption in the population was not as widespread. It is understandable that the trend in the cadets' stature diverged from that of the regular soldiers because cadets were drawn from better situated families than those of the average recruits.Google Scholar

45 For instance, in the 1870s and 1880s pork production stagnated even though corn output doubled. Although, beef production did double, the divergence between corn and pork production shows the dangers of drawing inference from one to the other. Parker, William N., “Agriculture,” et al., eds., American Economic Growth, pp. 369–417.Google Scholar

46 That growth in the livestock population did not keep pace with expansion of the human population was noticed by George Holmes who pointed out that the number of cattle per capita of the population was 0.88 in 1840, but did not reach that level again until 1900. He did not think this to be a statistical artifact. He observed that 1840 “was a time when meat was a much larger fraction of national dietary than in 1900” and added that “a steady, persistent, and strong decline in per capita number of swine in the United States is observed from the first census year in which swine were enumerated to the latest one.” He concluded that “the displacement of meat in the dietary by products of the vegetable kingdom advances slowly but surely.” Holmes, George K., “Meat Situation in the United States,” U.S. Department of Agriculture Report No. 109 (July 1916), part 1, pp. 22, 34;Google ScholarWarren, George and Pearson, Frank estimated food and feed crops production per capita stagnating between 1839 and 1849, rising to 1859, dipping somewhat during the Civil War, and rising thereafter; see Prices (New York, 1933), p. 44. However, their estimate is misleading because it does not contain meat production.Google Scholar See also von Richtofen, Walter Baron, Cattle Raising on the Plains of North America (1st edn. 1885; 2nd edn., Norman, 1964), p. 10.Google ScholarHilliard, Sam, Hogmeat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840–1860 (Carbondale, 1972), p. 66; Hilliard thought that there was a decline in meat consumption accompanied by “ … a marked improvement in the quality of the diet in the nation after about 1840…” Another source suggested that the national average meat consumption between 1830 and 1880 was 175 pounds, of which 150 pounds was pork.Google Scholar Hilliard, Hogmeas and Hoecake, pp. 41, 130; and Cummings, Richard, The American and His Food: A History of Food Habits in the United States (rev. edn.; Chicago, 1941), p. 258 as cited inGoogle ScholarLemon, James T., “Household Consumption in Eighteenth Century America and Its Relationship to Production and Trade: The Situation among Farmers in Southeastern Pennsylvania,” Agricultural History, 41 (01. 1967) pp. 59–70;Google ScholarLive Stock and Meat Statistics (New York, 1957) pp. 283, 284.Google Scholar

47 David, Paul A. and Solar, Peter, “A Bicentenary Contribution to the History of the Cost of Living in America,” in Uselding, Paul, ed., Research in Economic History, 2 (1977), p. 1–80.Google Scholar

48 Adams, Donald Jr, “Prices and Wages in Maryland, 1750–1850,” this JOURNAL, 46 (09. 1986), pp. 625–46.Google Scholar

49 Adams, T. M., “Prices Paid by Farmers for Goods and Services and Received by Them for Farm Products, 1790–1871; Wages of Farm Labor, 1780–1937,” University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station (Feb. 1939). If the agricultural labor market had been in competitive equilibrium, then one would expect money wages in this sector to rise with the rise in the value of their marginal product. Thus wages should have risen with grain prices, unless they were offset by a decline in labor productivity. This is also an indication that labor productivity was not growing as quickly as is sometimes suggested because if it had agricultural wages probably would have risen faster.Google Scholar

50 Rothenberg, Winifred, “The Market and Massachusetts Farmers: A Paradigm of Economic Growth in Rural New England, 1750–1855” (Ph.D dissertation, Brandeis University, 1985), pp. 219, 224.Google Scholar

51 Bezanson, Anne, Gray, Robert, and Hussey, Miriam, Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia 1784–1861 (Philadelphia, 1936), chap. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Rent and services are the only important components of the typical budget which are missing from this index. Regardless of how these missing prices behaved, my argument holds up as long as the cross-price elasticity between food and industrial products is stronger than between food and rent; 80 percent of a typical budget, is, however incorporated into these indexes. Williamson, Jeffrey G. and Lindert, Peter H., American Inequality: A Macro-economic History (New York, 1980), p. 25.Google Scholar

53 Schultz, Henry, Theory and Measurement of Demand (Chicago, 1983);Google Scholar and Wold, M., Demand Analysis (New York, 1953), p. 265Google Scholar as cited in Mansfield, Edwin, Microeconomics, Theory and Applications (2nd edn. New York, 1975), p. 109.Google Scholar

