America's Historic Stockyards: Livestock Hotels

TCU PRESS FORT WORTH, TEXAS Copyright © J’Nell L. Pate 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pate,...

Author: J'Nell L. Pate

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TCU PRESS

FORT WORTH, TEXAS

Copyright © J’Nell L. Pate 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pate, J’Nell L. America’s historic stockyards : livestock hotels / J’Nell L. Pate p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87565-304-9 (Hardback : alk. Paper) 1. Stockyards—United States—History. 2. Livestock—United States— Marketing. I. Title. HD9433.U4P38 2005 338.4’76360831—dc22 2004022004 Printed in Canada Cover and text design by Bill Maize; Duo Design Group

For all those folks—working in the big cities or raising livestock in the countryside— for whom stockyards represented a way of life for many years, and, again, as always, for Kenneth.

TA B L E

OF

CONTE NTS

Preface

ix

Introduction

xi

PART I: LIVESTOCK MARKETING IN AMERICA

1

CHAPTER 1

Stockyards Activities

3

CHAPTER 2

Early Livestock Markets—Colonial to 1850s

15

CHAPTER 3

Stockyards “Companies” Emerge—1860s to 1920s

21

CHAPTER 4

Uncle Sam Regulates Stockyards—1930s to World War II

31

CHAPTER 5

“Hotel” Occupancy Dwindles—1950s to the Present

41

CHAPTER 6

Looking Forward PART II: TWO DOZEN BIG STOCKYARDS— THEIR ORIGIN AND GROWTH

51 57

CHAPTER 7

Early Market Cities

59

Lancaster, Pennsylvania

60

Cincinnati, Ohio

63

Louisville, Kentucky

67

St. Louis, Missouri

70

Chicago, Illinois

75

CHAPTER 8

Midwestern Markets

83

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

84

Kansas City, Missouri

86

St. Joseph, Missouri

92

Peoria, Illinois

94

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S TOC KYARDS : L IVE STOC K H OTE LS

Indianapolis, Indiana

95

Omaha, Nebraska

100

Sioux City, Iowa

107

Denver, Colorado

111

South St. Paul, Minnesota

115

Fort Worth, Texas

118

Wichita, Kansas

124

San Antonio, Texas

127

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

130

CHAPTER 9

Later Stockyards

133

Portland, Oregon

133

South San Francisco, California

137

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

140

Ogden, Utah

145

Houston, Texas

148

Joplin, Missouri

151

CHAPTER 10

Other Stockyards

155

Appendix I: Tables

160

Appendix II: Comparative Livestock Receipts

162

Acknowledgments

165

Notes

167

Glossary

187

Bibliography

197

Index

213

Preface Americans have used meat as a large part of their diet from colonial times to the present. While hunting wild game may have been the earliest source of meat, especially on the frontier, domesticated animals quickly provided the most readily available food. The story of how various types of livestock have reached America’s dinner tables for the past four centuries forms a vital part of this country’s heritage. The historic marketing picture reveals various scenarios: driving animals to “cow pens” during colonial days, slaughtering hogs on the Ohio frontier, herding Texas longhorns northward to Kansas cow towns, transporting livestock by rail to big city stockyards, or, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, selling animals from feedlots or by video, computer, or closed-circuit television. From the 1860s to the 1960s and beyond, large stockyards dominated livestock marketing in America. Two dozen of the largest are featured in this book. Phrases from a unique language—that of stockyards and meat-packing workers, especially of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries— need to be preserved. Livestock workers used their own colorful terms to describe the animals and their surroundings at the yards. A glossary includes terms commonly used during the heyday of the big stockyards. Much of this country retained an agricultural existence until the fourth decade of the twentieth century, which meant that parents or grandparents of many present Americans either handled livestock at stockyards, worked in the packing plants, or loaded animals on railroad cars headed to market from their own farms or ranches. I hope readers can learn what earlier generations of Americans readily accepted as the only way to sell their domestic animals: through stockyards. Western historians will recognize the familiar themes of livestock, railroading, and meat-packing entrepreneurship in the

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rise and fall of the nation’s big stockyards in the century when they proudly called themselves “livestock hotels.” One comment about style: the industry spelled “stock yards” and “live stock” as two words for decades and then at mid-twentieth century combined these to one word. Consistent with the time frame, this manuscript follows the historical spelling.

Introduction Symbolically and literally, the era of big stockyards in the United States began with the opening of the Chicago Union Stock Yards on Christmas Day 1865. The innovative livestock marketing strategies that would dominate the business for the next century represented a welcome new beginning to a nation torn by civil war and ready for healing. Indeed, cattle drives heading north from Texas soon reached railroads that were building westward, allowing cattle to travel to slaughtering plants near the Chicago yards. In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad united the nation east-west at Promontory Point, Utah Territory, and a network of feeder lines made possible several cow towns in Kansas and Nebraska with rail connections to the large Chicago market and to other similar markets that soon developed. In addition to new markets, the revolutionary idea of shipping slaughtered meat by iced-down, insulated railroad cars (and later refrigerated ones) set in place elements that, for well over a century, made the big stockyards the major means of marketing livestock. After a long drive, cattle pens had to be available at railroad junctions and pens readied for hogs that were shipped from midwestern farms. Meatpacking companies (as the slaughtering plants were called) needed a ready supply of all types of livestock to keep their plants operating; consequently, the slaughtering companies invested both in stockyards and railroads. This triumvirate of rail lines, stock pens, and slaughtering facilities dominated livestock marketing in America. Most nineteenth- and twentieth-century markets operated in big cities at locations collectively called “the stockyards.” They actually consisted of a stockyards company, meat-packing facilities, offices for commission agents and dealers, market newspapers, cattle loan companies, market news services, officials hired solely to run the operation, and harness shops,

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veterinarians, and restaurants. Thus, the term “stockyards” became an umbrella designation for a variety of services. Also among these were public utilities officials, livestock traders, meat inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, officials from the Packers and Stockyards Administration, buyers from the meat-packing plants nearby, and railroad officials. All of these people and their customers made the livestock market a place teeming with activity.1 Therefore, “stockyards,” in its broadest definition, became a place to bring all kinds and classes of animals and people together. A relationship of mutual benefit existed among the railroads, the stockyards companies, and the slaughterhouses, making the three entities quite interdependent; probably none could have prospered without the other two.2 Along with other related businesses, the three major players constituted the “market.” In many instances ownership of the three business operations combined and overlapped. The packers constructed refrigerator railroad cars in order to protect their perishable product, and they also often built stockyards facilities in order to guarantee a ready supply of animals for slaughter in their packing plants.3 Louise Carroll Wade has called the livestock trade and the meat-packing industry “Siamese twins.”4 “Triplets” better describes the relationship between stockyards, meat packers, and the railroads, for the latter first carried the live animal to the market and then transported the slaughtered, refrigerated product away from the packing plant. The stockyards generally referred to the entire area in a city where all participants in the process came together to do business. Market participants used both broad and narrow definitions of “stockyards” as does this historical account. In a narrower sense, stockyards can be defined as only the company that provided the pens and facilities where livestock trading took place. A single company in each market, for example, often furnished food and water in the holding pens, veterinary services, loading and unloading facilities, weighing scales, and office spaces. A

I NTRODUCTION

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stockyards company did not buy livestock; rather, it provided a convenient place where buying and selling could occur. This unique system for marketing livestock in America found its greatest success from approximately the mid-1860s to the mid-1960s. Compared to railroads and the largest meat packers, little attention has been given to the stockyards companies, the firms that established this unified system. Clearly the holding area for livestock called “stockyards companies” played a vital role in the entire process. A president of the Wichita Union Stock Yards once used an analogy long accepted in the livestock industry when he described the narrower definition of a stockyards as a “hotel for livestock.” “For instance,” he said, “we rent ’em a room—a pen; if they want to eat, we feed them. We furnish branding service as a hotel furnishes a manicure; we have a veterinarian on duty, offering a complete service, just like a hotel employs a house physician.”5 He further explained that this livestock hotel charged the same rent, called yardage, whether the “guest” remained one day or a week. The “desk clerks,” employees of the stockyards, fed and watered the animal and weighed it as it “checked out.” Principal sources of revenue for stockyards company owners included the charges for market services and use of facilities. Normal charges were: (l) yardage at a fixed price per head; (2) weighing at a fixed price per draft (several animals); and (3) feed, if required, at a fixed margin above the cost of the feed. Quite properly, most businessmen chose sites for stockyards on the south side of towns so that prevailing north winds would blow the accompanying aroma away from residential areas—as in Omaha, South St. Paul, St. Joseph, and South San Francisco. As it happened, the men who organized the stockyards near Fort Worth owned fourteen hundred acres of land north of town, so they built there; stockyards promoters at Wichita located their pens to the north as well. Practicality and perhaps cheaper land overrode the public’s sensibilities in the nineteenth century.

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Eventually an association of livestock dealers or commission agents, who sold livestock on commission for others in a central market, banded together in a voluntary association called a “livestock exchange” or a “traders exchange.” The association provided a gathering place where members could meet and share views about the market. The major purpose of an exchange was to assure every patron of the market fair and impartial treatment in the sale or purchase of livestock and to bring about a uniform code of ethics among members. An exchange admitted new members upon the recommendation of an investigating committee. Various markets handled such organizations differently.6 Interconnected and well organized, this livestock marketing network involving big stockyards served the nation superbly for over a century. It faltered in the last third of the twentieth century, when many of the large stockyards began closing.

L I V E S TO C K MAR KETI NG I N A M E R I CA The stockyards marketing phenomenon developed an “inevitable trend toward economic centralization and specialization.” —Sue Flanagan, Trailing the Longhorns a Century Later

C HAPTE R ON E

STOCKYARDS ACTIVITI E S

Old timers in each market liked to refer to their operation as a “livestock hotel.” Each stockyards preferred to think that someone on its own yards coined the colorful expression, but just who, in fact, did so is difficult to prove. The term, “livestock hotel,” however, was in wide use by the late 1930s.1 Procedures at the nation’s large stockyards resembled those of a hotel in many ways. Included in an animal’s stay was its contact with “managers, bell-hops, porters and maids” who “served” guests during the enforced “visit.” The “guests” (cattle, calves, hogs, sheep, horses, and mules) averaged a brief, twenty-four-hour stop. Although the thousands of involuntary visitors mooed, squealed, bleated, or whinnied their discomfort, displeasure, and sheer frustration at being herded and crowded into strange, noisy pens (either in the hot sun or freezing cold wind), stockyards workers exerted some effort toward their comfort. Employees supplied fresh water and hay to each pen. If nature overtook the frightened animals, causing them to relieve themselves on their clean hay or to tromp on it before they could eat it, “room service” rarely provided any replacements. Workers, however, learned to place the food and water above ground level to minimize such accidental “guest” messing. Indeed, housing the animals in the “hotel” represented only the beginning of a stockyard’s duties. In 1959, Milburn Cross, general manager of the Peoria Union Stock Yards Company described the yards as “sort of like a

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combined hotel, stock market and fruit and vegetable market all rolled into one.”2 The entire operation existed to provide a neutral ground—a marketplace—where buyers and sellers could meet to transact business. With meat packers or railroad stockholders sometimes being part owners (even majority owners) of stockyards, one might question, at least in the early days, the “neutrality” of the market situation, but the P&SA appeared on the scene after 1921 to referee. In reality, stockyards fit well into the huge meat-packing corporate structure of the nation’s largest industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 A stockyard’s president or general manager might have worked his way up on the meat-packing side for Armour, Swift, or one of the other large packers and then been appointed to head a stockyards company. Or, he might have been a prominent official on a railroad that held part ownership in the stockyards, moving from place to place at the whim of his employers. In some smaller yards, members of one family often passed down the task of management to the next generation. Stockyards ownership proved profitable. One estimate puts profits to the “hotel” or stockyards company at the St. Joseph Stock Yards for 1903–1907 at .078–.094 cents per animal. During those years the industrywide average charge was a little less than 10 cents per animal. To those figures stockyards owners added receipts from other endeavors, such as interests in railroads, banks, cattle loan companies, land companies; in addition, they earned money from the rental of their exchange-building facilities.4 In 1931, a quarter of a century later, at Joplin yardage charges had risen to 35 cents for cattle, 25 cents for calves, 12 cents for hogs, and 8 cents for sheep and goats. Sample commission charges in 1931 were 90 cents a head for cattle, 40 cents for calves, 30 cents for hogs, and 25 cents for sheep and goats. Most other markets charged similar rates.5 Independent of stockyards ownership, commission agents accepted consignments of livestock (railroad car lots prior to the 1930s or truck

S TOC KYARDS ACTIVITI E S

5

“drive ins” later) and sold the animals for a customer in exchange for a small fee. Packer buyers purchased livestock for slaughter either for the big entrepreneurs or for various small independent companies. A packer buyer could estimate to within a few pounds how much the animal would weigh when “dressed out,” (i.e., slaughtered and processed). If a packer buyer miscalculated by too much too often, he lost his job. Order buyers purchased livestock for packers elsewhere or for customers for other purposes, perhaps for a producer who wanted steers to fatten on the range. Dealer buyers also roamed the yards, buying and selling on their own account. Whether they were small farmers or large ranchers, producers sometimes accompanied their livestock to the market. If the stockyards was distant, these producers either followed their animals or consigned them to a commission agent whose judgment they trusted. Others found on the yards besides actual stockyards workers, buyers, and sellers were telegraph operators, market reporters, railroad representatives, market news service employees, cattle loan officers, and, after 1921, field officers of the Packers & Stockyards Administration. Other than these stockyards regulars, many unskilled workers—the “porters and maids” of the operation—handled the dirty work. They shoveled manure and hosed brick-floored pens after handlers removed a railroad car’s lot of cattle, hogs, or sheep. The workers forked fresh hay and replenished the water for the next guests “checking in.” They repaired the pens, herded the animals, ran the errands, and performed numerous other necessary tasks. Many of the unskilled stockyards workers, like their counterparts in the nearby meat-packing plants, were first-generation immigrants. By the beginning of the twentieth century at least eighty percent of the immigrants entering the United States came from southern and eastern Europe, because cheaper travel costs had made such migration possible. Part of the “new immigration” to the United States—as opposed to the older and

