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The 1875 Map that Imagined the U.S as a Giant HogThe Porcineograph: A pig-shaped map of the United States. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/PUBLIC DOMAINThe 21st century is obsessed with bacon. bacon ice cream, bacon on and in beef, chicken and fish, pre-cooked bacon to carry as a snack, bacon everything. But this current obsession wwith pork is nothing new. After the Civil War, an eccentric entrepreneur distributed 2,500 maps of the United States in the shape of a pig to Civil War veterans.William Emerson Baker was born in Roxbury in 1828.[1] He was one of the seven sons of a not-too-successful businessman. Baker attended Roxbury High School, and hoped to go to college, but there was not enough money, so he went out to work at the age of sixteen. He was apprenticed to a wool-jobbing firm, and was paid $50 in his first year.[2] This was generally considered adequate – apprentices received room and board along with their training. Nevertheless, in his second year Baker suggested that be paid on commission, a percentage of all the new business he could bring in. That year he earned nearly $1000.[3] He saved enough of his earnings in the next couple of years to start investing. He was a mechanical tinkerer by nature, and the machine that caught his fancy was the newly invented sewing machine.As a young man, he joined forces with a Boston tailor named William Grover, and together they formed the Grover and Baker Sewing Machine Company[4], modifying the newly invented sewing machine. So in 1851, alongside fellow tailor Grover and Baker obtained the patent for an innovation that changed the industry forever:machines with a pair of needles that could create chains of interlocking stitches.[5] Their invention took off, and Baker and Grover teamed up with other sewing machine manufacturers to form a trust.[6]1851 Grover and Baker's Patent Model of a Sewing MachineAfter amassing a fortune almost beyond calculation, and as the trust was set to expire, Baker sold his share of the company and retired. In 1868, Baker, astronomically wealthy and barely middle-aged (40), moved to Ridge Hill Farm, an 800-acre summer estate in Needham, Massachusetts.[7] There, he built an amusement park that included a 225-room luxury hotel, known as the Hotel Wellesley. Built in 1877 and costing $190,000, Baker used some buildings from the World's Fair in Philadelphia that he had disassembled and brought here to Needham.[8] The first floor had a huge dining room that could seat 600 guests, with smaller rooms for private parties. There was also a billiard room with four tables, two bowling alleys, a music room with stage and scenery, and a large gymnasium. The best rooms cost $4 a day. The hotel was open during the summer season only, June 15 - October 15. In 1879, a railroad connected the hotel to the Charles River Village station.[9]There were monkey cages, bear pits, buffaloes, and a 'Sanitary Piggery,’ in which pigs slept in linen sheets," H.D.S. Greenway a frequent visitor to the estate wrote. "There were stables with animated stuffed horses that could nod their heads. There were elaborate mechanical jokes. You would be invited to drink at a fountain labeled 'Laughing Water,’ only to find the floor tilting to simulate drunkenness as you walked out. There were gardens, and shaded paths, and boats."[10]The remainder of the estate consisted of a man made pleasure lake a mile and a half wide for recreational fishing (Sabrina Lake)[11] , saloons, restaurants, two bear pits (including special lodging for his pet bear Billy Bruin a 500 pound black Labridor bear)[12], an underground crystal grotto, and a diorama of Darwin’s theory of evolution that contrasted stuffed monkeys with an artfully placed mirror revealing the human onlooker’s own face.[13] Most prized of Baker’s many attractions, however, was a state-of-the-art hog butchery facility he dubbed “the Sanitary Piggery.”[14]Mr. Baker’s Fairyland of the Beautiful and BizzareBaker’s interest in social causes was as sprawling as his estate. In a gesture of reconciliation after the Civil War, Baker invited Southern and Northern regiments to encampments, and when they left after some weeks, he gathered the empty bottles and formed them into a tower with a banner that read: “To the Departed Spirits”[15] , women’s education[16] , and a collection of elaborate statues of groan-worthy puns.First among Baker’s interests was public health. Specifically, the burgeoning field of food science. That, combined with his love of pork, gave rise to a bold hypothesis: If farmers raised pigs in hygienic conditions, they could eliminate food-borne disease.[17]But in 1875, the germ theory of disease was hardly common knowledge. Microrganisms known as pathogens or germs can lead to disease. These small organisms, too small to see without magnification, invade humans, other animals, and other living hosts. Their growth and reproduction within their hosts can cause disease. "Germ" may refer to not just a bacterium but to any type of microorganism or even non-living pathogen that can cause disease, such as protists, fungi, viruses, prions or viroids.[18] Diseases caused by pathogens are called infectious diseases. Even when a pathogen is the principal cause of a disease, environmental and hereditary factors often influence the severity of the disease, and whether a potential host individual becomes infected when exposed to the pathogen.