54 David and Solar, “A Bicentenary Contribution,” pp. 1–80.Google Scholar

55 Williamson and Lindert, American Inequality, p. 131.Google Scholar

56 Warren and Pearson, Prices, p. 197.Google Scholar

57 In the twentieth century, the price elasticity of beef is said to be about 0.92, while the price elasticity of wheat is 0.08. Mansfield, Microeconomics, p. 109.Google Scholar

58 Another reason was that immigrants were primarily grain consumers; hence they were more likely to increase the demand for grain than for meat products. Bezanson, et al., Wholesale Prices, p. 24.Google Scholar

59 In the 1880s, for instance, 25 cents could obtain 870 calories if used to purchase beef (sirloin), but 4,000 calories if used to purchase wheat bread. Massachusetts, Bureau of Statistics and Labor, Seventh Annual Report, Public Document No. 15 (Mar. 1886) p. 254.Google Scholar

60 Abel, Wilhelm, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur (1935; 2d edn., Hamburg, 1966).Google Scholar

61 This pattern is supported by data which show that the cost of living of the poor relative to the cost of living of the rich increased somewhat in the 1840s and 1850s. There was considerable annual variation in this index, but between 1844 and 1855 the ratio of the two indexes rose by 13 percent.Google Scholar

62 Steckel, “Height and Per Capita Income”; Williamson and Lindert, American Inequality, pp. 68–70.Google Scholar

63 Rothenberg, Winifred, “A Price Index for Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1855,” this JOURNAL 39 (12. 1979), pp. 975–1001.Google Scholar By 1830 farmers in Massachusetts were buying flour rather than growing grain. Rothenberg, Winifred, “The Market and Massachusetts Farmers, 1750–1855,” this JOURNAL, 41 (06 1981), pp. 283–304.Google Scholar

64 Consumption of Food in the United States, 1909–1948, U.S. Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication No. 691 (Aug. 1949), p. 99.Google Scholar

65 According to one source, losses in shipment might have been about 1 percent. McFall, Robert James, The World's Meat (New York, 1927), p. 116; Consumption of Food in the United States, 1909–1948, p. 129.Google Scholar

66 Holmes, Meat Situation, p. 118. Blood and offal, almost certainly consumed on farms, were turned into fertilizer by some meat packers. The fat of meat often went to the soapmaker. The loss in nutrients for human consumption must have been enormous because blood and offal made up 18 percent of the weight of a swine.Google ScholarWalsh, Margaret, The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry (Lexington, 1982), p. 83. Massachusetts. Bureau of Statistics andGoogle ScholarLabor, , Seventh Annual Report Document, No. 15 (Boston, 1886), p. 260.Google Scholar

67 Hilliard, Hogmeat and Hoecake, pp. 13, 71, 78.Google Scholar

68 The reader should be cautioned that no estimate exists for the calorie requirements of the American population in the nineteenth century. In order to arrive at such an estimate one would have to first calculate the work intensity of the various groups in the society.Google Scholar

69 Lindstrom, Diane, “American Economic Growth before 1840: New Evidence and New Directions,” this JOURNAL, 39 (03. 1979), 289–302;Google ScholarNorth, Douglass, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790 to 1860 (Englewood Cliffs, 1961), pp. 106, 251;Google Scholar Rothenberg, “The Market and Farmers, 1750–1855,” pp. 283–304; Clark, Christopher, “The Household Economy, Market Exchange and the Rise of Capitalism in the Connecticut Valley, 1800–1860,” Journal of Social History, 13 (Winter 1979), pp. 169–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Pope, Clayne L., “Native Adult Mortality in the U.S.: 1770–1870,” in Fogel, R. W., ed., Long-Term Changes in Nurition and the Standard of Living (Berne, 1986), pp. 76–85.Google Scholar

71 A similar pattern is evident in industrializing Montreal. Ward and Ward, “Infant Birth Weight.”Google Scholar

72 Strauss, Frederick and Beane, Louis, “Gross Farm Income and Indices of Farm Production and Prices in the United States 1869–1937,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Technical Bulletin No. 703 (Dec. 1940); Gallman, “Commodity Output,” p. 52.Google Scholar

73 Census, Seventh, “Report of the Superintendent of the Census” (Washington, D.C., 1853).Google Scholar

74 Batemen, Fred, “Improvement in American Dairy Farming, 1850–1910: A Quantitative Analysis,” this JOURNAL, 28 (06 1968), pp. 255–73.Google Scholar

