e. The total
value of the products of wholesale slaughtering and meat packing in
1900 amounted in value to $700,000,000, of which more than one-half was
produced in three cities, Chicago, Kansas City and South Omaha. In
Chicago alone 2,000,000 cattle and 22,000,000 hogs were packed. The
chief market for the numerous products of the packing establishments
was in the manufacturing districts of the East. The eastbound rail
shipments of provisions from Chicago in 1900 averaged about 20,000 tons
a week.

_Cotton._ The geographical limits of the cotton belt had been reached
before 1860 and consequently there was no further extension, but the
cotton acreage was increased from about 13,000,000 acres to more than
30,000,000 acres during the period. Texas in 1900 had over 7,000,000
acres of land devoted to cotton raising and seven more of the thirteen
states in the cotton belt each had an acreage of more than 1,000,000.
The chief interior cotton markets in 1898 were Houston, St. Louis,
Memphis, Augusta, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Little Rock and Shreveport. The
city of Houston, through which passed a large part of the Texas crops,
destined for export from Galveston, had the heaviest receipts amounting
to 1,800,000 bales. St. Louis and Cincinnati owed their prominence to
their position as natural gateways through which cotton passed to
Northern markets from Texas and the lower valley of the Mississippi.
Among the Southern seaports New Orleans held the lead in cotton
receipts until 1899, when Galveston took first place. Together these
two cities shipped nine-tenths of the cotton exported by the way of the
Gulf of Mexico. On the Atlantic coast Savannah held the lead in cotton
receipts. The trade of Charleston declined somewhat after 1880; Norfolk
and Wilmington, of relatively small importance before the war, became
large markets during this period, the former ranking next to Savannah
after 1880.

The "overland movement" of cotton by rail to the North, which began in
1855, developed to large proportions after the war. This movement
represented the results of the efforts of the railroads to secure a
share of the traffic that had formerly belonged entirely to the
coasting trade. The "overland" traffic originated in all the cotton
states, most of it passing through St. Louis and the gateways on the
Ohio and Potomac rivers to North Atlantic States to be sold to Eastern
spinners or exported to Europe. In 1899 the all-rail movement of cotton