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slower movement from western Europe whose people found land on which to settle—these newcomers knew that no free western homestead land remained. They often disembarked from a ship and immediately boarded a train to a major market city. Upon arrival, the new immigrant traveled straight to the stockyards area seeking a job either with the stockyards company itself or the packing plant. Many of the early twentieth century immigrants came from Slavic, Jewish, or Catholic-Mediterranean backgrounds and tended to settle together, sometimes in company housing furnished by the stockyards or meat packers. Often well-defined ethnic ghettos developed. Many stockyards workers at the St. Louis market, for example, were Bulgarians and Macedonians who lived in the community called Granite City.6 Workers at the Chicago market included Bohemians, Germans, Jews, Lithuanians, Mexicans, Poles, and Slovaks. They lived “back of the yards” or west of the stockyards in the town of Lake, an incorporated suburb of Chicago.7 In 1920 in the stockyards cities of over one hundred thousand population, people of foreign parentage or birth accounted for almost sixty percent of all residents. Overcrowding and the absence of proper sanitation in such communities contributed to high rates of illness and death.8 While they knew that many citizens looked down on their part of town because of the horrendous smell of the thousands of animals, fulltime residents of the stockyards area (in any or all of the stockyards cities) often were proud of their communities. Even the crowded tenements and rooming houses, and the distinctive aroma reminded them that they had jobs in the busiest business in town. Residents and workers often became so accustomed to the smell that they hardly noticed it. Sometimes the new immigrants to America earned more money in a month than their relatives made in an entire year in the “old country.” They could endure the smell of manure.9 Wages and working conditions of stockyards and packinghouse workers varied only slightly from city to city. In Chicago, industry workers in 1890


7

earned anywhere from $1.50 to $4.50 per day. Louise Carroll Wade, in her study of Chicago’s packinghouse workers, writes: “Contrary to Upton Sinclair’s 1906 depiction of packinghouse employment, workers in the 1880s and early ’90s had comparatively good wages and many opportunities for advancement in the expanding industry.”10 She referred to the muckraking novel, The Jungle, in which Sinclair may have exaggerated working conditions to try to convince the nation to adopt socialism in its major industries, including meat packing. Cynics generally observed that Sinclair reached the “belly” of the citizens rather than the “head” or political views, for an outraged public insisted on meat inspection laws rather than calling for a switch to government ownership of meat packing in America as Sinclair had urged. He stressed immigrant exploitation, but other writers have pointed out that some newcomers welcomed the opportunities for jobs and the variety of ethnic meat choices provided in their communities.11 Average annual wages at stockyards and packing plants in Chicago for selected years in the first two decades of the twentieth century were: 1914, $546; 1918, $1,015; 1920, $1,327; and 1921, $1,163.12 Unskilled workers in both stockyards and meat-packing jobs earned $0.175 per hour during the first fifteen years of the twentieth century. In St. Louis from 1907 to 1913 common laborers at the yards earned between $0.15 and $0.17 per hour. Some, however, received as much as $0.30.13 In 1917 the Big Five meat packers (who owned stock in most stockyards) raised the minimum stockyards workers and meat-packer wages to $0.275 per hour, the first raise in wages since 1904. Both output and prices had risen much earlier, however, causing complaints that wage hikes lagged too far behind. Some attribute the eventual pay raises to the actions of William Z. Foster, a socialist (later communist) who began organizing unskilled stockyards workers in Chicago. Foster, with fellow Chicago Federation of Labor organizers John Fitzpatrick and John Johnstone, helped form the Stockyards Labor Council on July 25, 1917. Two meat-packing

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unions, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and the Butcher Workers of North America, enrolled ninety percent of all workers on the yards (with separate unions for blacks).14 By the 1920s, stockyards workers and their meat-packing cohorts had demanded and received time-and-a-half for overtime work and double time for the six holidays they enjoyed. The holidays were Christmas, New Year’s, Decoration Day, July 4, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. This enviable situation did not materialize without great effort on the part of labor. Strikes in 1886, 1894, 1904, and 1921 paved the way. Owners often hired newly arrived immigrants and blacks as strike breakers.15 Whether induced by the activities of Foster and Sinclair or labor agitation, entrepreneurs Swift and Wilson created fringe benefits that included pension funds. The common labor wage by 1931 had reached $0.325 per hour at the meat-packing plants. Women made up almost twenty percent of the workforce across the industry.16 In addition, race problems nationwide affected housing, education, and economic equality both within and without the livestock industry. During the 1920s business leaders began a program that has been identified by the term “welfare capitalism” in which employers constructed clean, safe factories for their workers with cafeterias and even sometimes medical clinics. They also organized sports teams for off-duty hours. Baseball teams set full schedules, wore uniforms provided by sponsors, and advanced to playoffs. Blacks and whites found themselves on segregated teams, however. Partly to forestall organized union activity, some employers, including the livestock industry, created company unions. Businesses outside the livestock industry instituted practices that nevertheless influenced it. In the automobile industry, for example, Henry Ford doubled wages by instituting a $5 workday and in 1926 began a five-day week for his employees. In addition, Ford claimed to have originated the assembly line for his Model T cars, but livestock people reminded him that


9

slaughtering had used the technique for years—although in a “disassembly” process.17 Stockyards and meat-packing workers within a short radius of the yards formed close-knit communities. Many men went home for lunch. Families had little money to spare after providing necessities, but a creative use of resources found many free enterprise operations springing up after work hours. During the Great Depression one enterprising Hispanic in Fort Worth took orders for his wife’s ethnic cooking and carried meals back to work with him during his own lunch hour. He later quit the yards and opened a Mexican food restaurant that his grandchildren continue to operate in the same area, even though the stockyards have closed. Many other immigrant workers similarly thrived and eventually prospered, forming social networks that supplied assistance during crises.18 The arrival of a railroad carload of livestock set in motion a chain of events at the stockyards. Selling through commission companies by what participants called a “private treaty” characterized sales at all the major terminal markets in their heyday. When stockyards workers unloaded livestock from the railroad dock or from a truck, an employee of the stockyards company called a “key” man received the animals and locked them in catch pens. Gate men from each of the numerous commission companies met these carloads (or truckloads) and filled out a weigh bill on animals consigned to their companies. Commission agents paid the railroad freight charges for stock consigned to them. A gate man for a particular commission company took the livestock “guests” from the stockyards catch pens and drove them down alleys to the assigned pens of his company, signing with the key man for the animals. In some cases the stockyards company delivered the cattle, hogs, or whatever, to the commission firm. The gate man marked them individually to keep different owners’ animals separate, using a wax marker to place an “X” or a circle or other figure. He put the same mark on the weigh bill. Various markets used different methods of distinguishing animals.

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Buildings for weigh scales were scattered throughout Wichita’s many acres of wooden pens. To facilitate sales, stockyards officials assigned commission companies to courtesy specific scales near the pens they used. Photo courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.

At the commission company’s pens, the yardman for that company assumed responsibility for the animals and placed them in separate pens according to owners, making note of ownership on a card. Each commission company usually retained two or three cattle salesmen, some specializing only in calves, others steers, or cows and bulls. A salesman took buyers to the pens of his company, showing the animals for sale, until he obtained a bid that he thought represented fair market value. He might show the animals to four or five buyers before he was satisfied with the price. Bidders did not know what anyone else had offered earlier. When the commission agent had accepted a bid, he notified the yardman of his company to weigh the animals that he had just sold. Some salesmen claimed that they did all of this work by memory and became so adept that few if any mistakes were made. From memory the salesmen wrote down the animals sold, to whom, and for how much. (Others on the market claim that no one could have remembered that much.) The commission firm kept track of railroad


11

charges by weight or carload, yardage fees by head, and sales at price per pound. The number of scales available depended on the size of the stockyards. During the busiest years of the Fort Worth stockyards, for example, the company operated seven scales for weighing animals, and it generally assigned commission companies to certain scales. The commission company’s yardman lined up the sold animals in the alley to be weighed, opened the gate, put the animal or group on the scales, called out the purchaser, and at what price. The weighmaster wrote the resulting information on the scale ticket, weighed the livestock, and stamped the weight on the ticket. Several animals weighed at one time were a draft. Ownership changed hands as the weighmaster pressed a button to register the weight of a load. Once the animals stepped off the scales on the opposite side, the responsibility of the commission company ended; the newly weighed livestock became the property of the new owner. Responsibility for holding an animal or draft of animals until it left the stockyards usually reverted to the stockyards company, but not in all cases. The commission company’s work continued as the head yardman picked up several weigh tickets from the weighmaster and took them back to the various salesmen (of his company) who had sold the animals listed on the tickets. The salesmen checked the tickets, marked the price, and initialed them; then a runner carried the tickets to the office of the commission company, usually located in the livestock exchange building. As they modernized, stockyards provided pneumatic tubes to send tickets to the offices in the exchange building. The office staff of the commission company figured the amount of money due to the seller of the animal or animals and made up a bill to give the buyer. From the 1920s through the 1950s two or three women sorted the bills to buyers, packers, dealers, and others in a small room with wooden shelving like post office boxes. Even railroad freighters had a box. The

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commission company’s office girl or boy picked up the bills and took them back to the company. Packers picked up their tickets. Even though all of this was accomplished by hand, the process was surprisingly efficient.19 The commission company collected its fee and paid the stockyards company for yardage and handling, deducting that amount and also the railroad or trucking rates from the sale price due the livestock producer. Commission fees for each sale in the mid-twentieth century usually averaged $0.50 per animal. On the late evening or night of the sale, the office staff wrote a check to the stockyards company so that it would receive payment the following morning. In most markets the commission company collected the money before noon the following day; the process did not usually operate on credit. From fees collected, the commission agent paid rent to the stockyards and wages to clerks and bookkeepers or salesman and kept the rest as profit. The farmer, rancher, or other livestock producer who turned his animals over to commission companies (referred to as selling by private treaty) took no part in the sale unless he was so knowledgeable and traded animals so often that he knew all the buyers. In that case he might tell a buyer that he had some good animals in such and such a pen for sale that the buyer probably would want to see. The salesman for the commission company, however, retained control of the sale, although the commission company only acted as agent for the seller. The seller retained ownership and could stop the process at any time prior to the moment when the animals stepped off the scales. When the animals officially became the property of the new owner, the stockyards company received livestock in catch pens, and the animals remained there until some representative of the buyer came to the key man and signed for the animals. The representative then drove the animals to his own pens—if he had any—sorted them out, and prepared to deliver them to the new owner. During the heyday of stockyards activity, some workers


13

did nothing all day but go to the various weigh scales and receive cattle for their employers and take them to pens.20 Livestock producers used commission agents to sell their cattle on the large terminal markets for practical reasons. Most important was the commission agent’s knowledge of market prices because it allowed him to get the highest possible price for his customer in an efficient manner, usually considerably higher than the farmer or rancher could get for himself. A commission agent represented the producer (or whoever consigned the animals) and no one else. He was therefore under no obligation to accept the highest bid in any market day, particularly if he did not think the bid was high enough. He could wait until the next day, forward the cattle to another market, or even tell the rancher to wait a while, although these situations rarely happened. Actual sales transactions at the big terminal markets took place by word of mouth. Longtime market participants continually repeated the mantra that their industry was one of the last big businesses where a man’s word was his bond, believing that their “western values” created honesty and integrity. They prided themselves on this assumption.21 Different markets varied the sales procedure, but the pattern remained reasonably similar on all the major yards. Producers did not always sell to packers, for dealers might want to purchase animals to stock their own or others ranges, to fatten them, and to sell them later. The stockyards company or commission agent never owned the livestock. When packers purchased the animals, they tried to slaughter them the same day to keep from paying a charge to the stockyards company for holding them overnight.22 Joseph G. McCoy was the far-sighted entrepreneur credited with starting a market in 1867 at Abilene, Kansas, and engineering the cattle drives up the trail from Texas to that city. In his 1874 book about the cattle industry, he described stockyards employees’ activities in Kansas City in the 1870s; these activities duplicated the methods previously described,

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indicating that procedures did not change much over the years. According to McCoy: As soon as a train bringing stock arrives at the yards and is drawn up to the platform for unloading, the employees of the yard company (of which there are many) at once open the car doors, put down a small bridge from the car floor to the platform, and drive the stock out and down the inclining platform into the alleys, along which they are hastily driven to a yard of proper size, into which they are turned. Soon after, they are watered and fed according to order of shipper. Large barns for storing baled hay and corn are provided, and a shipper can have his stock fed either or both, and only has to pay for the amount he orders; and if no sale of his stock is made, no charge is made for yardage or reloading, which is done by the yard company. Only in case of sale are charges of yardage made for stock, which includes weighing. A large building is provided for the business offices.23 Private treaty sales took place on terminal markets and generally required several commission agents. The sales marketing process that evolved by the 1960s had added an auction to this long-held practice of private treaty sales. The purpose was to compete with small auctions that had developed in small country towns. Other marketing methods included direct sales to packers from feedlots and, by the 1980s, full-color video shots of entire herds grazing on their own range.

