In Meat We Trust (39 page)

I thank her and everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for their patience; seven years is a long time to wait for a payoff. I admire, too, their good cheer and resolve during 2008 and 2009, a grim moment in American publishing. I am grateful, and so should all of us be, that HMH and other publishers support complex projects like this one. The publishing industry, under so much attack these days from so many writers, is a major patron and subsidizer of intellectual work, especially for projects that require years rather than weeks to complete.

Agents facilitate that patronage. I am grateful to Jay Mandel at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment: for his patience and forbearance, for his dry humor (so much the opposite of mine), and above all for his mild eye rolls that motion me toward even keel amid my random, off-keel enthusiasms.

Once again, I thank the staff at Parks Library at Iowa State University. (If only we could convince the state legislature of its importance.) I also visited and received help from the staffs at the University of Iowa library and its special collections department, the Milwaukee Public Library, and the New-York Historical Society. For assistance at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I thank Marcy Altman, Valerie K. Angeli, Layna DeLaurentis, and Steve Zawistowski. I am particularly grateful to Layna for her hospitality, and to Steve for taking time to share with me his knowledge of the Buffet transcriptions of Henry Bergh’s letters. Sibella Kraus supplied me with a copy of a document she’d written. I thank Nancy Hallock and Keith Arbour for their friendship and scholarly solidarity. When I needed some last-minute help, they dispatched it immediately. Onward, comrades!

I thank the small army of physicians, surgeons, nurses, physical therapists, and massage therapists who gave me back my right arm. For a long moment, I was not sure I would be able to finish this book or any other. They pulled me out of the dark and into full health. There are no words to express my gratitude.

My thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress, to the people who created these marvels of media, and to all those who’ve chosen to participate in and shape the New Community. In my mind, the finest aspect of “social” media is the way it allows different generations to talk to and work with each other. During the years I devoted to this book, I learned so much from, and was constantly inspired by, people half my age. I thank all of them.

When the beer book came out in 2006, I landed smack in the middle of the craft beer industry, home to an extraordinary collection of creative, lively, engaging, ambitious, determined people, from those who make the beer, to those who sell it, to those who drink it. Most of all, I appreciate the camaraderie of those who write about craft beer. Every day I read their work and ponder their ideas, and my life is richer for that. Their passion, dedication to critical thinking and good writing, generosity, and friendship inspire me to reach higher and dig deeper. Folks: the next round’s on me.

Where I would be without my friends, I do not know. They know who they are, but I especially thank Carrie and Mark Kabak for the love, laughter, and food; and Anat Baron for her inspiring eye, mind, and will. The Spalings showed up late in the game and almost single-handedly (groupedly?) got me through the last year of this project, and for that, and much more, I am grateful.

As for my family—no one is more fortunate than I. In descending order by age: Bill Robinson, Kay Arvidson, Alys Sterling, Bernard van Maarseveen, Jen Robinson, Trevor Barnes, and the newest member of our tiny tribe, Willem Robinson van Maarseveen.

Of that tribe, my beloved Bill is the center, the heart, the soul. I pray that his noble spirit will be my companion for many more years. Certainly it graces each page of this book.

Finally, the book’s acknowledgment honors Bernard and Jen, who have shared, and with such loving generosity, the greatest of gifts.

Notes

Although most of these notes simply document the sources of quotations, a number of them elaborate on points made in the text. Some digital sources do not contain page numbers; in those cases, I’ve noted that the document was accessed online.

Introduction

[>]
“Truly we may be called”: “Consumption of Meat,”
American Farmer and Spirit of the Agricultural Journals of the Day
3, no. 2 (June 2, 1841): 9.

[>]
I respect the critics: Readers should note that my general argument in this book is a rejection, overt or otherwise, of the Marxists’ critique of “capital.” I am aware of that argument, and its complexities. I don’t agree with it and find it singularly useless for making substantive change.

1. CARNIVORE AMERICA

[>]
 “[ran] over the grass”: Quoted in Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “King Philip’s Herds: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England,”
William and Mary Quarterly
3d series, 51 (October 1994): 604.

[>]
“savage people”: Quoted in ibid., 604.

[>]
“advantageously . . . scituated”: Quoted in James S. Magg, “Cattle Raising in Colonial South Carolina” (master’s thesis, University of Kansas, 1964), 26.

[>]
“Hogs swarm like Vermine”: Quoted in Lewis Cecil Gray,
History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860
(Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1933), 206.

[>]
In Maryland in the late 1600s: The example is from Henry Michael Miller, “Colonization and Subsistence Change on the 17th Century Chesapeake Frontier” (Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1984), 378.

[>]
“live stock”: Quoted in Virginia DeJohn Anderson,
Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America
(Oxford University Press, 2004), 143.

[>]
When we bite: The discussion of the biology, chemistry, and nutrition of meat is based primarily on two sources, both of which are marvels of accessible prose: First, the two editions of Harold McGee’s masterwork
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
. The original edition appeared in 1984 (Collier Books). The revised and updated version—for which McGee rewrote nearly every page—was published in 2004 (Scribner). Second, Alan Davidson’s
Oxford Companion to Food
, 2d ed. (Oxford University Press, 2006). One of the best general sources for information about meat in early human history is Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds.,
The Cambridge World History of Food
(Cambridge University Press, 2000).

[>]
The average white colonial American: Colonial and preindustrial statistics represent the best estimates compiled by many scholars. I relied on information in Edwin J. Perkins, “Socio-Economic Development of the Colonies,” in
A Companion to the American Revolution
, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole (Blackwell Publishers, 2000); and Carole Shammas,
The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America
(Clarendon Press, 1990).

