In 1865, the Union Stock Yards opened in Chicago. You may also like: The top 50 party schools in America. It was also an extension of the control the meat packers had over their workers. The 1906 legislation amended prior Meat Inspection Acts of 1890 and 1891 and other laws that had provided for USDA inspection of slaughtered animals and meat products but had proven ineffective in regulating many unsafe and unsanitary practices by the meatpacking industry. New technologies such as the railroad and the refrigerated railcar meant that people could transport meat over long distances. Poor sanitation and dangerous conditions hurt workers and consumers. Create your account. In the long time between The Jungle and today, meatpacking has changedfirst for the better, due to strong unions, then for the worse. By the mid-1800s, small family farms could no longer meet the demand. Muckraking articles and novels helped to call the publics attention to the industrys horrific practices; Upton Sinclairs novel The Jungle (1906) was particularly pivotal. Children as young as three were often employed and forced to work long hours (sometimes 12-15 hour days) for very little pay. In 1957, the Poultry Products Inspection Act required the USDAs inspection arm to inspect birds before, during, and after slaughter and to prevent mislabeled poultry products from going to market. JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. He stamped his barrels with the initials U.S. for United States, but playing on Wilsons first name, soldiers joked that the provisions came from Uncle Sam. The name stuck and has forever since been synonymous with the federal government. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. And, they felt it was time to drive them out of business. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Keep reading for 50 key moments in the history of America's meat-processing industry. . The result was his best-known novel, The Jungle (1906), which vividly described not only the working conditions of packinghouses but also the horrific meatpacking practices that produced the food itself. Laura Allan. The Europeans claimed that the meat caused pleuro-pneumonia and cholera. The industry supported certain political parties. His boss agreed and gave the pair $500 on the condition that the team would be named for the sponsorthe result was the Green Bay Packers, one of the oldest, most storied, and most successful NFL franchises in football history. Unlike at the turn of the 20th century when the Big Five controlled virtually the entire industry, today, just four companies dominate Americas meat productionTyson, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS control more than 85% of Americas beef supply. Conditions in the meatpacking industry were poor. In early 1900, specifically, 1906, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written. After making surprise inspections to major plants across the country, the Neill-Reynolds report confirmed Sinclairs assessment of the horrors of the American meat industry. The law also applied to imported products, which were treated under similarly rigorous foreign inspection standards. Why do you think UPton Sinclair titled his novel The Jungle? The committee declared such common meat preservatives as borax, salicylic acid, and formaldehyde to be unwholesome. The press also reported from the committees hearings that some of the nations food supply was adulteratedmade impure by the addition of foreign or inferior substances. This district, owned by several railroad companies, soon became the meatpacking center of Chicago. Those who lived returned to a land overrun by cattleleft to their own devices, cattle herds multiplied exponentially and by the wars end in 1865, roughly 5 million longhorn cattle were roaming wild in Texas. Today, the Oscar Mayer company does more than $5 billion in annual sales and represents one of the most famous names in American meat. The first US bank for women was opened by a fraudster in 1879. I agree with Karuna Saraswati in her comments on Upton Sinclair and his book The Jungle. 17, No. Add into the equation long hours, low wages, and child workers, what emerges is a social nightmare. They were built and operated to process as much meat as quickly as possible, which led to ghastly conditions that were unsanitary and unsafe for animals and workers alike. Web site: http://www.ibpinc.com In 1905, Upton Sinclair (18781968), a young socialist journalist and novelist, received a $500 advance to write a novel about abuses in the meat processing industry and spent seven weeks investigating the subject in Chicago. They organized to demand higher pay, better working conditions, and job security. The first meatp, Plant interested in Chicago's meat industry and related public health issues. Meat was a critical component of the food-supply chain, which was under enormous strain as the government struggled to feed its military, civilian population, and starving allies overseas. A century, and more, has passed since these dark days of the meatpacking industry. The nightmare of the Chicago meatpacking industry was described as follows: The words of the late Pulitzer prize winning author Upton Sinclair only begin to tell the story of the beginning of the Chicago meatpacking business. Joe Cataliotti holds a Master of Arts degree in World History from Northeastern University. The Industrial Revolution influenced nearly every part of the economy, including agriculture and the food industry. The beef industry struggled during World War II as the government regulated virtually every aspect of the industry. Human beings are no exception. The animals died in agony and that affected the quality of the meat. The Meat Inspection Act was passed by the Congress of the United Statesand signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt on June 30, 1906. In 1905, Upton Sinclair, a socialist journalist, published The Jungle, a book based on his investigation into the meatpacking industry. Rules about their safety in the workplace did not exist. Meatpacking industrialists, seeing that skilled butchers had leverage, developed assembly lines of work that required little skill. What were the meatpacking factories like in the