OAH Magazine of History
Volume 24, No 1
January 2010

The OAH thanks the Merck Company Foundation for its generous support for this issue of the OAH Magazine of History

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Organization of American Historians

Teaching Strategy

Making Meat: Efficiency and Exploitation in Progressive Era Chicago

Thomas G. Andrews

llustrations to Accompany the Teaching Strategy
(Click on images for larger version.)

Illustration #1. A view of Chicago’s Union Stockyards in 1909. Opened in 1865 by the Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., a consortium of railroad corporations, the Stockyards held 2,300 livestock pens. By 1890, some nine million animals passed through them annually on the way to slaughter. They were headed for processing plants, such as the one owned by Philip Armour, looming in the background. (Courtesy of Library of Congress).

Illustration #2. The heyday of the open-range cattle industry and the mythologized American cowboy lasted from the mid-1860s through the late 1880s. Mounted cowboys led herds of cattle from Texas ranches, like this one shown in 1882, north to railheads in Kansas such as Dodge City and Abilene, where they were taken by rail to Chicago. By 1900, while long cattle drives were no longer needed--due to increased fencing, expanded railroads, and larger ranches--more than 35 million head of cattle still grazed on western lands. (Courtesy of Colorado Historical Society, © CHS, WHJ Collection, Scan 20101467).

Illustration #3. Caption: Bird’s Eye View, Chicago, 1877 (North is to the left, while the top of Lake Michigan in the image points east), from Seven Days in Chicago: A Complete Guide to the Street Cars, Omnibuses, Railroads, Notable Buildings, Union Stockyards, Churches, Charitable Institutions, Etc. (Chicago: J.M. Wing & Co., 1877).

Illustration #4. Meatpacking operation, Union Stockyards, from Seven Days in Chicago: A Complete Guide to the Street Cars, Omnibuses, Railroads, Notable Buildings, Union Stockyards, Churches, Charitable Institutions, Etc. (Chicago: J.M. Wing & Co., 1877).

Illustration #5. Railroad refrigerator car design, ca. 1870 (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

Illustration #6. The South Fork of the Chicago River, which ran through the Chicago meatpacking district, became known as Bubbly Creek, due to the chemical gases given off by decomposing stockyards runoff. This shot of the river at Morgan Street shows a rooster, to the left of the stump at center, standing on a thick layer of sludge. (Courtesy of Chicago History Museum, DN-0056899, Chicago Daily News.)