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Is Access to Food a Public Good? Meat Provisioning in Early New York City, 1790–1820

Taking New York as a case study, this article examines how well Early Republican city dwellers were provisioned with meat. It asks how the availability of supplies, and their distribution through a tightly regulated network of municipal marketplaces, affected the living standards of urban residents. The discussion centers on quantity, distribution, and quality. First, new meat consumption estimates document that New Yorkers enjoyed abundant meat supplies by any historical comparison. Second, geographic information system (GIS) analysis shows that the municipal market system fulfilled its mandate to distribute the city’s plentiful meat and other fresh food supplies to residents of all neighborhoods. And third, this article argues that the public market system played a central role in enforcing quality while also promoting egalitarian principles in citizens’ access to food. Overall, New Yorkers were well provisioned with meat not only thanks to sufficiently expanding supplies but also because they relied on a well-run municipal infrastructure of provisioning.