C HAP TE R TWO

E AR LY L IVE STOCK M AR KETS Colonial to 1850s The roots of America’s livestock marketing lay on the east side of the Atlantic. In medieval England, as early as the twelfth century, livestock raisers drove their animals to market. A market called Smithfield existed in the time of Henry II (1154–89); it was located in an open field outside the gates of the city by that name. Later, south of London on a three-and-onehalf-acre, cobblestone site, wooden rails secured animals awaiting sale. Country drovers timed their journey to the outskirts of London with their herds to arrive on Thursday for a Friday market or on Sunday for the even larger Monday sale day.1 English trading practices crossed the Atlantic to North America along with the Puritan religion, Anglo-Saxon ideas of free enterprise, and representative government. Boston became the earliest market town in New England. As early as 1640 cattle for sale began to move overland to the coast from areas due west and northwest. Within the next twenty years Hampshire County, Massachusetts—located one hundred miles inland— specialized in grass-fed cattle for the Boston market. One of the earliest public livestock markets of record in the colonies existed nearby at Brighton. John Winship constructed holding pens there in 1756 to serve his own slaughterhouses. Located just across the Charles River from Harvard, the Brighton market later provided meat for George Washington’s army and continued as the livestock market for all the New England states for twenty years after the American Revolution.2

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Trade also developed in the middle colonies. In 1641 the Dutch on Manhattan Island led colonial North America in livestock sales. New Amsterdam’s pens stood on the north side of what later became Wall Street in New York City, with refuse from slaughterhouses draining into the East River. An annual total of four thousand cattle and even more hogs arrived there by the mid-seventeenth century. In 1659 the burgomasters of New Amsterdam designated the space before the town’s military fort as a “market for fat and lean cattle” to be held continuously for forty days each autumn. They constructed a building with a tiled roof, later called the “Broadway Shambles.”3 During colonial days, livestock fairs became popular in Pennsylvania, and at the end of the seventeenth century markets for farm animals existed at Philadelphia, Chester, and New Castle. Philadelphia even exported livestock and packed meat to the West Indies in 1700. Because Lancaster later became the most important inland town in Pennsylvania on the path to the West and because people continually moved west, the place emerged as one of the first important trading points. Pioneers purchased wagons, food, rifles—and livestock—there before heading west of the Susquehanna River.4 Livestock raising flourished in the southern colonies because of the warm climate and rich soil. In the Carolinas cattle owners moved into the foothills of Appalachia to save room on the fertile coastal land for agricultural crops. Animals grazed freely on the lush pastureland until time came to collect them in cow pens and later to drive them eastward to Charleston and Baltimore.5 As the population increased, the large areas available for cattle and cow pens began to shrink.6 North Carolina farmers in the mideighteenth century drove hogs to market as far away as Philadelphia and then exported swine to the West Indies as well. Scottish-Irish immigrants, descendants of the Celts, had been “grazers” of animals rather than farmers in the Old Country. They turned their cattle, sheep, and hogs loose to fend for themselves in the thick woods of the southern back country.7

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As the population of the thirteen English colonies increased, drovers with herds of cattle, swine, or sheep became commonplace on roads leading to the markets at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston. In these principal centers, activity began at 7 A.M. with the ringing of a bell on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. In keeping with English practice, farmers could sell only at the designated market, and no one could buy animals to sell the same day for profit until after sales had taken place for two hours.8 Both auctions and sales by private treaty took place at these markets. At the time of the American Revolution, herds on the way to market often numbered in the thousands. Some farmers owned two hundred head of cattle, although an average farmer probably possessed no more than twenty cows. During George Washington’s administration, Alexander Hamilton’s whiskey tax made unprofitable the practice of farmers’ turning their corn into alcohol. For that reason, farmers fed corn to livestock, thus increasing cattle and hog production, and they drove their animals eastward across the mountains. Settlers along the way sometimes bought stockers to fatten and sell. By the end of the eighteenth century, promoters moved livestock markets to country fairs in rural areas, and markets in larger cities became less important.9 Until after the War of 1812, Ohio valley drovers took their animals to seaboard markets like Philadelphia or Baltimore. Estimates suggest that a hundred thousand hogs annually traveled east from Kentucky alone. During winter months farmers killed some of their livestock and smoked or cured meat for their own families’ needs. If surpluses existed, farmers might take their animals to local markets on the Ohio-Mississippi River network. Buyers then would ship downstream, relying on flatboats or keelboats for the river trade. An equal number of livestock moved on the hoof, however, until steamboating emerged after 1816.10 The Erie Canal opened in the mid-1820s, and the Ohio and Pennsylvania systems came a decade later. Livestock trade expanded, creating

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the need for more pens or yards to hold animals awaiting transport. Enterprising folks soon built hotels, taverns, and livestock pens to accommodate both men and animals traversing the newly developed canals or trails. Some called the pens “drove stands.” The drives to market remained seasonal during favorable weather, usually from February to August.11 By the 1830s Kentucky became the leading beef cattle state, and her fairs attracted buyers with large amounts of cash.12 Ports of the Ohio River and later the Mississippi became the nucleus of the early midwestern meat industry. Farmers often examined fall prices to determine which product seemed more profitable to market: corn, or cattle and hogs. If corn prices were high, farmers sold grain. If not, they fed their crop to the hogs and later marketed the animals. During the 1840s and 1850s, the American annual per capita consumption of pork reached 122 pounds. In the 1843–44 season, over ninety-six western towns, half of which were in Ohio, together packed more than 1,245,000 hogs.13An 1846 article in the Maysville [Kentucky] Eagle urged farmers to bring hogs there. Maysville was located sixty miles above Cincinnati on the Ohio River. “Good pens for keeping Hogs will be in readiness and corn furnished at the lowest rates, to feed when necessary.”14 The place was an early stockyards or livestock hotel. During the latter half of the 1850s, the two largest pork markets with big enough pens for the trade included Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, with each town slaughtering on average two hundred thousand hogs per year.15 By the mid-nineteenth century, railroads forged change in the livestock marketing industry—producers could ship to market year-round at lowered costs. Because they moved where steamboats and canals could not, railroads soon altered the pattern of production and distribution, eventually shifting production westward. American rivers carried products both north and south. Both meat-packing plants and cattle pens began to concentrate at main railroad terminals, introducing a new trend that would last for over a century.16

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The Civil War temporarily disrupted the regular flow of animals to market and created high demands for food for the soldiers. As a lasting result of the war, the total number of markets and packing establishments declined; those that survived grew larger. The major livestock markets at the time consisted of Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and Chicago in the Midwest; and Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington in the East.17 Soon the major livestock markets shifted to the Midwest and formed large stockyards complexes as the nation’s railroad network built westward as well. One historian has called the stockyards marketing phenomenon that soon developed an “inevitable trend toward economic centralization and specialization.”18 The rapid creation of railroad-based markets after the Civil War began the exciting stockyards story.

C HAPTE R TH RE E

S TOCKYAR DS “C OM PAN I E S ” E M E RG E 1860s to 1920s Following the Civil War the phenomenon known as the long drive burst on the scene with all its color and romance. Texas cattlemen rounded up immense herds of longhorns that had multiplied in South Texas during the war. Cowboys drove the cattle to railheads in Kansas to be shipped to Chicago, St. Louis, or, eventually, to new markets in Wichita or Omaha. This truly western aspect of the livestock trade introduced a new breed of animal, developed first in Spain and brought to the Spanish Southwest by Francisco Coronado and other early explorers. Originally of Andalusian extraction, the strong, wiry animal became famous as the Texas longhorn. It dominated the cattle trails and midwestern markets for nearly two decades. To accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Texas cattle moving northward, large incorporated stockyards companies organized at railroad junctions. Midwestern farmers, meanwhile, continued to meet the huge demand for pork for American breakfast and dinner tables. Finally, the three elements necessary to the century-long reign of large stockyards or terminal markets came together: efficient stockyards companies, interconnecting railroads, and modern meatpacking facilities in the same location. The new stockyards companies developed in several places: Chicago, incorporated in 1865; Milwaukee, 1869; Kansas City, 1871; St. Louis, 1872; St. Joseph, 1873; Peoria, 1874; Indianapolis, 1877; Omaha, 1884; Sioux City, 1884; Denver, 1886; South St. Paul, 1886; Fort Worth, 1887; Wichita, 1887; San Antonio, 1889; and Sioux Falls, 1889. Most

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markets followed the pattern of Chicago, which officially called their company a “union” stockyards, because promoters united several previously existing small stock pens and stockyards into one larger, more efficient operation near the major railroads. Immigrants from central and eastern Europe began flocking to America after 1890. Because free land on the frontier had ceased to exist, many of the newcomers sought jobs in livestock market cities. Over fifteen million immigrants arrived in the United States during the two decades after 1890, creating a need for more food and providing a workforce for large meat-packing facilities. Company towns developed near the stockyards. Local business leaders and livestock interests generally recognized the benefits to a town with a large stockyards in its midst. Consequently, during Nelson Morris—Born in Hechingen, Germany, in 1838, Morris came to the U.S. in 1850; his family settled in Buffalo, New York. By age sixteen in 1854, he had walked most of the way from New York to Chicago and got a job in the Myrick stockyards as a protégé of John B. Sherman. Morris became a cattle trader and was a major supplier to the Union Army in the Civil War. He later established packing plants in Chicago, St. Joseph, and Kansas City, owned interests in stockyards in several markets, and operated ranches in the Dakotas, Montana, and Texas. By 1873 his business was earning more than $11,000,000 per year. He died in 1907. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

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the years 1890–1920, these local men created as many of the new stockyards companies as did railroads or meat packers. Because the cattle industry had not recovered from a disastrous winter of 1886–87, cattlemen after 1890 sought alternative means of financing their operations. Eastern investment, which had provided most of the financing, declined tremendously after 1890. An 1893 nationwide financial panic choked off new money. Local business leaders, forerunners of official chambers of commerce in their western communities, created their own markets. They invited one or two of the large meat packers to visit their city, donated land, built roads, and added utilities to induce the packer or packers to build new facilities in their town. If the meat packers purchased most of the capital stock in the new stockyards adjacent to the packing plant, that was acceptable too. The creation of several thousand jobs and the resulting economic prosperity would be worth it. Some men in Oklahoma City appropriated the only automobile in town to give a grand tour to Thomas E. Wilson, who in 1910 was the executive vice president of the Nelson Morris Company. Several other cities, including Fort Worth, used similar tactics, even raising money and presenting bonuses to Armour, Swift, or other meat packers, if they would build slaughtering facilities.1 After 1900, cattle loan companies, regional banks, and later government bureaus replaced eastern capital in livestock marketing.2 Newer stockyards companies created during these years included Portland, early 1890s; South San Francisco, 1894; Oklahoma City, 1910; Ogden, 1916, and other smaller yards in California. Expansion of railroad lines, construction of new meat-packing plants, and incorporation of stockyards companies reached a peak in the 1920s. In the large transcontinental market (and later world market) that opened up for the nation’s livestock products, the management of the industry made a transition. According to Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., the “visible hand of management” replaced what Adam Smith had labeled the

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“invisible hand of market forces.” The market still generated demand, but the meatpacking, railroad, and stockyards managers took over the coordination of the flow of goods through production and distribution. They reasoned that they could produce more of their product at lower cost and higher profit by planning more efficiently rather than waiting on market forces to act. They moved a larger volume of animals through the entire process of acquisition, slaughter, and distribution. Chandler called it “managerial capitalism.”3 In some instances the big packers owned both railroads and stockyards. Farmers and cattlemen of the Midwest and West often complained of the railroad rates and the stockyards charges for handling livestock, protesting both in the courts and to their elected representatives in Washington. Congress responded on February 4, 1887, by passing the Interstate Commerce Act, which sought to regulate high railroad rates.4 Then in mid-May 1888, a Senate committee headed by George Graham Vest of Missouri investigated the dressed-beef industry, accusing it of monopoly. The committee said that the nation’s meat packers acted in collusion, fixed prices in the East, and squeezed the livestock raisers with high charges for railroad freight rates and stockyard fees but paid low prices for their animals. Indeed, by 1888 a group of packers called the Big Four (Armour and Company, Swift and Company, Morris and Sons, and George H. Hammond) produced almost two-thirds of the nation’s supply of dressed beef and slaughtered almost one-half of the nation’s total meat supply. The Vest committee helped persuade a reluctant Congress to pass the Sherman Anti-Trust Act two years later, although the provisions against monopolistic practices proved difficult to enforce. No one packer exerted monopolistic control. The situation resembled an oligopoly rather than a monopoly; the Big Four, and later a Big Five, dominated. (Hammond died in 1886, and the Cudahy brothers of Omaha entered the fray, along with Schwarzchild and Sulzberger of New York.)5


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Mary Yeager, in her study of the meat-packing industry, concluded that in the first decade of the twentieth century the industry was oligopolistic and had been so for a quarter of a century. She contended that livestock marketing and processing entrepreneurs set out to cooperate as an oligopoly rather than to compete in a market environment that had a large capital investment for the large players. The meat packers concluded that it was easier to work together than to risk their large investments.6 This concentration of meat-packing giants into four and later five large firms resulted because the companies owned their own refrigerator cars and because they controlled the largest stockyards in the country. Their explanation: they had to control the railroad cars to guarantee that their perishable product would arrive intact at its destination, and they had to own stockyards to guarantee a ready supply of live animals for slaughter. If the local railroad that served a city would not construct a branch line directly to the stockyards or meat-packing facilities, the two businesses often built and owned a railroad jointly to assure efficient service. This further illustrates the triangular relationship between railroads, meat packers, and stockyards.7 Vertical integration existed in the industry to the extent that a large meat-packing firm like Swift or Armour (the two largest of the Big Four and later Big Five) would own a ranch, the cattle that fed on the grass, the railroad cars that carried the animals to market, the stockyards, the company town around the yards, the utility company in town, a bank, and the refrigerator cars that carried slaughtered meat to waiting buyers.8 As the twentieth century arrived, the public began reading reports of “monopoly” in an era that President Theodore Roosevelt influenced with his trust-busting activities. The combination of stockyards, packing plants, and railroad facilities in one place, often managed by overlapping boards of directors, produced the success of the new “managerial” livestock marketing process, but it looked a whole lot like a “trust” to struggling farmers. Indeed, the Farmers’ Union, which began in 1905, two years later claimed nearly

