Tied to the Great Packing Machine: The Midwest and Meatpacking

CHAPTER 3 A Thing as Tremendous as the Universe

AT THE TURN of the twentieth century, Upton Sinclair described Chicago’s stockyards district as “the greatest aggregation of labor and capital ever gathered in one place.” His characterization of the stockyards district’s magnitude was no exaggeration ; it was indeed the largest industrial complex in the United States, if not in the world, at the time his book was published. Although at the turn of the twentieth century Chicago was the heart of the meatpacking industry in the Midwest and the United States,since the early 1800s,meatpacking in other midwestern locations had generated an economic influence that significantly impacted the region.1 Three of the industry’s most significant economic impacts have been in the arenas of direct employment, contributions to general manufacturing growth, and impacts on workers’ livelihoods. While the third issue is explored more specifically in chapter 5,this chapter charts these three general patterns of economic development from the antebellum period through the end of the twentieth century. Surveying these patterns clearly demonstrates how meatpacking’s economic impacts varied during each of the industry’s developmental phases.During the merchant-wholesale phase, meatpacking’s growth transformed Cincinnati into the Midwest’s first important manufacturing center. The industry was even more crucial in the manufacturing growth and development of the terminal-market cities through the end of the nineteenth century. During the first half of the twentieth century, as the industry shifted from larger to smaller and more rural midwestern cities, it provided good-paying jobs and significant economic benefits to the direct-buying centers.Much of the economic development during the early direct-buying phase of the industry occurred because of widespread unionization.But unionism waned during the modern directbuying phase, and the latest cycle of meatpacking’s evolution has provided fewer economic benefits. At the twentieth century’s end, the Midwest’s largest packing CHAPTER 3 A Thing as Tremendous as the Universe Economic Impacts plants were located in communities that had benefited only marginally from the industry’s locating in them. Merchant Wholesaling, 1820–1865 As part of merchants’ general wholesale and provisions trade, meatpacking—and specifically, pork packing—contributed significantly to the development of several Ohio River valley towns. As early as 1815, pork, bacon, and lard were second only to flour in Cincinnati’s export trade. Despite pork packing’s highly speculative nature before the 1850s, entrepreneurs in Cincinnati, Louisville, and other smaller river towns stretching over to St. Louis and up the Mississippi River pursued it on a seasonal basis. By the mid-1840s, Cincinnati was clearly the leading pork-packing center in the Midwest, with Louisville in second place. Madison and Terre Haute, Indiana, were third and eighth, and Chillicothe and Hamilton, Ohio, were fourth and fifth in importance. Madison and Terre Haute were still fifth and sixth respectively in pork production in the Midwest at the end of the 1850s. In each of these growing cities, merchants’ hog purchases and extensions of credit helped farmers open this part of the country to commercial agriculture. Pork products from the larger cities of the Midwest,particularly Cincinnati,were shipped downriver to New Orleans and its surrounding region,as well as back East to the major urban centers.2 Although Cincinnati became the center of antebellum meatpacking, the industry during this period did not require a large permanent workforce. Because pre–Civil War meatpacking was a seasonal industry that peaked during the fall and winter months, workers in the industry tended to come from the ranks of stonemasons, cellar diggers, plasterers, and others who worked primarily during the summer months. During the 1840s, the typical Cincinnati packinghouse employed around fifty workers. Even as some of the leading merchants started to construct integrated slaughtering and processing facilities distinct from their warehouses after the Civil War, packing employment remained seasonal and small in scale compared to that of the leading Chicago packinghouses.3 Cincinnati’s growing pork industry also stimulated the development of important by-products industries, including manufacturers of lard, soap, glue, candles, brushes, buttons, shoe polish, plaster, glycerine, fertilizer, sofas, and mattresses. For instance, Procter and Gamble got its start as a maker of candles and soap. By 1859, it employed eighty workers, who used thirty thousand barrels of lard that year to manufacture candles and soap.This by-products trade resulted in the further growth 30 economics of related ancillary industries, such as cooperage. A similar pattern of...