Authors: Maureen Ogle
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“to stop the drover”: McCoy,
Historical Sketches
, 96.
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“only the one place”: Thomas Dove Foster to John Morrell, March 9, 1875; Box 1, Morrell Meat Packing Company Collection, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
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“great facilities”: Quoted in Percy Wells Bidwell and John I. Falconer,
History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620–1860
(1925; reprint, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1941), 399.
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“The number of swine”: Quoted in ibid., 439.
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The numbers were stark: Statistics are in William P. McDermott, “Rushing the Milk Train: The Harlem Valley in Transition, 1845–1875,”
Hudson Valley Regional Review
18, no. 1 (March 2001): 36.
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“was a business that moved itself”: New York State Legislature, Special Committee on Railroads,
Proceedings of the Special Committee on Railroads
(Evening Post Steam Presses, 1879–1880), vol. 4, p. 3317. The report is often referred to as the Hepburn Report, after committee chair A. B. Hepburn.
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“this butcher and that”: Ibid., vol. 4, p. 3318.
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“The more you can concentrate”: Ibid., vol. 2, p. 1727.
2. “We Are Here to Make Money”
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“abominable nuisances”: “Dressed Beef,”
New York Times
, November 15, 1882, p. 4. The description of the facility is in “A Huge Meat Refrigerator,”
New York Times
, October 10, 1882, p. 8.
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“trying to force their beef”: Quoted in “Dressed Beef and Live Cattle,”
New York Times
, November 15, 1882, p. 5.
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“sharks”: Quoted in “Western Dressed Beef,”
Boston Globe
, November 23, 1882, p. 1.
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“gigantic fortunes”: Quoted in “The Fresh-Beef War,”
Boston Herald
, November 14, 1882, p. 11. Swift made the comments about his early days as a cattle dealer at a moment when the railroads threatened to retaliate. Swift is not identified by name in this article, but it’s clear from details in it that the reporter was interviewing Swift and a partner, presumably his brother Edwin.
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“simply enormous”: Ibid.
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“right over the fence”: U.S. Senate, Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce,
Report of the Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce
, 49th Cong., 1st sess., 1886, p. 661.
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“There is perhaps nothing”: “The Hog and Cow Question,”
Milwaukee Sentinel
, December 4, 1863, p. 1.
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“not very elegant language”:
Sanitary Condition of the City: Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York
, 2d ed. (1866; reprint, Arno Press, 1970), 168.
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“snorted and pranced”: “A Fumigation,”
Milwaukee Sentinel
, October 17, 1866, p. 1.
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“often lost a meal”: “Board of Health,”
New York Times
, August 29, 1866, p. 5.
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“old-fashioned, clumsy and wasteful”: All quotes from “Report on Slaughtering for Boston Market,”
First Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts
(Wright & Potter, 1870), 20, 21, 22.
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“cramped [slaughterhouses]”: “Facilities for Slaughter-houses,”
San Francisco Bulletin
, January 2, 1868, p. 2.
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“great central slaughter-house[s]”: Quoted in City of Boston,
Report on the Sale of Bad Meat in Boston
([1871]), 56.
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“sticker”: All the quotes and the description are from “Opening of the New Abbattoirs [
sic
]—Great Celebration at Communipaw,”
New York Times
, October 18, 1866, p. 2.
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“arbitrary, tyrannical and unjust”: Quoted in “Local Intelligence,”
New York Times
, June 20, 1866, p. 8.
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“Long Island”: Quoted in ibid.
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“oppressive, and create[d]”: “The City of Chicago
v
. Louis Rumpff. Same
v
. James Turner,” 45 Ill. 90 (1862), 97, 99.
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“skimming the scum”: Quoted in “The State of Louisiana, ex re., S. Belden, Attorney General,
v.
Wm Fagan, et al.,” 22 La.
Ann. 545 (1870), 552.
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“the personal rights”: Quoted in Ronald M. Labbé and Jonathan Lurie,
The Slaughterhouse Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment
(University Press of Kansas, 2003), 106.
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“general police power”: “State of Louisiana, ex re.,” 555.
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“Liberty”: Quoted in Labbé and Lurie,
Slaughterhouse Cases
, 133.
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“compelled”: Quoted in ibid., 187, 208.
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“outrage”: “The Slaughter-House Nuisance,”
New York Times
, May 3, 1875, p. 4.
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“dangerous”: “The Fifty-ninth-Street Abattoir,”
New York Times
, April 10, 1875, p. 2.
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“comparatively poor”: “The Abattoir Nuisance,”
New York Times
, April 14, 1875, p. 12.
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“fear and apprehension”: “The Market Systems of the Country, Their Usages and Abuses,”
Report of the Commissioner on Agriculture for the Year 1870
(Government Printing Office, 1871), 251. I also tracked public dissatisfaction with the use of railroad transport by reading annual reports issued by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded by Henry Bergh, as well as a transcript collection of his letters held by the society. Bergh hired “detectives” to investigate the condition of livestock in Chicago, at watering stops, and at abattoirs like Communipaw.
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“chemical decomposition”: “Bringing Cattle to Market,”
New York Evangelist
, September 3, 1868, p. 7.
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“endanger[ed] the health”: Quoted in City of Boston,
Report on the Sale of Bad Meat
, 11, 12.
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“deep red blotches”: E. H. Dixon, “The Beef Market,”
New-York Tribune
, August 22, 1868, p. 2.
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“right off the grass”: “Frozen Meat,”
Prairie Farmer
42 (July 22, 1871): 228.
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“excellent condition”: “Cheaper Beef for the East,”
New York Times
, December 8, 1873, p. 2.