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three million members and “acquired substantial political influence” as the voice of the farmers in the Progressive Era.9 Extending from 1890 to 1920, the progressive period was characterized by industrialization, technological advances, immigration, urbanization, and the beginning of government regulation reforms that the Populists had advocated in the 1890s. As the twentieth century began, politicians argued over what role the government should take in solving the problems brought by progressive changes in society.10 The progressive reforms that came during the administrations of Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson resulted from two or three previous decades of lobbying by organizations like the Grangers, the anti-monopolists, the Greenback Party advocates, various farmers’ alliances, and the Farmers’ Union, as well as the Populists. Farmers formed large voting blocs in these organizations, although historians point out that most progressive reforms originated in the cities and towns. Women in many cities became active in the movement, some in stockyards’ cities such as Chicago, where Jane Addams established Hull House.11 Hull House was a settlement house that helped poor families, many of them near the stockyards. Although similar centers developed in slum neighborhoods in other cities, Addams’ was the first. One product of the Progressive Era, idealistic twenty-year-old socialist Upton Sinclair, spent seven weeks observing conditions in the Chicago stockyards in 1904. He witnessed a Lithuanian wedding supper at a saloon and found his characters for The Jungle, in which, two years later, he attacked the packing industry. The public outcry over the conditions Sinclair dramatized resulted in the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Administration, but the public remained unsatisfied.12 During World War I when reports became public concerning the profits of the meat industry, an outcry ensued, charging unfair competition. Several things encouraged the public demands: the American Federation of Labor


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decided to challenge the Big Five’s resistance to collective bargaining; Senator Robert M. LaFollette and President Woodrow Wilson at the behest of progressives called for stricter anti-trust legislation; consumers feared a food monopoly throughout the nation because packers had expanded into nearly every food line, including a fresh fruit trade on their refrigerator cars; farmers and ranchers in the western states remained concerned over the low and fluctuating price of meat animals; and farmers worried that commission men might tend to favor packer buyers because the commission companies rented their offices in the exchange buildings that the packers owned.13 Calls for government regulation came during World War I when the livestock industry made great profits supplying meat for the war effort, even before the United States entered the war. As a result, President Woodrow Wilson, in February 1917, requested that the Federal Trade Commission study the packing industry to determine if agreements in restraint of trade and other monopolistic practices had occurred. A study of major meat packers meant an investigation of stockyards as well, because the same ownership in most cases controlled both industries. After several months of hearings and investigations and five volumes of collected material, the FTC concluded: “It appears that five great packing concerns of the country—Swift, Armour, Morris, Cudahy, and Wilson (who had replaced Schwarzchild and Sulzberger as a member of the Big Five in 1915)—have attained such a dominant position that they control at will the market in which they sell their products, and hold the fortunes of the competitors in their hands.”14 In one chart the FTC report listed thirty-one major stockyards, showing percentages of ownership by the Big Five. The report indicated that the five large companies controlled over fifty percent of all but two of the yards mentioned, and the percentage of ownership usually ranged in the eighties or nineties. Armour and Swift owned large percentages of stockyards shares

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in Sioux City, St. Paul, St. Joseph, Fort Worth, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Louisville, Newark, Milwaukee, Brighton, Portland, and Cleveland. In fact, the Big Five packers owned financial interests in twentyeight central markets and held an average of over eighty percent of the stock in each yard they controlled. The percentages ranged from twentythree at Philadelphia to total ownership of the yards in Denver. The FTC also charged the Big Five with making agreements to buy cattle in specified percentages.15 Critics of federal regulation insisted that the government never proved that the degree of major packer ownership of the stockyards in which they operated, in and of itself, gave them a significant competitive advantage. These critics claimed that the Federal Trade Commission “assumed” a collusive oligopoly rather than proving it, using faulty statistical documentation in many cases. They further asserted that the packers’ profits resulted from continued cost cutting, improved administrative coordination, greater use of existing facilities, and expansion overseas. Cities had invited, even begged, the packers to expand into their communities by giving them shares of stock in stockyards companies after under-financed local businessmen had failed to keep a market going. The big packers came in and succeeded because of their financial superiority, thus providing jobs and booming economic activity for the cities involved.16 Almost as an immediate result of the FTC report and under authority of a food control law passed the previous year, President Wilson issued a proclamation in June 1918 that as of July 15, 1918, all commercial stockyards must have a federal license as must all commission merchants and livestock dealers. Regulatory power would be in the hands of the secretary of agriculture, but he delegated his power to the Bureau of Markets.17 The Sims Bill, H.R. 13324, introduced in the House of Representatives in November 1918, attempted to authorize government ownership of stockyards, exchange buildings, terminal railroads, rendering plants,


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market newspapers, and other market facilities. The action, regarded by market analysts as a part of the war psychology, was quickly defeated once the war ended.18 Uncle Sam, however, would soon be regulating the nation’s livestock hotels.

C HAPTE R FOU R

U NCLE SAM R EG U LATE S S TOCKYAR DS 1930s to World War II “The cattle business is a damn risky one . . . . But I’ll take my chances if the government will give us a flat playing field and give everyone the same shot at it. Unfortunately, it’s not that way,” wrote one Texas cattleman decades after government regulation began.1 Livestock producers with similar attitudes expressed their anger, claiming that the packers unethically and unlawfully colluded and took advantage of farmers and ranchers. They also complained about excessive railroad rates. In a 1920 speech to the American National Live Stock Association in Spokane, Washington, John B. Kendrick, president of the organization, called for government legislation to regulate the packers, who operated at each stockyards, and to allow a “free American market.” Kendrick, at the time a U.S. senator from Wyoming, helped support such legislation, although sentiment to regulate the packers was not unanimous within the organization. By 1919–20 opponents of the packing industry had become better organized than proponents. Seizing on the findings of the Federal Trade Commission’s 1918 report, the opponents began a legislative barrage. Major leaders included Senators Kendrick, William S. Kenyon of Iowa, Asle Gronna of North Dakota and Representative Gilbert Haugen of Iowa.2 A difference of opinion existed in the livestock industry concerning the guilt of the packers or the need for strict regulation. One writer blamed the furor and calls for legislation on wholesale grocers, who publicized the

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FTC report, although he said the charges from the grocers were never substantiated or “made to form the basis of a real court action.”3 Some cattlemen defended the packers, saying that they were the only group large enough to expand worldwide, thus providing a good market for their animals. The breakup of their arrangement could hurt producers, it was argued. Robert J. Kleberg, owner of the huge King Ranch in South Texas, predicted that government regulation would be “ruinous to packers, meat producers, and consumers.”4 To try to forestall regulation that might entail government ownership of stockyards, the packers requested a meeting with Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer where they proposed to clean up the industry from within. They signed a Packers’ Consent Decree in 1920 in which they agreed to dispose of their interests in public stockyards, railroads, market newspapers, and cold-storage warehouses. They further promised to relinquish their business in unrelated lines and to stop the use of the rail distribution system for anything other than meat products. They also promised to stay out of retail businesses. Some livestock producers accused the meat packers and the attorney general of making a deal which would allow the packers to avoid prosecution.5 Litigation began over the decree almost immediately and continued for a decade, during which time the packers did not comply with all its provisions.6 Months of committee hearings continued after the original FTC report came out as both the Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Congresses tried to pass legislation to regulate the packing industry. A new organization, the American Farm Bureau Federation, created in 1919, met with senators from agricultural states in the spring of 1921 to push for the regulatory legislation. With their support, Midwestern farm bloc congressmen insisted that Congress not adjourn until it passed the agricultural legislation that included a bill to regulate packers, plus a provision that they could no longer own stockyards.7

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Gray Silver, a former member of the Senate from West Virginia, knew his way around Washington, so the American Farm Bureau Federation hired him to lobby for legislation that they believed many farmers and livestock producers wanted. Silver lived on a large farm two hours drive west of the Capitol and commuted daily. Later, when the vote for the agricultural legislation became crucial and his work heavier, he stayed long hours at his office and slept in town.8 Silver’s work and that of others paid off. On August 15, 1921, Congress passed H.R. 6320, commonly referred to as the Packers and Stockyards Act, which took effect in September 1921 to “regulate interstate and foreign commerce in live stock, live-stock produce, dairy products, poultry, poultry products, and eggs, and for other purposes.”9 It became unlawful to engage in unfair deceptive practices, to give undue preference to persons or localities, to apportion a supply among packers in restraint of commerce, to trade in articles to manipulate prices, to create a monopoly, or to conspire to aid in unlawful acts.10 In essence, the law represented a legislative code of fair practices that the secretary of agriculture must enforce. The Packers and Stockyards Act made stockyards quasi-public utilities and required yard officers, agents, and employees to register with the government. The law forbad stockyards from dealing in the livestock they handled. Yards had to maintain orderly accounts and accurate weights and measures and must pay shippers promptly. Packers could not own stockyards, apportion livestock supply among themselves, manipulate to control prices, or create a monopoly. The secretary of agriculture possessed the power to regulate the rates that stockyards companies and market agencies charged and to issue fines for violations.11 To implement the law, officials identified eighty public stockyards as subject to the new rules, those of a size larger than twenty thousand square feet of pen space. The government then created field offices at nineteen

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stockyards. Chester Morrill, an attorney from Missouri, became the first head of the Packers and Stockyards Administration, reporting directly to Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace. Another provision of the act limited jurisdiction of the Packers and Stockyards Administration to transactions only at subject stockyards. By the end of the first year, the government had registered over 3,400 dealers and 1,000 market agencies. The operating budget for the first year totaled $200,000.12 The Big Five packers challenged the P&S Act immediately, arguing that the sale of livestock in stockyards was not an integral part of interstate commerce. Chief Justice William Howard Taft in his opinion against the packers said that the act was a permissible regulation of a business affected by public interest. The stockyards were “great national public utilities” that promoted interstate commerce in livestock. The law thus was confirmed as constitutional.13 Packers used the courts to block enforcement of the law; and because of their delaying litigation, no drastic changes occurred immediately in the nation’s stockyards. The P&S Administration monitored activities at the nation’s larger terminal markets, but their regulations did not extend to the small auctions that began to spring up in the country towns in the 1930s. The packers made no move to divest themselves of their stockyards until forced to do so. One immediate result of the P&S Act, however, became the packer-instituted practice of buying livestock directly from producers in the country—called direct marketing—rather than waiting until the animals arrived at the public terminal markets. Farmers complained that the packers sought to pay lower prices and to avoid the federal regulation at the large stockyards. Many Midwestern farm groups agitated in the mid-1920s for amendments to the P&S Act to prevent the packers’ direct marketing.14 Of course, the farmers could have refused to sell directly to packers, but organization among farm groups proved difficult to achieve. The P&S


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Administration obviously could not enforce any sanctions against individual farmers who wanted to sell directly and save shipping costs; farmers were not a “stockyards” so were not subject to the act. Seventy years later a market analyst wrote: “Sure enough, direct buying increased through the decades and no doubt contributed to the downfall of major stockyards.”15 Even a farmer with a two-wheeled trailer or sideboards on a model T could turn it into a truck in the 1920s, allowing him to haul a couple of calves or several hogs to market rather than put them in a railroad car with other farmers’ animals. The trailer-truck, which became available to more producers, also made possible the local livestock auction market where farmers could take their animals and thus ignore large stockyards. By the end of the 1930s an auction market existed in nearly every rural county or within at least a two-hour drive for every farmer throughout the country. The manager of a large New Mexico ranch in the 1920s believed that the federal appointees to the FTC, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Packers and Stockyards Administration opposed the interests of farmers and stockmen. He said that the P&S had “adopted an attitude of masterly inactivity,” adding, “[if ] it has done anything except to proceed against a couple of yard traders for alleged insolvency . . . the news of it has not reached me.”16 His comments represented an attitude of opposition to government regulation that was common in much of the West.17 Before the end of the 1920s, Armour created a company to hold all its shares of stock in the various stockyards companies over the country, calling the new corporation General Stockyards. Swift delayed until 1936 before transferring its similar stock to a new corporation created for that purpose, United Stockyards.18 Thus in the 1920s and 1930s the Big Five began selling off their stockyards investments and their interests in railroads, cattle loan companies, banks, market newspapers, and similar facilities which they had owned at the markets. Packer Nelson Morris had died in 1907, and his sons chose to

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sell their father’s meat-packing plants rather than the stockyards interests, because they could not own both. After obtaining federal permission, they sold their packing operations to Armour, thus reducing the number of major packers to a Big Four again. To create an unbiased daily market report, Congress established a national Livestock Market News Service in 1924, setting uniform standards throughout the industry. The reports assured each market of accurate information.19

N EW STOCKYARDS OPEN Livestock prices dropped at all stockyards during the Great Depression. Sometimes the prices were so low, one wonders why farmers bothered to sell. For example, Jay Marcy of Rushville, Nebraska, shipped two hogs to the Omaha stockyards in 1934. After commission agents deducted their fee, paid railroad freight charges and feed costs at the stockyards, they mailed a check to Marcy for $0.03. Marcy’s nephew fared even worse; he shipped two hogs and got a bill for $0.08 from the commission firm. Shippers to most markets related similar stories.20 Livestock marketing associations began organizing nationwide as farmers joined together to sell their animals in an attempt to reduce costs. Finance companies often began operations within a marketing association in order to assist producers who suffered economic setbacks. Also, livestock owners established cooperative commission companies at the St. Joseph Stockyards in 1917, at the Kansas City yards in 1918, and at Wichita in 1925. Any member who would pay a small fee could sell animals through the cooperative. By 1929 cooperative commission companies existed at twenty-two of the nation’s central markets and handled over twelve million head of stock annually. The influence of the cooperatives declined in the 1930s as more country markets opened, but sometimes, through the cooperatives, large terminal markets received animals marketed first at country


