Page:Evolution of American Agriculture (Woodruff).djvu/56

52 was rapidly developing the packing industry. Kansas City, St. Joseph, Omaha, Sioux City, St. Louis and Chicago became great slaughtering centers.

In connection with the cattle-feeding industry the raising of hogs became a by-product, as the hogs could be fattened on the droppings and wasteagewastage [sic] of the cattle.

We have seen the beginning of the dairy industry in the Colonial period and the subsequent effort to improve the breeds of dairy cattle. Butter making was practically confined to the supply of various local demands and the surplus of milk was converted into cheese, but the refrigeration system began to open up the possibilities of the butter market and the invention of the mechanical creameries in 1880 caused a revolution in the industry.

The commercial butter making center was at first in Orange County, New York, but the Babcock butter fat test, the centrifugal cream separator, and the bacteria method of "ripening" cream so developed the business that the center of manufacture moved Westward to Elgin, Illinois. The Americans are not great cheese eaters, and the foreign markets have special tastes in this regard, hence cheese making naturally declined and, on the strength of the national demand, butter making supplanted it.

The Civil War produced a violent agricultural change in the South. The emancipation of the slaves and the bankruptcy of the Southern planters required a reorganization of the cotton industry. This reorganization was encouraged by the high prices for cotton on the English market, which reached 43 cents per bushel in 1865.

But the reorganization was not a judicious one