[19]While Americans relied on pork as a staple meat, pigs were city animals, raised on scraps from urban kitchens and street refuse. On his first tour of America in 1842, Charles Dickens stepped onto Broadway, New York’s biggest commercial thoroughfare, encountering “two portly sows” and “a select party of half-a-dozen gentlemen hogs” among the brightly dressed ladies and a bustle of coaches.[20] Even more than this strange sight of pigs roaming the city’s streets, Dickens was captivated by the free and easy swine lifestyle—a “roving, gentlemanly, vagabond kind of life.” [21] Scavenging curbside trash in droves, New York’s wandering pigs were on equal, if not superior footing with humans—a model of self-sufficiency.William Emerson Baker (1828–1888) (Mr. Baker’s Fairyland of the Beautiful and Bizzare)Baker’s ideas reflected an age of feverish cultural change. The Civil War and its deprivations were over, and rapid industrialization led to growing cities that were laden with opportunities for the exchange of goods, ideas, and pathogens. Food production after the Civil War rapidly shifted from local cottage industries to industrial conglomerates.[22] Tainted products were common.In response to this trust deficit, a coalition of scientists, religious reformers, and progressive female activists founded the Pure Food Movement.[23] They approached their work with evangelical zeal. The Pure Foods Movement of the 1870s was a grass-roots movement, creating the principal source of political support for the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906.[24] Between 1877 and 1906, they proposed 190 separate pure food bills in Congress.When Baker unveiled his sanitary piggery in 1875, the pure food movement was just beginning. He was ahead of his time, petitioning the Massachusetts Legislature in 1881 to secede his estate from the town of Needham and create his own independent hygienic village, HYGERIA.[25]He also requested tax-exempt status on the grounds that his discoveries would benefit all citizens of Massachusetts, and save the Commonwealth far more than was lost in taxes. The beneficial example of Hygeria would “…induce the people of this Commonwealth to practice such sanitary economies and household reforms as shall tend to diminish crime and disease and improve the vigor of the race.”[26]Other porcine endeavors meant to model sanitary livestock practices, accompanied by a hygienic cooking school (Fanny Farmer school),[27] were more successful. The sanitary piggery began to revolutionize how people raised and consumed pork. Baker’s hogs were kept in such pristine conditions, he liked to joke, they slept in their own miniature beds with blankets and pillows.[28]In 1875, Baker threw an opulent gala commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.[29] The event was intended to bring former Union and Confederate soldiers together for a night of good-natured excess, and to celebrate the sanitary piggery. Party favors included glass pig jar with beans inside for male guests, while women recieved perfume bottle in the shape of a pig.[30] At the end of the evening, each of Baker’s guests left with a “good cheer souvenir,”[31] a map of the United States in the shape of a pig. The country’s snout was Maine, its bum California, the tip of its tail touched Alaska, and its Florida-shaped hoof stomped on the plump sausage of Cuba. Baker called it the “Porcineograph.”[32]A porcine tour de force… the PorcineographAround the edges of this fanciful chart, bright with the new technology of color lithography printing, was a symbol of each state, complemented by a signature pork dish. The dishes are equal parts familiar (gumbo for Louisiana and pork and beans for Massachusetts) and fanciful (antelope and roast pork for Colorado, and bear steak, grapes, and ham sandwiches for California). The map also included notes on famous legal cases involving pigs in U.S. history, meant to convey that pigs are responsible for the foundation of American democracy.[33]These imaginative leaps reveal the aspirational zeal of Baker’s vision for the United States. At a time when the Union had barely been saved, when the purchase of Alaska (1867) was widely regarded as a waste of money[34] , and the West consisted of an assemblage of territories and newly incorporated states, Baker’s map depicted one country from coast to coast, revealing a deep seeded desire to bring the country back together. Baker thought that pork would become the adhesive, reuniting the North and South.[35]Baker’s Porcineograph also bears hints of the more sinister side of both American expansionism and industrialization.[36] Many Western territories were still contested, with white settlers violently seizing land from indigenous Americans. At the same time, the United States was beginning to turn its attention to empire beyond its shores, a trend perhaps unintentionally evoked by the image of the U.S.’s pig feet stepping on Hawai’i and Cuba.[37] Indeed, the very notion of pure food was, like much science of the time, mired in racist ideas of ethnic purity, which frequently spiraled into xenophobia.[38] For many food activists of the era, what was readily accepted was that which was white and more pure, which became an entrenched racist perception.