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auctions.21 In addition, a number of smaller stockyards began operation during the 1930s and 1940s, and trucking joined railroading as a means to move cattle to local markets. These new markets included Port City Stockyards in Houston, 1931; Joplin Stock Yards, 1931; West Fargo, North Dakota, 1935; and Billings Union Stock Yards, in Montana, 1940. Because government regulation of meat packers and stockyards became a fact of life with the P&S Administration, owners of large stockyards felt justified in creating stronger ties among themselves. The need to share information and work together resulted in creation of the American Stock Yards Association. They wanted to reverse the growing trend of farmers selling directly to packer buyers or to sales at small country auctions and to bring those animals back to the larger stockyards in the cities. The efforts of President Herbert Hoover to build trade associations among businesses no doubt influenced the stockyards owners in the 1930s. Hoover believed that a modern economy needed coordination and national planning but with the cooperation of the people and businesses involved, calling it “managerial cooperativism.” Hoover thought the meat-packing industry was in trouble because of its competition and wanted to convince the owners that they should not be disorganized but adapt “more associationalism to maximize profits.”22 Stockyards company owners listened as well as meat packers. In addition, cattlemen’s associations advertisements urging consumers to “eat more beef ” eventually began to pay off.23 The major argument of the new stockyards organization, a valid one, was that more competition to purchase livestock existed in the well-established larger markets. Livestock producers, the argument went, would cause the prices they received for their animals to drop if they sold to smaller markets where fewer buyers bid on them. Large stockyards remained the place where price setting occurred, and livestock producers obviously benefited by receiving high prices. If more and more business kept shifting to the country auctions, then fewer receipts at the large markets

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would attract fewer buyers with the eventual result of lower prices. Ultimately, lower prices at the price-setting large markets would depress prices industrywide. The American Stock Yards Association published a booklet, Dollars and Sense in Livestock Marketing, which they made available in bulk to member stockyards. The association hoped members would distribute the material to their farmer and rancher customers and anyone else who would read it. The association also produced an educational film, This Little Pig Went to Market, for use in schools, 4-H, Future Farmers of America meetings, and elsewhere It explained the economics of marketing. Stockyards ownership copied ideas from each other, shared expertise, hired market analysts, and tried everything to try to slow the decline in livestock receipts. Stockyards management may have believed that their move toward association was succeeding in the 1940s, for the nation’s two dozen largest markets enjoyed record receipts in livestock and profits during those years. The boom, however, was related to the nation’s production of meat for U.S. troops and American allies in World War II. Had war not erupted, the shift that began in the 1930s to smaller country markets might have continued slowly and steadily. Because during the war the nation had to move large numbers of animals rapidly, railroad networks continued and packers stepped up production at already established large market centers. Farmers and ranchers cooperated fully with the war effort. Most stockyards set records that would never be broken.24 During the war the country auction centers remained in place, ready to expand once the war ended. Local auctions often became the only way folks in the small towns could obtain animals for meat, since everything at the large market was rationed and destined for the war effort. In addition, the unregulated country markets paid higher prices during wartime price freezes than the large stockyards where the government more easily


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enforced its controls. Not unexpectedly, with wartime controls, a black market developed at some large stockyards. In order to leave no record of sales, buyers paid cash to stockyards workers who cooperated.25 Various factors caused the drop in livestock receipts at the large markets after the war. Chain grocery stores expanded, tempting the consumer to demand top-quality, grain-fed beef and forcing the cattle industry to produce better beef. A few feedlots had existed during most of the early twentieth century, but the number of them would multiply many times in the coming decades. The number of “guests” in the livestock hotels of America began to dwindle rapidly by mid-century.

C HAPTE R FIVE

“H OTE L” O CCU PANCY DWI N DLE S 1950s to the Present Following the close of World War II, livestock producers in some parts of the country shifted more and more to marketing their animals at country auctions rather than the big city stockyards. In an attempt to save their larger, big-city markets, stockyards companies tried delaying tactics. The stockyards and the market centers they represented added auction barns like the smaller country towns possessed; they changed their animal pens from holding railroad-car size loads to accommodating gooseneck trailers. They added modern feeding and watering facilities. By the mid-1950s most of the large, multistory meat-packing plants in use were at least fifty years old. Their facilities needed to be updated, but packers believed that it was not cost effective to do so when animal receipts kept dwindling. Within a few years, new packers built modern, one-story, conveyor-belt processing plants near feedlots or where the greater supplies of cattle existed. Energetic entrepreneurs, experienced in the industry because of working for others, began to take risks on their own to build newer, more modern meat-processing plants near the feedlots and rural farms and ranches. They moved in ahead of the slower giant packers who took too long to decide to abandon their aging facilities in the cities and to strike out with new plants in the country. Railroads carried less livestock, as farmers could easily load three or four head in a pickup or gooseneck trailer and carry them to a nearby auction

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market in a rural small town. Indeed, a Union Pacific spokesman, John Bromley, explained that at least three things put an end to the need for cattle trains: decentralization of meat packing, increasing competition from trucks, and the development of the interstate highway system.1 From Portland to Peoria all the major livestock markets faced the same problems: declining use of railcars, increased truck traffic, outdated packing plants at the yards, and the new feedlot phenomenon that drew meatpacker buyers to the country and enlarged country auctions. Many stockyards cut back sales to Monday through Thursday, then to two days a week, or even one. A Texas cattle feeder, A. L. Black, looked back on livestock marketing and remarked, “The mode of transportation has always dictated the way we

Introduced at most older stockyards in the late 1950s, the livestock auction required a special building. Most were similar with theatre-type seats, an air conditioned facility, and a snack bar. The St. Louis market here hosted a horse auction. Photo by Russ Maxwell AD-PIX Photo, East St. Louis. Courtesy St. Louis National Stockyards.

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market cattle. First there were cattle drives—the only way to deliver cattle. Then the railroads arrived . . . and we drove cattle several miles to the railroads, for the beginning of their trip to the central markets. By 1952, there were 2,500 livestock auction markets in the country. They, along with direct buying by packers, soon put the big central markets out of business.”2 In 1960 the American Stockyards Association (the name changed to singular in the 1950s) listed 50 terminal markets as members. In contrast, the Certified Livestock Markets Association cited 837 active markets, which included the smaller country auctions.3

F EEDLOTS An increased emphasis on what had been around all along—feedlots— began sweeping the plains by the 1960s, creating what seemed to many an entirely new phenomenon. While cattle or hog feeding had existed on a small scale for three hundred years in the United States, farmers originally created feedlots to use up excess grain. In the late nineteenth century, cattlemen even had competed with cottonseed oil mills, which fed cattle mainly to dispose of meal and hulls, by-products of their oil. Around the turn of the century, some large ranchers copied this practice or fed alfalfa and other grains. A few large feed yards appeared in Texas and the Midwest as early as the 1930s. In the mid-twentieth century, however, feeding intensified purposefully to increase the weight of the animal and to improve the quality grade.4 Consumer demand gave impetus to the feedlot phenomenon. Several things contributed to this demand for better cuts of beef. Population increased rapidly after World War II, because of the “baby boom” after soldiers returned home. Gains in per capita income meant that consumers had the money to pay for choice cuts of beef or to dine more frequently in fine restaurants. In addition, large supermarket chains spread rapidly across the nation, and their bulk buying power increased.5

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The only way to assure a better quality of meat was to feed grain to the animals rather than grazing them solely on the range. The result was that large feedlots sprang up in the grain country of the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Colorado. Additional feeding shifted to corn-belt states such as Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and South Dakota.6 As early as 1963 two-thirds of the steers and heifers slaughtered in the United States that year had been fed in feedlots.7 The growth of feedlots in Texas is an example of the rapid acceleration of the nationwide change in production methods. In 1956 only 63 feedlots with capacities of over a thousand existed in Texas, but in 1964 the figure had increased to 207. Businessmen created a Texas Cattle Feeders Association in 1967, and two years later their directory listed 280 members with nearly 1.5 million cattle being grain fed in feedlots.8 Jess Egurrola, an officer of the Denver Livestock Market, Inc., reported that feedlots were “everywhere,” and so it surely seemed to stockyards officials accustomed in the past to seeing their large market as the only one in an entire state.9 Population shift was another factor in the rise of the feedlot. Many small farmers sold out and moved to the big city to enter other occupations. Producers invested more money, often borrowed, to finance larger operations to feed a larger population. Large feedlots generally operated more efficiently at cheaper percentage costs than small yards, for the feeder’s ability to market cattle during the entire year helped to stabilize profit and loss. Ranchers or feedlot operators bought feeder cattle and grazed the animal on grassland before sending them to “finish” for 120–150 days at the feedlot. Financing the large feedlot operations became a major factor in commercial banking as well; many large and even small banks maintained an agricultural loan officer who specialized in the field.10 Because of fluctuations in cattle prices, bankers sometimes became hesitant to finance livestock ventures or were stricter in their oversight, often preferring to finance feeding operations,


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which could claim a better price, and sometimes using financial pressure on ranchers to achieve their ends.11 Following the feeding trend, packers in the 1960s constructed modern onestory slaughtering plants with conveyor equipment near the feedlots. Modernizing the older, multistory facilities in the large cities at the terminal markets would have been too expensive. Feedlots built near the new meat plants multiplied rapidly. In 1970 eighty percent of all slaughtered cattle received some feed prior to marketing.12 By 1984 the figure reached ninety percent.13

F EDERAL OVERSIGHT Although the 1920 Packers’ Consent Decree with the U.S. Attorney General and a decade of court cases delayed the implementation of government regulation, by the mid-1930s stockyards owners began complying with the regulation laws. During the last half of the twentieth century Uncle Sam kept his eyes on the entire process through the continued efforts of the Packers and Stockyards Administration. Congress passed various amendments to the P&S Act through the years. In 1935 an amendment of the law extended the agency’s jurisdiction to all persons engaged in the marketing of live poultry. Two major changes came in 1958: the jurisdiction of the secretary of agriculture expanded to include all stockyards, market agencies, and dealers operating in interstate commerce whether at a terminal stockyard or auction market (before that, jurisdiction of the P&S applied only to yards of over twenty thousand square feet); and the new changes defined the areas of jurisdiction for the P&S Administration and the Federal Trade Commission in meat packing, meat food products, livestock products, and poultry and poultry products industries. (Confusion had existed over the responsibilities of the two agencies.) The P&S had prohibited packers from owning custom feed yards, but packers challenged the regulations and won, so they were able to own and feed cattle.14

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Because they believed that economic conditions had changed after three decades, in 1956 three large meat packers (Armour, Cudahy, and Swift) asked the government to cancel the provisions of the 1920s Consent Decree. The meat packers wanted to be able to sell at retail, which the decree prevented. Judge Julius Hoffman denied their request, claiming that the conditions warranting the original decree still existed. Then in 1971 the government substantially amended the decree and allowed the meat packers to sell 114 previously prohibited non-meat products at wholesale. But they still could not market meat at retail. In 1979 the government relaxed the decree even further, letting the packers acquire firms that retailed the 114 products if the companies’ annual sales totaled less than $100 million or if they controlled less than fifty percent of the market.15 With two or three thousand small markets existing by the 1970s, P&S agents continued their focus primarily on competition, fair trade practices, and financial protection. From primarily stressing rule enforcement in the 1940s and 1950s, the agents in the 1980s and 1990s placed more attention on monitoring competion in the industry. A drop in cattle prices during the 1970s and a rise in grain costs forced numerous feedlots into bankruptcy. Many others survived, some when grain companies themselves began feed yard businesses to protect their grain markets. Even though the number of feedlots in the Southwest decreased, those that survived became larger, and the number of cattle on feed increased.16 The Packers & Stockyards Administration saw the national stockyards picture change dramatically through the years, for the original Big Four and Big Five packers and stockyards owners no longer survived requiring the government to monitor them. United Stockyards, which Swift created originally in the 1930s to own their stockyards, had quickly bought out Armour’s General Stockyards. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, United Stockyards owned or leased eleven central public stockyards, making it the nation’s largest owner of stockyards. But the number of active yards


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United owned dropped to seven in the 1990s. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, United had relinquished ownership of the yards to its holding company Canal Capital, which retained only three of United’s former large stockyards: Sioux City, Sioux Falls, and St. Joseph. Sioux City closed in 2002. Congress amended the P&S Act in 1976 to require that meat packers be bonded, largely because an Omaha meat-packing firm filed for bankruptcy owing $22 million to livestock sellers. This amendment brought stability because the bond ensured that producers would be protected and would be the first to receive any recovered funds in the event of a packer bankruptcy.17 Bonds vary, depending on the amount of business conducted, but in no case is the bond coverage less than $10,000. In addition, the P&S Administration required that every packer, live poultry dealer, stockyard owner, market agency, and dealer (except a packer buyer registered to purchase livestock for slaughter only) to file an annual report.18 Two cases illustrate the type of problem the P&S Administration monitored. Agents found the Fort Worth auction engaged in fraudulent weighing practices. One incident involved a man equipped with a two-way radio who was in the scale pit during an auction. The man stayed in contact with the dealers with whom he worked. When the dealers purchased cattle, the pit man manipulated the scale lever system to short weigh the cattle purchased, thus favoring the buyer. Conversely, when the dealers sold cattle, he reversed the procedure to favor them with heavier weights. A sharp observer discovered the scheme when the man in the pit lit a cigarette and smoke wafted up through the scale platform.19 The other case involved “price-and-weight mark up on livestock purchased on order, false records, and destruction of records.” A judicial officer described a Portland violation as the “most important case ever brought in the (at that time) history of the Packers and Stockyards Act.” The situation, involving a Portland commission company, tested the authority of