[>]
“[E]ven in the humblest”: Gottlieb Mittelberger,
Journey to Pennsylvania
, ed. and trans. Oscar Handlin and John Clive (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960), 49.

[>]
“because he thought”: Quoted in James E. McWilliams,
A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America
(Columbia University Press, 2005), 185.

[>]
“Custom of ye Country”: All quotes from “A Mutiny of the Servants,”
William and Mary Quarterly
11 (July 1902): 34–37.

[>]
“The Cattle of
Carolina
”: Quoted in Magg, “Cattle Raising,” 28.

[>]
“there was no longer any holding”: William Bradford,
Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647
, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), 253, 254.

[>]
“deer and skins”: Quoted in Anderson,
Creatures of Empire
, 207.

[>]
“Your hogs & Cattle”: Quoted in ibid., 221.

[>]
“Violent Intrusions”: Quoted in ibid., 240.

[>]
“[W]hat will Cattell”: Quoted in ibid., 236.

[>]
One of the most important: For a good description of the cattle-corn-hog complex by one of its practitioners, see William Renick,
Memoirs, Correspondence and Reminiscences
(Union-Herald Book and Job Printing, 1880), 11, 12. Renick originally wrote the essay for the 1860 United States Census. The best surveys of this phase of American agriculture are in John C. Hudson,
Making the Corn Belt: A Geographical History of Middle-Western Agriculture
(Indiana University Press, 1994); and Paul C. Henlein,
Cattle Kingdom in the Ohio Valley, 1783–1860
(University of Kentucky Press, 1959).

[>]
“long moving lines”: Rev. I. F. King, “The Coming and Going of Ohio Droving,”
Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications
17 (1908): 249.

[>]
“up the river”: Quoted in James Westfall Thompson,
A History of Livestock Raising in the United States, 1607–1860
(1942; reprint, Scholarly Resources, 1973), 95. The book was initially published as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural History Series no. 5, November 1942.

[>]
“I alwase”: Harris’s life is recounted in Mrs. Mary Vose Harris, ed., “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Harris,”
Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1923
30 (1923): 72–101.

[>]
“There are few things”: “Consumption of Meat,” 9.

[>]
One popular cookery book: For this example see “General Operations of Cookery,”
American Farmer
7, no. 35 (November 18, 1825): 278.

[>]
“nicely”: A Farmer’s Wife, “Household Affairs,”
Cultivator
1 (April 1834): 31.

[>]
“free negroes”: Quoted in “Cobbett on the Expenses of House- Keeping in America,”
The American Farmer
6, no. 16 (July 9, 1824): 123.

[>]
“highly-seasoned flesh-meat”: Quoted in Stephen Nissenbaum,
Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform
(Greenwood Press, 1980), 34.

[>]
“overload[ed] the stomach”:
Cincinnati Mirror
, November 26, 1831, p. 35.

[>]
“beyond all question”: Jno. Stainback Wilson, “Health Department,”
Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine
60 (February 1860): 178.

[>]
“excessive use of fat”: Jno. Stainback Wilson, “Health Department,”
Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine
57 (November 1858): 372.

[>]
“Eastern demand”: “Meats, Milk, and Fruits,”
New York Times
, May 25, 1852, p. 2.

[>]
“
great law of the movement
”: Silas L. Loomis, “Distribution and Movement of Neat Cattle in the United States,”
Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1863
(Government Printing Office, 1863), 259; emphasis in original. Also published as HR Ex. Doc. no. 91, 38th Cong., 1st sess.

[>]
“western”: Charles W. Taylor, “Importance of Raising and Feeding More Cattle and Sheep,”
Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1864
(Government Printing Office, 1865), 255. Also published as HR Ex. Doc. no. 68, 38th Cong., 2d sess.

[>]
“as literally to blacken”: Quoted in William Cronon,
Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
(W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), 215.

[>]
“Why”: Quoted in Scott Michael Kleeb, “The Atlantic West: Cowboys, Capitalists and the Making of an American Myth” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2006), 88.

[>]
“long-legged”: “New-York Cattle Market,”
New York Tribune
, July 4, 1854, p. 8.

[>]
“Stampeded last night”: “Driving Cattle from Texas to Iowa, 1866,”
Annals of Iowa
14, no. 4 (April 1924): 252, 253.

[>]
“contented to live quietly”: Joseph G. McCoy, “Historic and Biographic Sketch,”
Kansas Magazine
1 (December 1909): 49. For a marvelous appreciation of McCoy, see Don D. Walker, “History Through a Cow’s Horn: Joseph G. McCoy and His Historical Sketches of the Cattle Trade,” in
Clio’s Cowboys: Studies in the Historiography of the Cattle Trade
(University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 1–24.

[>]
“establish a market”: Joseph G. McCoy,
Historical Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest
, ed. Ralph P. Bieber (1874; reprint, Arthur H. Clark Company, 1940), 112.

[>]
“a man of hasty temper”: C. F. Gross to J. B. Edwards, May 4, 1925, J. B. Edwards Collection, microfilm version, Kansas State Historical Society.

[>]
“log huts”: Quoted in Ralph P. Bieber, “Introduction,” in Joseph G. McCoy,
Historical Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest
(1874; reprint, Arthur H. Clark Company, 1940), 58.

[>]
“Texas fever”: In the 1860s, theories abounded about the cause of Texas fever, but another quarter-century passed before veterinarians discovered the source of the disease: microscopic organisms that attacked the animals’ blood cells. Ticks spread the disease from one animal to another.