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“be regarded with”: Quoted in J. C. Hoadley, “On the Transportation of Live-Stock,”
Sixth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts
(Wright & Potter, 1875), 93, 94.
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“vision”: Louis F. Swift and Arthur Van Vlissingen Jr.,
The Yankee of the Yards: The Biography of Gustavus Franklin Swift
(A. W. Shaw Company, 1927), 24, 29–30, 201, 208.
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“New England Fresh Meat Express”: “Boston Enterprise,”
Boston Journal
, July 26, 1879, p. 3.
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“coolers”: “The Western Refrigerator Beef,”
Trenton State Gazette
, October 23, 1882, p. 3.
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“era of cheap beef”: “Cheaper Beef,”
Harper’s Weekly
26 (October 21, 1882): 663.
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“Everything with us”: Quoted in “The Western Refrigerator Beef,” p. 3.
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“has ceased to be”: Ibid.
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“panicky feeling”: See the dispatch from the
Chicago Tribune
published as “Chicago Dressed Beef” in
New York Times
, October 15, 1882, p. 3.
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“[I]f you showed me”: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Transportation and Sale of Meat Products,
Investigation of Transportation and Sale of Meat Products with Testimony
, S. Rpt. 829, 51st Cong., 1st sess., 432; hereafter
Investigation of Transportation and Sale
. The document is often referred to as the Vest Report after committee chair George G. Vest. As is true of Swift, there are no substantive biographies of Armour. The best way to understand the man is by reading the newspaper coverage of his exploits as well as the many obituaries published at the time of his death in January 1901 (although as with any of the “robber barons,” those must be approached with care). A marvelously fictional biography is
Armour and His Times
, by Harper Leech and John Charles Carroll (D. Appleton-Century Company, 1938). Also see Cora Lillian Davenport, “The Rise of the Armours, an American Industrial Family” (master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1930), as well as a string of biographical essays prompted by the early-twentieth-century “trust-busting” movement. I pieced together Armour’s early career primarily from Milwaukee newspapers. Like most things economic, cogent explanations of futures trading, corners, and the like are hard to come by. An excellent description and analysis written for the non-economist can be found in Cronon,
Nature’s Metropolis
.
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“did not understand”: U.S. Senate,
Investigation of Transportation and Sale
, 432.
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“refrigerator”: “The Pressed Beef Business,”
Springfield (MA) Republican
, February 16, 1883, p. 2; reprinted from the
Philadelphia Press
.
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“no waste at all”: Quoted in ibid.
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“There can be only”: “Dressed Beef,”
Chicago Tribune
, October 24, 1882, p. 5.
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“only stupid and sluggish minds”: “The Dressed Beef Innovation,”
Wheeling Register
, March 27, 1883, p. 2.
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“fat and comfortable”: “Dressed Beef,”
New York Times
, November 15, 1882, p. 4.
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“[A]ll of this is nothing more”: “Steady Growth of the Dressed Beef Trade,”
American Farmer
9th ser. 1, no. 21 (November 1, 1882): 305; this article first appeared in
Drovers’ Journal
. The shipment numbers are in Norman J. Colman, “Dressed-Meat Traffic,”
Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Animal Industry for the Year 1886
(Government Printing Office, 1887), 278. A lower estimate was made in Treasury Department,
Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States
, H. Rpt. 7, 48th Cong., 2d sess., 264; that document is typically referred to as the Nimmo Report for its author, Joseph Nimmo Jr.
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“bright and sweet”: “City Article,”
Boston Journal
, September 8, 1883, p. 3.
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Families satisfied: The butcher’s comments are in “Bulging Beef,”
Oshkosh Daily Northwestern
, May 16, 1882, unpaginated.
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“Even a laborer”: U.S. Senate,
Investigation of Transportation and Sale
, 407.
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“Do you suppose”: Quoted in W. O. Atwater, “Pecuniary Economy of Food: The Chemistry of Foods and Nutrition V.,”
Century
35, no. 3 (January 1888): 443.
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In 1894: The prediction is in Warren Belasco,
Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food
(University of California Press, 2006), 27. It’s impossible to read nineteenth-century magazines and newspapers without encountering discussions of the relationships among nation-building, national power, and food. Two good surveys are in Belasco,
Meals to Come;
and Mark R. Finlay, “Early Marketing of the Theory of Nutrition: The Science and Culture of Liebig’s Extract of Meat,” in
The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840–1940
, ed. Harmke Kamminga and Andrew Cunningham (Rodopi, 1995), 48–74. Finlay’s essay is especially good for the European view.
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“rice-eating”: “The Non-Beef-Eating Nations,”
Saturday Evening Post
, November 13, 1869, p. 8.
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The cultural and nutritional significance: On this point, see especially Vincent J. Knapp, “The Democratization of Meat and Protein in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Europe,”
The Historian
59, no. 3 (March 1997): 541–51.
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“makes an enormous return”: Quoted in Kleeb, “The Atlantic West,” 57.
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“good business management”: James S. Brisbin,
The Beef Bonanza; or, How to Get Rich on the Plains
(1881; reprint, University of Oklahoma Press, 1959), 36.
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“riding through plains”: Quoted in Richard Graham, “The Investment Boom in British-Texan Cattle Companies, 1880–1885,”
Business History Review
34, no. 4 (Winter 1960): 423, 424.
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“The cost of both”: Brisbin,
Beef Bonanza
, 74.
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“a young Wall Street”: Quoted in Ernest Staples Osgood,
The Day of the Cattleman
(1929; reprint, University of Chicago Press, 1966), 96.
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“clever bait”: Quoted in ibid., 103.