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the secretary of agriculture to suspend “for a reasonable specified period” a registrant who had violated the act. The ten-year suspension ordered was the longest suspension period imposed in a litigated case under the act.20 Originally twenty-six P&S offices were scattered throughout the nation. By 1963 the number was reduced by half. In 1991, as the agency celebrated its seventieth birthday, only two of the original P&S field offices, Denver and Omaha, remained located at the same stockyards posted in 1921. (Even though the Denver stockyards had closed, the office remained in the exchange building.) Field offices existed in only six of the original cities: Atlanta, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Portland, and South St. Paul, although some of the stockyards had closed. In 2003 field offices existed only in Denver, Des Moines, and Atlanta. In addition, thirty agents, geographically placed across the country and working from their homes, reported to these field offices.21 Partly as a result of the changed conditions, a new meat monopoly developed, beginning on a fairly small scale. As it took the lead in slaughtering a large percentage of the nation’s meat supply, the new company caught the industry by surprise. Currier Holman and A. D. “Andy” Anderson, founding fathers of the new beef giant, started in 1960 with a $300,000 loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration. They opened a packing plant in Denison, Iowa, near corn-fattened, feedlot cattle.22 Originally calling their company Iowa Beef Packers, Holman and Anderson pioneered a concept of “boxed beef ” in which they shipped chilled packaged meat ready to place on a supermarket meat counter. Consequently, wholesalers and retailers did not have to retain onsite butchers to divide carcasses into smaller cuts. With a name change in 1970 to Iowa Beef Processors, IBP constructed a string of modern plants, locating them in rural cattle country. This action allowed IBP to negotiate for cattle directly rather than using the “cumbersome stockyard system” (as they called it) that added time and transportation costs to the price of beef. In addition,


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their profits rose because they paid lower wages to mostly non-union, rural workers.23 IBP’s concept of “boxed beef ” became one of the major innovations in the packing industry, nearly rivaling the advent of the refrigerator car of an earlier day. Sadly, the nation’s “grand old terminal markets” or “livestock hotels” had become—in modern terminology—a “cumbersome stockyard system.” By 1980 IBP dominated the U.S. boxed-beef business even though other companies had also entered the market. Such concentration of slaughtering into one company meant that one-third fewer meat-packing and processing facilities operated in 1983 than had existed in 1945. By the 1980s approximately one-third of the major stockyards had ceased operations as well.24 Within a decade, a meat-packing Big Three emerged, one that included IBP (Iowa Beef Processors, fifty-one percent of which was owned by Occidental Petroleum with annual sales in the billions and exports to Europe and Asia); Excel Corporation, (formerly MBPXL Corporation and in the 1990s a subsidiary of Cargill Corporation, the world’s largest grain trader); and Con-Agra, Inc., (which owned Swift Independent Packing Company, abbreviated SIPCO). Swift, one of the turn-of-the-twentiethcentury Big Four, survived longest as a remnant of the nation’s former meat-packing giants.25 Tyson Foods acquired IBP/Foodbrands in 2001 in a $2.7 billion takeover. Another large packer on the scene at the beginning of the twenty-first century was Farmland National, formerly National Beef Packing.26 But the modern Big Three—IBP, Excel, and Con-Agra—slaughtered nearly seventy percent of all steers and heifers in the United States in the 1990s. In some cases the Big Three killed as many cattle or hogs per hour as some packing plants had in an eight-hour shift forty or fifty years earlier.27 The new Big Three decreased the power of the meat-cutters union and hired non-union workers at lower wages. Vertical integration existed to the extent that the Big Three contracted in advance for cattle or they owned

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feedlots to produce their own beef for slaughter. In 2000, the nation’s four largest packers either owned or controlled 38.2 percent of the cattle they slaughtered, which perhaps lowered the market prices for cattle and eliminated any stockyards-auction method for marketing the feedlot livestock. The P&S is continuing to monitor this new oligopolistic situation.28 Only fourteen of the old-time, once booming, large terminal livestock markets survived to the mid-1990s: Indianapolis, Joplin, Lancaster, Louisville, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Peoria, St. Joseph, St. Louis, San Antonio, Sioux City, Sioux Falls, and South St. Paul. By the beginning of the twenty-first century only Lancaster, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Peoria, St. Joseph, San Antonio, Sioux City, Sioux Falls, and South St. Paul remained in operation. Of these, Lancaster, San Antonio, and Sioux City have closed and some of the other markets moved to smaller facilities elsewhere. A P&S Administration official in Omaha wrote near the end of the twentieth century: “The central public livestock markets may be declining in influence as the evolution of the livestock marketing industry continues, but they will be fondly remembered by most of the people associated with the livestock industry.”29 He grossly understated the feeling that most stockyards old-timers experienced recalling the grand old, once-booming markets. Bill McCoy, president of the Lancaster Stockyards, said: “I don’t have any regrets for coming in and staying in this industry. Buyers and sellers traded with [a] shake of their hand; that was the deal; there was implicit trust. That’s refreshing.”30

C HAPTE R S IX

LOOKI NG F ORWAR D

Historians try to understand the past. Frontier historian Frederick Jackson Turner attempted to describe the migration of people westward from settled societies to the frontier as an orderly movement. The development of the huge livestock industry with the accompanying large stockyards became a part of that nineteenth-century progression. Turner “saw a process of social evolution, from the simplest forms of society to the level of complexity which we call modern civilization.”1 Corn, cattle, hogs, railroads, packing plants, and stockyards all thrived in the Midwest. “The meeting point of corn and cattle has led to the development of the packing industries,” Turner observed.2 He identified the Midwest as an important “mediator” between Canada and the United States and between the manufacturers of the North Atlantic states and (at that time) the “sparsely settled Western mining, cattle raising, and agricultural states.”3 The largest stockyards developed in Turner’s Middle West. To many observers, the stockyards, those grand old terminal markets, represented the ultimate in complex marketing management and advancement, but they too have become a casualty of a more modern marketing technology. Contemporary historian William Cronon, sometimes a Turner critic, suggests that “the central story of the nineteenth-century West is that of an expanding metropolitan economy creating ever more elaborate and intimate linkages between city and country.”4 The growing livestock market centers

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that drew animals from the surrounding rural areas accomplished Cronon’s linkages. He argues that the rural setting, or frontier, did not always evolve into the city, thus causing its overflowing inhabitants to move farther westward. Instead, both city and town, urban and rural were interdependent, each supplying the other’s needs, and they often developed together.5 The meat packers, the railroads, and the stockyards met in the cities all over Turner’s Midwest. In the present-day meat-marketing industry, indeed, the current Big Three abandoned the older trilogy of meat packers, railroads, and stockyards in the urban areas and chose for their arena of operation the rural Midwest with its grain production and feedlots. The large industrial metropolitan areas depend upon the meat products of that rural Big Three. The half-dozen stockyards that remained open three or four years into the twenty-first century faced a new problem, one no one had conceived of a century earlier: animal rights activists and pro-vegetarians crying “meat is murder.”6 Indeed, consumers’ dietary habits changed to include more chicken and fish, displacing beef and pork on the dinner tables of many modern Americans. The twenty-first century has ushered in a world that livestock producers and handlers of an earlier day could not have foreseen. Even calling a stockyards a “livestock hotel,” a common practice throughout the industry, offends some people today. This terminology manifests a frivolous attitude, they say, toward the treatment of animals whose most likely destination is a slaughterhouse. Early businessmen and livestock producers—removed by a couple of generations from animal rights protests— saw cattle and hogs as food and as a business. Current producers still do. Market fluctuations present a continuing problem. David Simons, of the Texas Livestock Marketing Association, claims that the cow business often runs in ten-year cycles with mid-decade often the down part of the cycle. He hopes that a better marketing system, as magnificently efficient as the large stockyards were in their heyday would reemerge, preventing extreme price fluctuations and that producers, grazers, feeders, and packers

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can somehow integrate their activities in order to operate with more precision and prediction of success.7 Even when prices are high, as they were in 2003, an unforeseen problem like the mad cow disease scare can rapidly affect exports and prices. Other frustrations for livestock marketing in the twenty-first century include the continuing drop in the water level of the Ogallala Aquifer of the Texas Panhandle and Great Plains. Feedlots in that area could experience water shortages in the foreseeable future.8 The U.S. Department of Agriculture Market News Service continued in the latter twentieth century to place reporters at the remaining large stockyards markets to report prices, but it also cited prices at country auctions. The service also recorded video sales in order to assist the nationwide industry in keeping abreast of prevailing prices.9 Video sales comprised about five percent of the market in the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first; auctions and private treaty sales made up the other ninety-five percent of livestock activity. Obviously, buyers no longer must travel to stockyards for livestock, nor must animals be shipped by rail to central city stockyards—transportation and communication technology have revolutionized livestock marketing. 10 Few livestock market analysts want to predict the future. Some stockyards, located in central areas of their state, such as Oklahoma City, are easily accessible to trucks because of the intersection of modern highways. They will continue as a viable part of the nation’s livestock marketing for some years. But owners will have to learn to use electronic technology to manage large livestock operations. Computer sales have become a major part of the industry. Agricultural technology will prove challenging for future industry personnel. Environmental protection laws and stricter pollution regulations create problems for owners and will continue to do so. Opportunities to trade more extensively in cattle futures will be a factor in the industry in the coming years as well. The idea of live cattle futures

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may have originated in several places at about the same time. One story is that J. D. Sartwelle, then president of the Port City Stock Yards of Houston wanted to find a way to avoid cyclical losses, so in 1962 he asked a friend about cattle futures. The friend suggested that he talk to Everett B. Harris, president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. On Harris’ next visit to Houston, the two men visited over dinner, and Harris liked the idea of futures. Both Sartwelle and Harris discussed the idea with several cattlemen, who initially reacted unfavorably; the idea of selling cattle before they were fed, or even purchased, sounded risky to them. Packers who spoke through a Mellon Bank representative in Pittsburgh said that they wanted a beef carcass contract. Sartwelle replied, “No, cattle feeders want a live contract.” 11Because there were more feeders than packers, Sartwelle got his way, and on November 30, 1964, a new live cattle contract was offered. It opened at $24, closed at $23.67; volume was 191 contracts. Exactly a quarter of a century later, on November 30, 1989, the open was $75.25; the close was $74.97, and volume reached 13,142 contracts.12 Live cattle futures is a phenomenon that caught on and will continue to expand, although some cattlemen avoid the risk. “If you like to gamble, it is fine, but don’t ever play any more than you can go home and go to sleep and forget it,” one cattleman advised.13 Superior Livestock Auction, Inc., of Fort Worth in January 1987 began to use video technology to sell cattle. More than a decade later the company remains the only truly national firm to sell cattle by video. Customers from Canada to Mexico and across the United States watch cattle grazing on their own pastures via a special video channel and send in bids. Sales reached 1.3 million animals in 2000, according to Paul Branch, an official of the company. A new challenger was Western Video Market, serving states in the West and selling around 600,000 animals per year. Of course, anyone with a computer can set up a website offering photos of cattle for sale, and more such websites are beginning to appear.14 Computer marketing will emerge in the twenty-first century as a major player.

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Because numerous small producers still exist, most analysts agree that country auctions will continue to have a place in livestock marketing. Increasing in activity will be the video sales, livestock and specialty breed shows, the creation of new breeds, and order buyers flying around in airplanes to view animals before purchase. The practice of slaughter sales going directly from feedlot to meat packer will continue. Also, direct marketing will link producers to consumers; from “ranch to retail” as some in the industry call it. Livestock marketing associations and exchanges, which have existed for many years, will continue to assist producers. Several of them are currently celebrating birthdays of three-quarters of a century or more. “Producers, by joining forces, have a stronger voice, and create a more stable environment in the livestock marketing industry,” according to Larry Ayers of the Indiana Livestock Exchange.15 An advertising program that the Cattlemen’s Beef Board operated for the last fifteen years of the twentieth century came under fire at the end of the century. Under the “check-off ” plan, $1 was deducted automatically from each animal sale to fund an $85 million advertising campaign to promote beef consumption. Larger producers in the industry favored the plan; smaller ones opposed it. A November 2002 Montana court decision upheld the program. In another case it was declared unconstitutional at the lower court and at the Eighth Circuit Court. On December 8, 2004 the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the two cases, Veneman v. Livestock Marketing Association and Nebraska Cattleman v. Livestock Marketing Association. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association polls members yearly and affirms that over sixty percent of beef producers support the check-off plan.16 The future may hold other new marketing strategies. “Change is the rule in the livestock industry, rather than the exception,” according to longtime market analyst Ed Uvacek, Jr., of Texas A&M University.17

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Allan W. McGhee, who wrote for The Drovers Journal in Chicago for fortytwo years, the last quarter century and more as editor-in-chief, said, “Having seen in my career what changes can be absorbed by an industry, I would not feel safe in making a guess.”18 The heyday of the large central markets, that colorful time when practically all the nation’s livestock was marketed in big-city stockyards, has come to an end.