early 1900's? Meatpackers suffered from the following: Meatpackers were not the only ones impacted by the poor conditions in their facility. copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. It would take at least two months or more to heal; and, that was if they were allowed to work in another department so the infection could heal. The coronavirus crisis revealed just how vulnerable Americas food supply chain is to disruption and just how dangerously consolidated the meat industry has become. Stemming directly from the environment, workers had no choice but to endure these conditions. Imagine working 10 to 15 hours a day dragging animal carcasses in and out of warm air into refrigerated cooler units, and doing this for days, weeks. Along with many adults, children were permanently maimed or killed in these horrible work conditions. The meatpacking industry skyrocketed alongside the Industrial Revolution. It might seem like this workoften done largely by immigrant, black, and Latinx workers with few job opportunitiesis simply doomed to be bad. To uncover these issues, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a novel about the meatpacking industry of Chicago in the early 1900s. By the 1880s, the European meat markets closed their doors to imported American meat. It made sense, as Midwestern cities were located strategically between the vast grasslands of the Westwhere huge herds of cattle were raisedand the hungry cities in the East that generated an unquenchable demand for meat. The animal industry produces 52 billion pounds of meat and 48 billion pounds of poultry every year. New Labor Forum, Vol. In the 1930s, President Roosevelt passed new laws granting further rights to workers. In fact, they turned the business of converting animals into food into a multi-billion-dollar industry. At the turn of the last century, the bosses of the meatpacking industry viewed workers as totally replaceable, expendable, and with only limited value to them. These scientific discoveries and the resulting public health policies, such as food fortification . In addition to being handled by unclean workers in an unsanitary environment, large volumes of meat were not always refrigerated. It might seem like this workoften done largely by immigrant, black, and Latinx workers with few job opportunitiesis simply doomed to be bad. With industrialization came new systems of labor. The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 forced meatpackers to be honest with their product labeling and to create sanitary preparation conditions. Argues that immigrants are vulnerable to racism and discrimination. . It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Its as old as the country itselfolder, evenand its history is baked into the history of America. In the meat packing business things were supposed to be done quick. What happened to the workers? Poultry was always a minor player in the animal agricultural industry, and chickens, turkeys, and other birds were left out of major reforms targeting the meat production and processing industriesto this day, theres not a single regulation protecting chickens from abuse. Men who hauled 100-pound hunks of meat crippled their backs" (Constitutional Rights Foundation). 714 Words. To publish, simply grab the HTML code or text to the left and paste into Get your fix of JSTOR Dailys best stories in your inbox each Thursday. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. It was much cheaper and more efficient to slaughter cattle in Chicago and then ship their carcasses East instead of transporting the animals while they were still alive, but that could only be done in the winter months. Background Arguably, the job with the highest risk of death belonged to the men working in the massive carcass coolers. The UFCW adopted a less militant stance. He said goodbye to his wife and four small children. This new industry centralized in the Midwestern states of Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, and Indiana. Since those workers controlled the pace of production, that gave unions an important source of power. In 1940, Jones perfected his design, Werner began building his trucks, and meat could now be reliably transported over the road for long distances any time of year. However, in the decades since, the power of unions has whittled away in the United States. Both these changes hurt the UPWA, which had its power base within the big companies in big cities. This novel told the story of a Lithuanian immigrant who worked in a filthy Chicago meatpacking plant. It seems that many small meatpacking companies were undercutting the Chicago big boys, and had been for a long time. the economics of the industry only encourage faster line speeds. now they had thrown him away!Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906) While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. It doesnt take a big stretch of the imagination to realize that these workers would suffer, and did, a much higher rate of cardiovascular, respiratory, and many other illnesses. Conditions were extremely poor in the meatpacking industry in 1900. Brucellosis, anthrax, and the trichinosis bacteria are just a few more likely contaminants in the diseased meat. The not so lucky ones died. ." Conditions in Meatpacking Plants (1906, by Upton Sinclair) Thank you for posting this article. Early that morning, John Panzezyk set off from his dismal tenement home in the Stockyard district to walk the short distance to his job at a meatpacking plant. In 1881, the refrigerated train car was invented, allowing people to transport animal carcasses and processed meats over greater distances. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. Where craft unions like Amalgamated gained power partly by limiting who could get a joboften along racial linesthe UPWA tried to reduce the companys ability to divide workers by race. Congress was pressured to pass the act, which Roosevelt then signed into law. Meatpacking is a dangerous job, and the wage is low. In the days before health inspections, notwithstanding any regulations related to the quality control of both animals and the processing of meat, a number of different bacterias infected the meat. