Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/83

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A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE.
65

loaded market of the place, falls so considerably just for the time, as to afford a good opportunity for laying in a large stock at a materially reduced price. But to those outside and far off, this is only to be done by means of direct local agency and instant action, and for all this, I am glad to say, my young friend satisfactorily arranged.

A Glance also at the Provision Trade, and the World's Great Food Question.

Having finished so satisfactorily my young companion's business, I next put in for a turn at my own; and so, upon our homeward track, we alighted at Old Cincinnati, a place which still conspicuously commanded the world's pork and ham provision trade. But on what an infinitely greater scale after ten centuries, and in what a different style from modern laboratorial resources, so much prompter and cheaper, more cleanly and convenient, than by the slow old processes of natural growth in the superseded prairie or pigsty. I made here, for my own account, some advantageous direct arrangements. It is indeed wonderful how some one place will command a permanent supremacy over all others in certain fabrications; and in nothing is this more remarkable than in our great provision trade. In the mere application, for instance, of artificial essences, in order to imitate the mellowing of time in such meat manufacture, without incurring time's heavy cost in interest of money, this place would hold the lead in the great ham trade, in spite of all expenses of carriage and agency.