T WO D OZ E N B I G S TO C KYA R D S — TH E I R OR IG I N A N D G R OW T H As soon as a train bringing stock arrives at the yards and is drawn up to the platform for unloading, the employees of the yard company . . . drive the stock out and . . . into the alleys. —Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest

C HAPTE R S EVE N

E AR LY M AR KET C ITI E S

Trade centers east of the Mississippi River naturally expanded first as Americans began to cross the Appalachian range of mountains and to move westward. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, became a livestock market center, and then much later incorporated its own stockyards company that survived into the twenty-first century. Cincinnati, Ohio, profited from flatboats floating down the Ohio River to join the mighty Mississippi as it surged southward. Predominantly German settlers in Cincinnati slaughtered increasingly larger numbers of hogs for sausages, hams, and bacon in an antebellum society that depended almost solely on pork for its meat diet. Louisville, Kentucky, located only a bit southwest of Cincinnati on the south bank of the Ohio, launched its Bourbon Stockyards from a travelers’ tavern. The market survived for over 150 years, even as the frontier moved westward. The long-established former French trading center, St. Louis, Missouri, then became the mid-nineteenth-century “jumping off place” to the American West. Because Chicago, Illinois, developed as the center of a large railroad network, that city became the largest livestock center of all and maintained its dominance for more than a century, even after later stockyards opened in the Midwest as cattle drives brought thousands of Texas longhorns northward. By 1880 the population of Illinois had reached three million people, but more than that number of animals soon began to arrive in Chicago annually.1

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The story of how these livestock markets began, the personalities who shaped them, and their records and successes deserve coverage. Often the ownership of a stockyards facility and a meat-packing establishment became intertwined, and both emerged simultaneously at a new market. As the history of each livestock city illustrated, the activities of stockyards, meat-packing and railroad connections grew interconnected. The development of a livestock market city was as important as the establishment of a specific stockyards company whose ownership and name could and often did change over time.

LANCASTER, P ENNSYLVANIA An incorporated stockyards may not have opened in Lancaster in the earliest days of settlement, but by the eighteenth century cattle trading certainly took place. Travelers used a road from Lancaster to Columbia in 1734 and followed the route from Lancaster to Harrisburg three years later. Because Lancaster was the most important inland town in Pennsylvania on the path to the West at that time and because animals and people continually moved west, Lancaster became one of the first important trading points. The first turnpike in the United States opened between Philadelphia and Lancaster in 1792, featuring a stone track for Conestoga wagons, stagecoaches, and horseback travelers. Towns quickly sprang up along the road. Pioneers drove their animals with them at the rate of about ten miles per day. Travelers purchased wagons, food, rifles—and livestock—in Lancaster before heading west of the Susquehanna River.2 One of the first records of a livestock market in Lancaster was an advertisement in the August 19, 1797, Lancaster Journal for the sale of forty yoke of “New England broke oxen” at Abraham Witmer’s house on the turnpike near Lancaster.3 By the latter part of the eighteenth century the movement of cattle became quite common on the turnpike, and toll collectors charged drovers $0.25 for every ten miles of road driven.4

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Promoters constructed the first official stockyard company in Lancaster in 1868 on a lot owned by James Stewart and located at North Plum Street and New Holland Avenue. Covering only six acres, the pens faced an adjacent railroad. Owners soon enlarged the amount of space for livestock, and a hotel was built to serve customers.5 The Stewart yards eventually became overcrowded. In 1895 the Pennsylvania Railroad created the Union Stock Yard Company on a farm belonging to the James Buchanan family, fifteenth president of the United States.6 Located on Marshall Avenue, the twenty-six acre facility featured a hotel, office building, and pens. Gradually dealers at the older yards moved to the new facilities. By the 1920s, during some periods of the year the yards handled more livestock than any similar facility east of Chicago.7 By the mid-1950s they were being called “one of the leading industries” in the Lancaster area as more than 100,000 stocker and feeder cattle passed through the market annually to be placed on farms for fattening. Fourteen commission companies operated, and some called it the “stocker and feeder capital of the East,” with the volume of business ranging from $60 million to $93 million annually.8 The Lancaster facilities, once the biggest on the East Coast, sold animals for consumption in Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Following the trend nationwide, the stockyards added an auction barn. As happened at the other markets, business dropped off considerably, a thirtysix percent decline from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. Cattle sales of 260,000 animals in 1956 dropped to 108,000 in 1986. Hogs and sheep showed receipts of 146,000 and 28,000, respectively, by the mid-1980s.9 New ownership made up of livestock exchange members purchased the yards in 1972 from the Pennsylvania Railroad that had owned them for three-quarters of a century; they changed the name to Lancaster Stockyards. One of these, Bill McCoy, indicated that his grandfather came

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from the St. Paul Stockyards, and both he and his father continued at the Lancaster market.10 His brother Patrick McCoy also became a partner. Well into the 1990s a viable feeder market as well as a slaughter market operated in Lancaster. Numerous small butchers frequented the market as well as buyers from a large packing firm in Philadelphia. Because of many Jewish residents in the area, sales of animals for the kosher market began doing well. Mennonite and Amish farmers used the market, and it drew 250,000 animals each year early in the 1990s. The sheep and goat market soon attracted 100,000 animals yearly. Increased immigration of people of the Middle Eastern culture to the eastern seaboard and their demand for mutton fueled the market rise. Owners later moved goat sales to a sale barn outside of Lancaster. Near the end of the twentieth century, the Lancaster area became the highest priced market in the nation for sheep and goats.11 As a terminal market throughout the Covered pens dominated at the Lancaster yards, located in the heart of this historic Pennsylvania town. Sheep and goats, which needed cover, constituted a large part of livestock receipts in the late twentieth century. Photo courtesy Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.


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twentieth century Lancaster served as a price setter for the eastern seaboard as cattle came from Nebraska, Montana, the Dakotas, Texas, and Oklahoma. At the end of the century, however, the stockyards became increasingly empty, and the pens deteriorated. The last auction took place in the summer of 2000. The owners received a bid of $200,000 per acre for their land on which a developer wanted to construct a shopping mall, but the city refused to rezone because of the historic significance of the stockyards district.12 The pens were still receiving a few cattle, but real operations at Lancaster had ceased. A local reporter described the Lancaster Stockyards as “quiet alleys and weathered wooden fences.” That description fits many of the nation’s formerly busy stockyards—unless they have already been torn down and turned into industrial parks or shopping centers.13

C INCINNATI, OHIO Call her Queen City, Porkopolis, or Hogopolis, Cincinnati became the chief pork-packing center in the early-nineteenth-century West because of its location on the Ohio River. A ready supply of both labor and salt also helped the city compete in an era when “meat packing” literally meant the packing of slaughtered hogs into barrels of salt brine for preservation.14 Transportation patterns in the nation explained why some cities became market centers and others did not. In the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly 1820–40, water transportation—flowing mostly north to south—dominated in America. Cincinnati’s business owners took advantage of the city’s fortunate location on the Ohio, first using flatboats and then steamboats to transport both hogs and cattle downriver to New Orleans, along with other agricultural products, such as grain and corn (or whiskey). Westerners’ eating habits, as well as those of most of the rest of the nation, favored pork as the meat of choice; therefore, farmers concentrated on hogs as a money crop and for home consumption. The first meat packer of record in Cincinnati was Elisha Mills, who began operations in

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Because so many Midwestern farmers began driving their hogs to market in Cincinnati, the community became the first major meat-packing center in the early-nineteenth-century West. Known as Porkopolis, Cincinnati enjoyed excellent water transportation in the first half of the century. Photo courtesy Cincinnati Historical Society.

1818.15 Another early local entrepreneur was a Welsh Quaker named Jason Evans who has been described as “tenacious” and “pugnacious.”16 Settling early at Waynesville, Evans first established a gristmill, but when this did not turn out profitably, he tried farming. Often it took him a week to drive his four-horse wagon to Cincinnati to sell his hogs and other produce. Along with other traveling farmers, he slept in taverns or in his wagon in the woods. Eventually this background of farming,


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milling, and trade connections persuaded Evans to start a pork-packing business—Evans, Eulass, and Pierce later Evans and Swift. Rivals who challenged Evans included Samuel Davis, Jr., Hartshorn and Childs, Miller and Johnson, R. W. Lee, and Lot Pugh and Company. Even so, his business stayed near the top for nearly twenty years until Cincinnati’s market began to decline.17 During Cincinnati’s boom of the 1820s, exports totaled $740,020 in 1826 with $223,000 of it pork, lard, hams, and bacon. In the 1826–27 season Cincinnati finally surpassed Baltimore, once the major pork city.18 Major livestock markets began moving west along the Ohio River, and by 1830 a system of canals made Ohio the principal hog-producing state. Cincinnati slaughtered 150,000 hogs each year. The community also became the most populous western city by that time with 30,000 people.19 By mid-century pork production reached a peak of over 400,000 hogs with forty-two plants. Cincinnati had become the principal pork market in the world, truly Porkopolis.20 Packing, with its adjacent stockyards of pens, dominated until trade spread westward into Illinois.21 The pork trade diminished, but Cincinnati remained an important city because by the time water travel gave way to rail, the community had diversified the economy to include more than livestock sales. Cincinnati’s share of the total western hog-packing market slowly declined from twenty-eight percent in the 1840s to nineteen percent in the 1850s. At mid-century, pork and lard furnished only fifteen percent of the city’s total receipts and shipments, and by the early 1850s Cincinnati began losing control. The population at that time had reached 115,000, and the Queen City remained the largest city in the West until 1860.22 Chicago pushed ahead of Cincinnati in 1862 to become the world’s largest packing center.23 Increased railroad connections and new settlers going primarily east/west explained Cincinnati’s livestock decline, but in addition, the local

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hog supply became unstable. Rival markets competed for trade, and the river city continued to rely too heavily on her water routes.24 Cincinnati investors tried to remain competitive in 1871 as they organized the Union Railroad Stock Yard Company with a capital of $1.25 million. Officials acquired fifty acres on which they constructed covered pens and sheds with a capacity of 75,000 head of stock. They built a hotel called Avenue House with offices on the first floor for brokers. The centrally located facility on Spring Grove Avenue provided railroad sidings surrounded by shipping pens. Within two years when four of the city’s largest packing companies constructed new plants adjoining the stockyards, a multi-million-dollar livestock industry continued. The next year the stockyards hosted a livestock convention in September as an attempt to set uniform standards and solve trade problems.25 During the 1870s Cincinnati packed over a half million hogs a year, but by then Chicago had surpassed her for good.26

Artist’s rendering of the Cincinnati Union Stockyards before 1900, showing mostly covered pens and the large exchange building. Photo courtesy The Cincinnati Historical Society.


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As the twentieth century began, local producers continued to drive livestock up Spring Grove Avenue to the stockyards. Annual receipts at the yards in the 1920s were in the range of 1,405,000 hogs, 276,500 cattle, 165,200 calves; 374,000 sheep, and 6,400 horses and mules. The nationwide trend of small country auctions and direct buying by meat packers and processors also caused Cincinnati’s livestock receipts to diminish. The Cincinnati Stockyards closed on December 5, 1980.27

LOUISVILLE, K ENTUCKY The Bourbon Yards at Louisville enjoyed the distinction of being the first livestock market to celebrate its 150th birthday. Born from a First Monday courttrade day in 1834, the market reached its sesquicentennial mark in 1984. The Virginia tradition of a monthly court day at the county seat moved westward with early pioneers to Kentucky. A fair and trade day naturally developed when nearly everyone came to town, and, logically, livestock always were among the major items for sale or trade. Soon livestock trade activity outgrew this one-day-a-month forum. Between 1800 and 1834 the town of Louisville, at the falls on the Ohio River, developed into a continuing trade center. Only four hundred inhabitants lived in log cabins in 1800, but the small twentyyear-old community had a good harbor where numerous flatboats, keelboats, and barges stopped by with cargo from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.28 During low water season dealers were forced to unload goods and haul them around the falls. They drove cattle or hogs two or three miles to another wharf. Naturally, enterprising businessmen constructed pens to hold the livestock during busy times and bought and sold animals while people waited. A canal bypassed the falls by 1830, however, and opportunistic Louisville businessmen constructed turnpikes into their town to encourage the land trade. A large number of German immigrants had moved to Louisville by the 1820s and 1830s, many of them butchers. They built slaughterhouses

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behind their homes and created a “Butchertown” in the center of Louisville’s busy market area, sending agents out to surrounding county fairs to buy hogs. A tavern or drovers’ hotel was built near Butchertown in 1834. Owners named the tavern the Bourbon House, after Bourbon County, reflecting the French influence that named the town. The Bourbon Stock Yards officially began that same year when the owners of the hotel prudently built pens behind the building where drovers could safely hold their animals before taking them to the slaughterhouse. To get a head start on prices and deals, traders soon began coming to the drovers’ hotel to buy and sell.29 Over the next forty years Louisville became one of the nation’s leading meat-packing centers, specializing in pork. By the 1849–50 season, six slaughterhouses packed 179,105 hogs annually, and by 1850–51, the total reached 195,414.30 The first of several railroads entered Louisville in 1851—the Louisville, Cincinnati & Lexington. Slaughterhouse operator Herman F. Vissman bought out the Bourbon House and Stockyards in 1854. Within a decade he constructed a new three-story hotel at Main and Johnson streets. Because the railroad did not go near the old stockyards, he moved the pens next to his new hotel to be adjacent to the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, which arrived in 1860. Other partners came in, and a merger with another stockyards occurred in 1869. The Civil War placed disruptive demands on loyalties and supplies, but many packinghouses worked day and night to supply meat, mostly to the Union Army.31 Meat packing continued in Louisville after the war, but competition from Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Kansas City in the 1870s meant that the slaughter trade became only a small percentage of the business activity of Louisville. The hog trade still ranked ahead of tobacco and distilled spirits in annual sales, however.32 Local promoters claim that a former bookkeeper named Stephen S. Snodgrass began what possibly was the first modern commission company


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on the Bourbon Yards in 1869.33 Buyouts and reorganizations continued at the yards until the reorganized and incorporated Bourbon Stock Yard Company emerged July 1, 1875, with John Garnett Barrett, a banker, serving as president. His tenure in the office lasted for a quarter century.34 In 1908, the Bourbon Stock Yards Company bought out a Central Stock Yard owned partly by Armour and Swift. In the merger, however, Armour and Swift “obtained substantial stock interests in Bourbon Stockyards Company.”35 Oscar Fenley, another banker, served 1900–30 as president of the Bourbon Stock Yard Company, and, during his tenure, the Louisville Fat Cattle Show was inaugurated in 1921. During these years Louisville remained the South’s largest market and even for a time became the “greatest spring lamb market in the country” as more than 250,000 thousand head arrived per year.36 Constructed in 1914, this Bourbon Stock Yard Company Administration Building replaced the old Bourbon House Inn at the corner of Johnson and Main streets in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo courtesy Photographic Archives, University of Louisville.