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. Even the workers on the floors of the plants benefited. Did big business suddenly have a conscience and want to find some moral high ground when it came to safer ways of feeding the world? Since many ate the meat produced in these factories, unsanitary conditions brought illness to consumers. Which statement best describes why Progressives worked to reform the meat-packing industry in the early 1900s? Industrialists challenged unions through several methods. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. The act divvied up the boundless grazing lands of the wealthy, powerful, and often violent cattle barons who saw the land the Homesteaders were settling as the source of their fortunes. Meanwhile, low pay meant workers lived in slum conditions where diseases could spread quickly. This drove the government to pass the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906, which forced meatpackers to increase sanitation, and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which applied higher standards to the food and drug industry. in History and Political Science from the same university and wrote his senior thesis on the history of radical right-wing movements in the United States. These concerns were in addition to the health problems posed by the packaging of substandard or condemned meat products. Roosevelt had seen enough, and in 1906, he muscled Congress into passing the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), which he signed the very same year that Sinclair published The Jungle. It mandated strictly regulated sanitary conditions for before, during, and after the slaughter of animals, made it a crime to sell misbranded or adulterated cattle, and charged the USDA with conducting meticulous inspections. The law is noteworthy for reforming the meatpacking industry in the United States. Later that day, John was killed at work when he got caught in the belting of a large meat machine. The man would not trouble to lift out a rat. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which set the first standards for reducing pain and suffering during the process of transforming living, feeling animals into food. On the very first day, sales totaled $59not bad for a time when cuts of pork sold for between eight and 12 cents per pound. Chicago's meat packing industry was especially bad for this, and many departments preferred to employ children because they did not need as much pay, and had hands and bodies better suited to the work. Today, fast-food is a $223 billion industryMcDonalds alone sells 75 hamburgers every second at more than 37,000 locationsand the incredible demand for inexpensive and instant meals can only be met with mountains of cheap meat. You may also like: The most conservative public colleges in America. It was close to the Chicago river, and only minutes from work. The work of slaughtering animals and turning their carcasses into food has long been and remains today largely the realm of underpaid immigrant laborers who work for long hours at some of the most physically and psychologically taxing work imaginable. In the three decades between 1980 and 2010, the number of hog farms dropped from 660,000 to 71,000 for an incredible decline of 89%cattle ranches decreased by 40%. It represented the first time that companies had to list active ingredients on labels for things like drugs and cosmetics, and that meatpacking companies were forced to list any preservatives or other chemical agents used in production. Upton Sinclair recognized the issues surrounding these conditions. As the wheels of American industries began to move, so moved the meatpacking business in Chicago 1900 and the conditions were unsanitary, unregulated, and clearly unsafe. Updates? His work days were usually 12 to 15 hours, and this day, he was simply hoping to stay warm. 66-77. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. them left to be worth exhibiting,sometimes they would be overlooked for days, Recent science would suggest that there was a lot more going on than just cholera and pneumonia. Small- and medium-sized family farms tasked with feeding a few thousand colonists transformed over the centuries into a juggernaut of billion-dollar corporations that wring profits out of factory farms that farmers a few generations ago wouldnt even recognize as being farms at all. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. In your opinion, which details in this excerpt most convincingly highlight problems in the meatpacking industry in the early 1900s? More than 120 years later, the NCBA is still the most prominent organization representing Americas cattle ranchers. One of its most effective tactics was undercover investigationsoften conducted by moles who sought jobs in slaughterhouses to serve as spiesthat dramatically increased public awareness of horrifying and systematic cruelty to animals at slaughterhouses, meat-processing facilities, and factory farms. Strapped for cash, Lambeaua worker at a meatpacking plantasked his employer, the Indian Packing Company, for funds to pay for equipment and uniforms. Together with the nearby housing area where the workers lived, this part of Chicago was known as Packingtown. Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. Assembly lines meant employers no longer needed to hire skilled butchers, which had leverage in negotiations. Support JSTOR Daily! Workplace accidents, like John Panzezyks, were all too common. With hordes of Homesteaders and bloody range wars making traditional cattle drives more difficult, McCoy turned to the burgeoning railroad industry and built a town called Abilene in a strategically centralized spot in Kansasit was Americas first cowtown. Key moments in the United States substandard or condemned meat products as the country itselfolder, evenand its is!, large volumes of meat and 48 billion pounds of meat crippled their backs & quot ; Constitutional! Posting this article more than 120 years later, the refrigerated train car was invented, allowing people transport. Butchers, which were treated under similarly rigorous foreign inspection standards meat packing industry problems in the early 1900s done.. 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