CHICAGO THE GREATEST PORK AND BEEF MARKET IN THE WORLD.

These figures show Chicago to be the most prominent packing point in the world. It has secured that position by the advantages of its position and the perfection of its communications, both natural and artificial. To the east cheap transportation of provisions is afforded by lakes and canals; while from the west numerous lines of railroad furnish the only means of carriage which can profitably be used for the transportation of live stock. Living animals must be transported rapidly, for they rapidly become unfit for butchering. Canals and rivers never can compete with railroads for this class of freight. The country reached by railroads which lead into Chicago is especially productive of corn, and consequently well calculated for the production of hogs and cattle. These can be raised for this market at a profit even in the interior of Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota, although the freights on grain from points so distant make it a profitless crop unless fed to stock. Little of the grain received in this market is raised west of the Mississippi. The rates of freight will not permit it. The territory from which we receive live stock is four or five times as extensive as that from which we receive grain. Great as is this branch of business, it is yet in its infancy. Chicago must always be the great live stock emporium, and the great provision manufacturer for the Eastern and European markets. For a number of years Cincinnati was the greatest packing point in the country, and was known to every one as the great Porkopolis. Until 1861 she held the palm. Her business has not decreased, but ours has increased. The following table will illustrate the extent and the growth of this business in these two cities sincə 1854:

The receipts and shipments of hogs at Chicago since 1852 are shown

in the following table:

The following table shows the number of hogs packed in the seven States-Obio, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Kentucky -since 1860. It is, of course, incomplete, because many of the smaller towns make no returns, but includes the business of all the leading packing points:

THE DECREASE OF THE HOG CROP.

It will be remarked that the hog crop reached its maximum in the season of 1862-63, and that there has been since that time a considerable decrease in production. That this has not been occasioned by a decrease in the demand will be very plainly shown by a comparison of the prices paid for live and dressed hogs for a series of years. highest and the lowest prices paid during the season:

The table shows the

During the war the demand for pork was unusually and unnaturally great. To answer this demand farmers pushed forward all the animals which would answer for market, including many which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been preserved for stock and for breed.ng. The consequence was that the number of animals was sensibly diminished, and the crop of 1863-64 considerably less than that of the previous season. The next season shows a remarkable falling off in the crop from the action of similar causes, and, as a consequence, the demand continuing remarkably great, and the supply being remarkably small, prices rose enormously, and dressed hogs, which sold at $3 50 per cwt. in the first year of the war, brought $15 readily before it closed.

With the close of the war the army demand has ceased, but in its place we have an extensive Southern demand, and as the crop has not increased, but considerably decreased, prices have continued better than were ever known before last year, in spite of the cheapness of corn.

SUBSIDIARY MANUFACTURES.

In enumerating the manufactories of the city it is not usual to include the packing-houses; yet these are truly manufactories, where raw material, such as cattle and hogs, are transformed into pork, beef, hams, lard, tallow, etc., by the aid of machinery and labor. This business is one of the most important interests of the city, and occupies the capital and capacity of many of our most energetic and wealthiest citizens, gives employment to thousands of laborers, and produces a very large proportions of our exports. It is easy enough to count the packing establishments and to ascertain the number of laborers which they employ, but this will give us only a slight idea of the industrial importance of the business. Besides the nien who are directly employed in the packing-houses, we must remember the hundreds who are engaged in moving the stock and the provisions manufactured from them to and from the various depots, and in connection with the carriage of such freight on the railroads which bring in stock and dressed hogs and take out provisions.

The manufacture of barrels and tierces and packing boxes, which is so extensive in the city, and gives employment to hundreds of mechanics at a season when work is usually scarce, is supported entirely by the packing interest. The consumption of salt in these establishments is enormous, and creates an mense trade in this material, giving employment to ships and sailors and dealers. The business of the packing-houses is

mostly confined to four months of the cold season, when laborers are unable to prosecute such occupations as are practiced in the open air, and when work is scarce. During the winter months, hundreds of carpenters, masons and bricklayers, and thousands of laborers who find employment in the summer in lumber yards, and in connection with building, are left without their accustomed occupation. These packing houses afford employment at this time, and many who exercise mechanical occupations during the summer find steady work and good pay in them throughout the winter. Some idea of the importance of this business may be gathered from the fact that more than $20,000,000 was expended by our packers last year for the cattle and hogs which they put up.

GENERAL REFLECTIONS, ETC.