75 Town and Rasmussen, “Farm Gross Product,” p. 283. Calves are not included in the statistics.Google Scholar

76 Swan, Dale Evans, “The Structure and Profitability of the Antebellum Rice Industry: 1859,”(Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1972), p. 230;Google ScholarHilliard, Hog Meal and Hoecake, p. 129;Google ScholarU.S. Department of Agriculture, “Conversion Factors and Weights and Measures for Agricultural Commodities and Their Products” (Washington, D.C., 05 1952).Google Scholar

77 Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957, p. 137; Livestock and Meal Statistics, 1957, pp. 148, 196.Google Scholar

78 Livestock and Meat Statistics, 1957, p. 2.Google Scholar

79 Sutch, Richard, “The Care and Feeding of Slaves,” in David, Paul A. et al. , eds., Reckoning with Slavery (New York, 1976), pp. 246–47;Google ScholarFogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods—A Supplement (Boston, 1974), p. 95; Gallman, “Self Sufficiency.”Google Scholar

80 Swan, “The Structure and Profitability,” pp. 212, 215. Slaughter ratio in the South was assumed to be 0.5.Google Scholar

81 Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake,” pp. 101, 102, 261; Berry, Western Prices, p. 231.Google Scholar

82 Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957, p. 291.Google Scholar

83 Town and Rasmussen, “Farm Gross Product,” p. 297.Google Scholar

84 Strauss and Beane, “Gross Farm Income,” p. 37; according to “Consumption of Food, 1909–1949,” p. 177, humans consumed only 8 percent of the corn crop.Google Scholar

85 Bennett, Merrill and Peirce, Rosemond, “Change in the American National Diet, 1879–1959,” Food Research Institute Studies, 2 (05 1961), pp. 95–119; Consumption of Food,1909–1949, p. 85.Google Scholar

86 Bennett and Peirce, “Change in the American National Diet,” p. 115.Google Scholar

87 Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake, p. 101;Google ScholarBogue, Allan, From Prairie to Corn Belt (Chicago, 1963), pp. 105, 112. Hogs were often fattened on acorns in the woods until five or six weeks before slaughter and were then turned into the cornfields;Google ScholarBerry, Thomas, Western Prices Before 1861 (Cambridge, Mass, 1943), p. 230.Google Scholar

88 McFall, The World's Meat, p. 141. According to one twentieth-century experiment it took 18 bushels of corn to produce a 225-pound hog;Google ScholarSmith, William, Pork Production (New York, 1937), p. 435.Google Scholar

89 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 130, 234; Hilliard, p. 15; “… corn could stand the transportation costs for a moderate distance by canal, river or railway, but could not yet be economically brought from many farms to the local depots.” The perishability of corn also predicated against long distance trade in it. Berry, Western Prices, p. 203.Google Scholar

90 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 94, 101.Google Scholar

91 Ibid., pp. 109.Google Scholar

92 The 1862 figure is most likely an outlier.Google Scholar

93 McFall, The World's Meat, p. 143.Google Scholar

94 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, p. 94.Google Scholar

95 U.S. Census Office, Agriculture of the United States in 1860: Eighth Census (Washington, D.C., 1864), p. cxxxi.Google Scholar

96 Lindstrom, Diane, “Southern Dependence upon Interregional Grain Supplies: A Review of the Trade Flows, 1840–1860,” Agricultural History, 44 (01. 1970), pp. 101–13; Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, p. 131.Google Scholar

97 Berry, Western Prices, p. 231.Google Scholar

98 Personal correspondence with Winifred Rothenberg whose research of Massachusetts farm account books has yielded livestock weights. In addition to the data cited she found some eighteenth-century hog weights which indicate a large increase in weight between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Google Scholar

99 Walsh, The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, pp. 20, 34.Google Scholar

100 Smith, Pork Production, p. 143. It took about a pound of corn per 100 live weight to keep a hog at constant weight, pp. 148, 173.Google Scholar

101 Ibid., pp. 150, 172, 435.Google Scholar

102 Ibid., pp. 171, 175.Google Scholar

103 Holmes, Meat Situation, p. 16. The average caloric content of a pound of meat was said to be 1,040.Google Scholar

104 Watt, Bernice and Merrill, Annabel, Composition of Foods, Raw, Processed, Prepared, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Handbook No. 8 (Dec. 1983).Google Scholar

105 Massachusetts, Bureau of Statistics and Labor, Seventh Annual Report.Google Scholar