[39]The Ridge Hill Farms, estate of William Emerson Baker, Needham, Massachusetts, 1868-1888The souvenir was extremely popular, as Emerson went on to issue a variant edition for sale to benefit charitable causes. This variant, of which the present map is an example, features different typography and can be readily identified by the addition of a note in the lower margin:“Yielding to numerous requests, the Author has decided to publish this as a good-cheer offering to all. Gains from its sale will be devoted entirely to charity.-Recognised organizations in different States, desiring its sale in aid of Centennial or other charity, may address “Aquarium, 13 West street, Boston, Mass. Copyright secured.“Compliments of the Author.”[40]In 1881, Baker petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature to allow him to secede his land from Needham and establish an independent Hygienic Village, to be called HYGERIA.[41] He also requested tax-exempt status on the grounds that his discoveries would benefit all citizens of Massachusetts, and save the Commonwealth far more than was lost in taxes. The beneficial example of Hygeria would “…induce the people of this Commonwealth to practice such sanitary economies and household reforms as shall tend to diminish crime and disease and improve the vigor of the race.”[42]As word of the elaborate Ridge Hill Farms spread, people began descending on the property, so Baker opened it to the public (admission cost 10 cents).[43] Baker staged a funeral procession to mourn the death of Billy Bruin, his favorite bear. In December, 1891, Hotel Wellesley burned down from a fire started in a huge fireplace in the hotel office.[44] There were no guests in the hotel at the time, only the caretaker, Mr. Geary and his family. No one was hurt in the fire. The estate remained in operation until 1892, because Baker died when he was just 59 (1888), and the property was deeply in debt.Baker’s innovations contributed to a movement toward food safety that benefitted immigrants and poor city dwellers. Baker himself died in 1888 of a heart attack, perhaps spurred by the heartbreak of learning that the Massachusetts government had denied him permission to build his sanitary village.[45] Baker’s wife, who had never been a fan of her husband’s hobbies, sold off the estate soon after his death, and the piggery was disbanded.Once Upon a Time at the Baker EstateBaker’s legacy continued in the training of those who had attended his sanitary cooking school and in the plentiful donations he had given to educational institutions. A century and a half later, the map depicting American “Gehography” is a reminder of a cultural moment where Americans such as Baker dreamed of a reunited country powered by industrialization and replete with clean pork for all.[46] The Porcineograph exhibited a bit of Baker's moral outlook, a little bit of his political outlook, a little bit of his belief in the way to improve public health, and his belief in the overwhelming superiority of pigs.Footnotes[1] Once Upon a Time at the Baker Estate[2] Mr. Baker’s Fairyland of the Beautiful and Bizzare[3] Mr. Baker’s Fairyland of the Beautiful and Bizzare[4] GROVER & BAKER SEWING MACHINES, SEWALOT[5] 1851 Grover and Baker's Patent Model of a Sewing Machine[6] Grover & Baker Sewing Machines[7] Once Upon a Time at the Baker Estate[8] Expo Legacies[9] Expo Legacies[10] The Fabulous Baker Estate[11] The Baker Estate[12] Billy Bruin and his festive funeral[13] Porcineographs and Piggeries: William Baker Emerson and Ridge Hill Farms[14] Clean Your Plate[15] The Universalist Quarterly and General Review[16] Film chronicles 'Beautiful & Bizarre'[17] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://sleevelessrda.gq/k/william-emerson-from-old-catalo-baker-guide-to-ridge-hill-farms-wellesley-mass-and-social-science-reform/&ved=2ahUKEwjt3IP1qfflAhVJTd8KHf4rAaYQFjAHegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw34TU96wa8aD_7wSI9FRda_&cshid=1574202751102[18] Germ Theory[19] Infectious diseases - Symptoms and causes[20] The hogs that created America's first urban working class[21] The hogs that created America's first urban working class[22] Books — Benjamin R. Cohen[23] Early history of food regulation in the United States - Wikipedia[24] http://Janssen, Wallace F. "The Story of the Laws Behind the Labels." The Food and Drug Administration. Hauppauge: Nova Science, 2003. 23-35.[25] Little remains of 19th-century eccentric’s wondrous estate in Needham[26] Once Upon a Time at the Baker Estate[27] Lilliputian Quantities: An Early Tasting Menu[28] The Fabulous Baker Estate[29] The Porcineograph of 1875: A “Pork Map” Of America[30] The Baker Estate[31] This porcineograph[32] A porcine tour de force… the Porcineograph[33] A porcine tour de force… the Porcineograph[34] U.S. Senate ratifies purchase of Alaska from Russia on April 9, 1867.[35] The Civil War Era and Reconstruction[36] Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic Satirical Maps:#2[37] Creatures of Cartography[38] Food Has Become a New Target for Nationalists[39] The Origins of State Pure Food Regulation[40] A porcine tour de force… the Porcineograph[41] The Fabulous Baker Estate[42] National Porcineographic: a Portrait of America as a Young Hog[43] Film chronicles 'Beautiful & Bizarre'[44] The Hub's Metropolis[45] William Emerson Baker (1828-1888) - Find A Grave...[46] Why an 1875 Map Imagined the U.S as a Giant Hog