The urban pig

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forwarded with permission from another list. thought it might be of interest

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From Natural History, December 2002/January 2003, p 80.

Walking Sewers by Ted Steinberg

When Europeans visualized American cities in the nineteenth century, it

was not Indians or buffaloes but pigs that came to mind. " I have not

yet found any city, county, or town where I have not seen these lovable

animals wandering about peacefully in huge herds. " wrote Ole Munch

Raeder, a Norwegian lawyer, during a visit to America in 1847. Swine,

he observed, kept the streets clean by " eating up all kinds of refuse.

And then, when these walking sewers are properly filled up they are

butchered and provide a real treat for the dinner-table. "

Working-class women, who depended on pigs to supply food for the table,

allowed them to scavenge the urban commons for garbage. Thus city pigs

converted people's waste into protein for the working poor. But a food

source to some proved a nuisance to others. By 1849 so many pigs were

wandering the streets of Little Rock, Arkansas, that according to one

newspaper, they had come " to dispute the side walks with _other persons_

[empasis in the original]. " The creatures were not the sedate porkers

one encounters today in children's zoos; they were wild animals that

copulated in public and had the annoying habit of defecating on people.

Worse, they injured and occasionally killed children.

The authorities in New York City had sought to ban swine from the

streets as early as the 1820's. Public outcry led to the repeal of that

ordinance. But Mayor Cadwallader Colden stood firm against the pigs.

" Why, gentlemen! " he remonstrated in 1819, " must we feed the poor at

the expense of human flesh? " Eliminate the urban commons, he argued,

and the poor would be forced to find jobs to pay for food, instead of

taking their meals at the expense of the city's more refined residents.

As for the role of swine in street cleaning, Colden intoned, " I think

our corporation will not employ brutal agency fof that object when men

can be got to do it. "

In 1821 city authorities went to war against the pigs, taking many into

custody when Irish and black women banded together to defend the

animals. Other significant pig-related conflicts erupted in 1825, 1826,

1830, and 1832. The fatal blow to the urban commons came in 1849.

Cholera broke out in New York, and health officials linked the outbreak

to the city's filthy conditions. No animal symbolized dirt more clearly

than the pig. Police, armed with clubs, drove thousands of swine from

the dwellings of the poor, banishing them uptown. By 1860 the area

below 86th Street had been secured as a pig-free zone. And by the last

decade of the nineteenth century, the urban commons - a surrogate for

the open range in the South and West - had vanished from the scene in

cities throughout America. The urban pig was ultimately exiled to the

farmyard, where, tho this day, it perpetuates for people the division

between the country and the city.

About the author: Ted Steinberg is a professor of history and law at

Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. This essay is

adapted from hi book _Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History_,

which was published this past May by Oxford University Press.