The advantages of this business, however, are not limited to the citizens of Chicago. Our packing-houses are of immense importance to all the producers of stock. Everything which in any way facilitates the transportation of produce from the farm to the consumer is of great value to the producer. Hogs and cattle, when reduced into barrels of pork and beef, of lard and tallow, are not only materially reduced in weight, but put into a much more convenient and manage ble form. A few days' con finement in cars tells wonderfully on these stock. The shipper must not only pay freight on good butchers' meat, but also on blood and bones, horns, hoofs and all manner of offal; he must hire men to care for them, and buy hay and grain to feed them. Barrels of provisions, on the contrary, submit to be rolled about from wagon to car and warehouse; they will rest contentedly and without injury on the longest journey, with no one to watch over and take care of them; they require no outlay for either food or drink, and are neither decreased in weight or injured in quality by hard travel or long keeping. There is every reason why the cattle and hogs of the west should be butchered and packed,—in other words, should be manufactured into provisions,—before they are exported, and it is not to be wandered at that Chicago and Cincinnati have become the greatest packing points in the world. The causes which are now operating will continue to operate, and we can hardly fix a limit to the increase which may be expected in packing operations. The great weight of grain compared with its value will always tend to discourage shipments of breadstuffs to distant markets, and we must expect to see trade in live stock and provisions increase more rapidly, and reach greater proportions, than the grain trade. There are many reasons why it is desirable that the farms of the west should be devoted to raising stock rather than grain for export. Besides the difference in the cost of transportation which has just been mentioned, a very important consideration is the difference in the effect upon farming lands. Repeated crops of wheat and corn will eventually exhaust even the rich soil of western prairies; flocks and herds enrich the field which feed them. Continued cropping of prairie farms will sooner or later leave the land, like that of the exhausted plantations of Virginia, barren and unproductive; while a system of culture which includes the raising of ammals, and consequently the production and use of fertilizing agents, will preserve and increase the productive capacity of this magnificent agricultural country which is now deservedly known as the garden of the world.

APPLICATION OF HYDRAULICS TO STEAMSHIPS.

The London Daily News says that on the 7th of April an unpretending looking little steamship of eighty seven tons, named the Nautilus, left London bridge with a company of practical engineers, naval architects, and other scientific men on her decks. She was innocent of paint, unencumbered with masts and rigging, and looked altogether rather rough and home-made as she started off on her trial trip. The novelty was that the vessel was propelled with neither paddle nor screw, and the river-faring people stared with no little incredulity on the strange innovation. The Nautilus is the property of private gentlemen who have sufficient faith in what is known as 16 Ruthven's hydraulic propeller,” to fit her up with it, and challenge the attention of the scientific world to the invention. The principle is so simple, and its promised advantages are so enormous that, if the expectations of the promoters are realised, the revolution in merchant shipping will be almost as great as that caused by the substitution of iron armor for oaken planks in the navy. The importance of the results involved certainly deserve he close observation with which the scientific gentlemen on board watched the experiment; and the almost unanimous conclusions arrived at appeared to be highly favorable to the newly applied motive power.

The principle can be described in a single sentence. In the centre of the ship, and below the water line, there is fixed a kind of Turbine wheel, supplied with water through holes in the vessel's bottom, and which, being set in motion by an ordinary steam engine, revolves rapidly, and drives out a thick perpetual column of water through apertures, termed nozzles, on each side of the ship. This propelling power, unlike the paddle and screw, does not force the vessel ahead by pushing back the water, but acts directly on the vessel, (something like the recoil produced by firing a gun,) preventing, of course, that loss of power caused by every revolution of the paddle or screw. The all important agents, the nozzles, are the tubes through which the water is expelled from the wheel to the outlet apertures on the water line. When the steady stream is directed towards the stern the ship goes ahead; when to the stern, she backs; and when the streams flow one each way, the vessel, as if en a pivot, turns on her own length. These nozzles are so potent that they can be used to steer as well as to propel the ship; so that the smashing of a rudder would be a matter of perfect indifference. The advantage h re is immense, when it is remem. bered how many disasters at sea bave been traceable to the loss of a rudder, the breaking down of a paddle, or the fouling of a screw In the Nautilus no portion of the machinery is exposed. If she were a ship of war the invariable attempt of the enemy to shoot away paddles, screw, and rudder would be therefore useless; and if she were a merchantman she would not labor under the disadvantage of paddles to diminish her sailing powers, or of that inevitable weakness of stern which attends the use of the screw. Again, the leak, which in other ships too often means hopeless destruction, becomes here, if not a positive blessing, at least no source of danger or inconvenience, because the greedy wheel can be made to swallow up the dangerous water, use it to increase the speed of the vessel, and in doing so to send it out considerably faster than it came in. These are put forward as the main advantages, but it will at once be seen they would involve others, secondary perhaps to a certain extent, but still fraught with benefit. Thus, the uniform working of the machinery prevents vibration, and consequently wear and tear; the pitching and rolling of a heavy sea produces none of that vexatious reaction which strains every part of the ship; the steiner leaves no swell, and very little ferment behind; the peculiarity of