Joseph bear to the cattle trade of today; they were the collecting points for the business and the slaughterers who bought them either salted the carcasses down in barrels and casks or sold them to local consumers. Other dealers, however, bought some of these cattle and drove them on to smaller towns nearer the coast. "In the census of 1850, it was recorded that Illinois alone sent 2,000 head of cattle each week to the New York market." While the cattle barons represented a large part of the beef cattle trade of Illinois, there were hundreds of smaller dealers who fed only a few cattle each year which added materially to the magnitude of the beef cattle industry of the state. A few of these smaller operators were found in almost every section of the state, especially in the central and northern part. Cattle trailing continued until lines of railroad connecting Illinois with the cities on the Atlantic coast were built. This made cattle trailing unnecessary and greatly stimulated the production of beef in the state by furnishing means for placing beef before the consumers of the east quickly and, at a much less cost than that of the old method. The long drives greatly decreased the weight of the animals, and, at the same time, the meat of carcasses was inferior to that of the cattle that were shipped by railroad, and slaughtered without having taken such a long drive.[15] _John T. Alexander_[16] [Illustration: JOHN T. ALEXANDER.] "Among the cattle operators of Illinois, John T. Alexander was probably the greatest by reason of the magnitude of his transactions, but he was antedated by Jacob Strawn, who located in Morgan County in 1827. Alexander has been regarded as America's greatest cattleman in a commercial sense. In the strict sense of the term, he was a pastoralist and a trader, not an agriculturalist. His parents were native of Ireland, who migrated to Virginia in 1818, and in 1824 joined the exodus to the Mississippi Valley, settling in Jefferson County, Ohio. John T. Alexander was the oldest of a family of eleven children. His education was on the farm. He was endowed with that faculty called cattle sense. At the age of fifteen, he was entrusted, by his father, with the entire charge of a drove of cattle sent to Philadelphia. He sold them to advantage, collected the money, and took it safely home. At the age of seventeen, he was purchasing cattle in Illinois to replenish his father's Ohio pastures. It is related that his search took him down into Sangamon county, where he was so struck with its natural advantages, from a cattle standpoint, that he determined to migrate."