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A stockyards man named Ernest Louis German took over operation of the yards in 1930. A native of Louisville, German, who had joined the company in 1917 as a traffic manager, served as president for twenty years. During the stockyards presidencies of Louis Seelback, 1951–62, and George K. Tomes, 1962–68, the volume of livestock at the yards began decreasing rapidly, following the national trend. The company encouraged educational programs, innovations, cattle auctions, and engaged in other promotional efforts. Various livestock shows helped sales, but smaller shows gave way to the North American International Livestock Exposition held annually at the Kentucky State Fair. New owners purchased the Bourbon Stock Yards in 1968 and encouraged expanded cattle production, tried to operate the yards more efficiently, and changed their marketing methods to compete more effectively with direct sales. Owners installed computer systems as well as video marketing.37 Even though Louisville was one of the oldest of the important terminal markets, its willingness to change and innovate enabled it to meet the challenges and survive longer than most. The Bourbon Stock Yards closed on March 29, 1999, after operating for 165 years. When the pens were demolished two years later, a shelter for children and families called Home of the Innocents was built on the site.38

ST. LOUIS, M ISSOURI The St. Louis livestock market remained distinct among the national markets because it was located in the small city of National Stockyards, Illinois. Numerous other stockyards started out as South-this or North-that outside a larger city, a separate community on its own. Later the larger metropolis annexed those cities. Only a few have remained separate, incorporated cities, developing beyond their stockyards interests. Unlike many other stockyards communities, the larger city of St. Louis did not originally develop because of the livestock trade.


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French fur trappers began St. Louis in 1764 as a fur trading outpost for a western trade, not even realizing that treaty negotiations of the previous year had ceded the land to Spain. Located on the west bank of the Mississippi River four miles from its confluence with the Missouri, St. Louis later became a popular starting place for fur traders headed west and north, especially after the United States acquired the land in 1803 as a part of the Louisiana Purchase. Farmers from the Ohio valley floated their goods southwest to St. Louis or downriver to New Orleans. Not until the mid1840s and a larger influx of settlers did the community become involved in cutting and curing hogs.39 About the only St. Louis industry that did not suffer from Civil War dislocations was their growing meat-packing trade. Contracts to supply Union troops convinced leading merchants to seek better direct rail links to northeastern cities. During and after the war these businessmen kept in mind that they could also supply meat for foreign export.40 After the war, these railroad interests conceived the idea of creating a stock receiving and shipping center at St. Louis. One major problem: no railroad bridge crossed the Mississippi to the city on the west bank; producers west of the river of necessity had to put their cattle on a ferry.41 To create a site with railroad access, the developers eventually chose land to the east on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, across from St. Louis.42 Outside capitalists, mostly railroad men, headed by Samuel W. Allerton, Jr., an eastern financier, invested $1 million to construct the St. Louis National Stockyards on a four-hundred-acre site served by the major rail lines. Among the railroad entrepreneurs involved were a son-inlaw of W. H. Vanderbilt and Jay Gould.43 Texas longhorn herds traveling north to Chicago figured prominently in their plans. Rivalry for trade, the obvious problem of the Mississippi River, and a first chance at those Texas cattle, immediately prompted a smaller company (with only $325,000 capital) to build the St. Louis Union Stockyards on

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Samuel W. Allerton, Jr.— A descendant of Mayflower pilgrim Isaac Allerton, Samuel Waters Allerton, Jr., was born in 1828, the youngest of nine children. When his father’s health failed, Allerton left school at age fourteen to help support the family. He and a brother began trading livestock. Allerton traveled to Illinois, bought hogs on credit, and managed a stockyard for one of the railroads in Chicago. He led the movement to consolidate railroad stockyards into one called Chicago Union Stock Yards and was later instrumental in building the St. Louis Stock Yards and an Allerton House Hotel. He also invested in stockyards in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Jersey City, St. Joseph, and Omaha. Allerton died in 1914. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

the west side of the river.44 Despite the opportunity to purchase cattle first, the western yards remained smaller than its counterpart on the east side of the Mississippi. Allerton, who also led the effort to build the Chicago stockyards, became president of the larger stockyards on the east side of the river. The value of the National Stock Yards in Illinois by 1873 had risen to $1.5 million after construction of an $87,500 exchange building. Also included in the complex was the $150,000 Allerton House Hotel, later called National Hotel; the stockyards also boasted a restaurant, warehouses, a fertilizer plant, and five thousand pens paved with white oak planks.45 When the stockyards officially opened for business on November 19, 1873, the daily capacity was 17,000 cattle, 20,000 hogs, 15,000 sheep, and


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3,000 horses and mules. During the first full year of operation in 1874 the Illinois stockyards received 234,002 cattle and calves, 498,840 hogs, 41,407 sheep, and 2,235 horses and mules.46 Quite logically, both pork and beef packing plants eventually opened. In 1889, Morris and Company bought out one existing plant; then Swift came in late 1892, and Armour opened by 1903.47 In 1885, the same year that the National Live Stock Exchange was organized in Chicago, St. Louis founded its own St. Louis Live Stock Exchange to ensure fair methods in the buying of livestock, giving patrons an organization to resolve appeals. W. L. Cassidy served as first exchange president. The two stockyards continued to exist on opposite sides of the Mississippi River, connected by transfer steamboats. By 1889, the National in East St. Louis covered a hundred acres with the Union west of the river only one-fourth that size. Each had a hotel, an exchange building, and telegraph and telephone communications.48 In February 1890, a newspaper called The St. Louis Live Stock Reporter began publication, making it easier for producers to follow prices on the St. Louis market. By 1893, St. Louis National Stockyards (east side of the river) was emerging as the third largest stockyards in the world, with receipts totaling 653,377 cattle, 847,703 hogs, 298,532 sheep, and 14,920 horses. At that time, packer Nelson Morris served as president of the stockyards. He and the Swifts controlled the yards. Armour purchased stock six years later. By 1896, stockyards ownership increased the capital outlay to $4 million, and the next year electric streetcars reached the yards.49 Quite obviously, the larger St. Louis National Stock Yards in East St. Louis (National Stock Yards, Illinois) on the Illinois side became the real St. Louis terminal market. The company bragged of being the largest horse and mule market in the world on numerous occasions, the peak year being the war year of 1917 with 223,000 animals.50

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Horse sales continued to be high in 1922 and even 1934, during the Depression. By that year the yards occupied three hundred acres and served twelve packing plants surrounding it. Twenty-six railroad lines centered on St. Louis, radiating out like numerous spokes in a wheel. In the 1930s, St. Louis had climbed to a rank of second among the top terminal livestock markets of the country, often challenging Kansas City, for that spot. During these years Chicago consistently received more animals yearly.51 Market declines and shifts of sales to country auctions and feedlots after World War II made livestock receipts shrink at St. Louis as elsewhere. By 1972, owners reduced the yards to a hundred acres and planned a 640acre industrial park on their remaining property. The yards, however, still handled two million animals per year.52

With numerous rail lines in the foreground and the Mississippi River behind, the St. Louis National Stockyards and its many acres of pens comprised its own city, National Stockyards, Illinois, on the east bank of the river. Photo ca. 1920s or 1930s, courtesy St. Louis National Stockyards Company.


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The Oklahoma City Stockyards bought the St. Louis National Stockyards shortly before feedlots put an end to the big barns in 1997.53

C HICAGO, I LLINOIS Always the giant, the number one market that rivals sought to surpass, Chicago benefited tremendously from its expanding rail facilities that in 1861 saw thirteen important lines converge with a combined length of 4,500 miles. In fact, Chicago became the largest railroad center in the world, allowing it therefore to become the largest livestock center as well. Carl Sandburg called Chicago “Hog Butcher for the World,” and a Chicago Tribune article on January 1, 1889, referred to the Chicago Union Stock Yards as “the eighth wonder of the world.”54 Even before Chicago became incorporated as a town, it was a livestock market. In 1827, Archibald Clybourn built a log slaughterhouse on the north branch of the Chicago River and supplied meat to the garrison of Fort Dearborn. Other packers soon set up plants and slaughtered animals that farmers drove in from the surrounding prairies. To accommodate the producers, tavern keepers then opened houses and, to attract business, also provided pens and pastures for the stock.55 The first privately owned stockyard in Chicago was called the Bulls Head Market and opened to the public in 1848. Between 1852 and 1865 five railroads arrived in Chicago, opening yards of their own.56 The Illinois Central and Michigan Central built the largest set of pens, which were located on the lake shore east of Cottage Grove Avenue from present Twenty-ninth to Thirty-fifth Streets. Besides the Bulls Head and the Cottage Grove Yards, four other separate stockyards existed, and by 1865 their facilities overflowed with livestock. These four were the Sherman Yards, the Pittsburgh and Fort Wayne Yards, the Michigan Southern Yards, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy & Northwestern Yards.57

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All of this activity increased Chicago’s population threefold in a decade, from 29,963 in 1850 to 109,206 in 1860. The Civil War and the need to feed Union troops boosted the Chicago market tremendously. Hog receipts rose 258 percent from 392,000 in 1860 to 1,410,000 in 1864–65. Cattle receipts jumped 189 percent from 117,000 to 339,000. By the 1864–65 season fiftythree packing firms welcomed the opportunity to purchase livestock from the various stockyards. Eight of the plants had either built new facilities or had made significant alterations to their existing establishments.58 Chicago had reached an enviable position with its railroad network; it was the western terminal for the eastern railroads and the eastern terminal for branch lines coming from the few western states with railroads. But the railroads and their adjacent stock pens were scattered all over town. When the small railroad stockyards became badly outgrown, the Chicago Pork Packers Association made the first real move toward the establishment of one large central stockyard. In June 1864, they passed a resolution that the several stockyards should be consolidated to form a joint stock company. Fortunately, when consulted, the railroads agreed to close their separate yards, and Samuel Allerton, Jr., and John B. Sherman led railroad interests to construct a large new facility. Allerton, youngest of nine children, quit school at age fourteen to help support the family when his father became ill. Farming and livestock trading led him to Chicago in 1860 where he prospered after working for one of the railroads. Sherman was also born on a New York farm but in 1856 began managing two Chicago livestock markets.59 Eleven railroad men and eight meat packers made the consolidation dream a reality. The Union Stock Yard and Transit Company of Chicago, capitalized at $1 million, received its charter on February 13, 1865. Timothy B. Blackstone, president of the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad, became president of the new Union Stock Yards for the first year, after which Sherman took over and served for thirty-one years. John L. Handcock, president of a prominent packing firm, Craigin & Company,


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John B. Sherman—Born on a farm in New York State in 1835, John B. Sherman profited from the 1849 gold rush. He returned from California and bought a farm near Chicago. In 1856, he began managing two railroad stockyards. Often credited with organizing the Chicago Union Stock Yards, he worked closely with Samuel W. Allerton, Jr., and numerous bankers and railroad officials to merge several smaller yards into one huge one. Beginning in 1866, he served as president of the Chicago Union Stock Yards for thirty-one years. He died in 1902. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

served as president of the Board of Trade in 1863 and 1864 and helped to establish the new stockyards as well. Of the $1 million capital invested, the railroads supplied $925,000 and city packers provided the remainder. The nine railroads involved eventually sold their stock to the general public and then held no financial interest in the stockyards.60 To prepare the new site, workers drained a 345-acre area just south of the city limits. Opening ceremonies on December 25, 1865, proclaimed the new Union Stock Yards open, but no animals arrived until the next day. As agreed, all the old yards closed within a few days, and commission men who had worked throughout the city moved into rented offices in the new exchange building. Packing plants were built directly west of the stockyards

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area with Nelson Morris and Company being one of the first. At its largest, the Chicago Union Stock Yards and adjacent slaughtering facilities stretched from present Thirty-ninth Street to Forty-seventh and from Halstead to Ashland, approximately one square mile. A new nine-story office building allowed officials to overlook a bustling scene that encompassed 150 miles of railroad track involving twenty-three railroad lines. In later years, thousands of trucks also carried livestock to the yards daily. The slaughtering plants employed twenty thousand workers who lived in nearby “Packingtown.”61 As a result, Chicago became the largest livestock market in the world and enjoyed that distinction for nearly a century. Cornelius Vanderbilt, encouraged by his son William H., acquired the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad in 1870. This gave his New York Central System a magnificent, wholly owned route to Chicago—and an “in” at the Chicago Union Stock Yards. That same year the Vanderbilts made agreements that extended their operations to Omaha.62 The Vanderbilt railroad network that included the Pennsylvania railroads held large investments in stockyards in the eastern half of the country.63 Investors actually constructed the Union Stock Yards in a south Chicago suburb called Lake. When it soared in population from 3,000 in 1870 to 85,000 in 1889, the city of Chicago decided to annex it. Thousands of immigrants flocked to Chicago and other stockyard/packing town centers because of the ready job market. New arrivals from the English-speaking countries of western Europe, Welsh, Scots, Irish, became the first workers along with many Germans. In the 1880s and 1890s, Bohemians, Poles, Slovaks, Ukranians, Croatians, Slovenians, Serbians, Syrians, and Lithuanians arrived from eastern Europe as well.64 By World War I African Americans and Mexicans were joining the packing plant workforce in Chicago.65 Progress and change came rapidly at the Chicago yards. The Union Stock Yard held a livestock show in a lakefront exposition building in 1878


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This impressive limestone entrance gate to the Chicago Union Stock Yards was completed in 1879 at a cost of $l2,000. Between the top of the arch and the roof the architect added the carved head of a steer that had won the top prize at the fat stock show the previous year. An iron grill could be lowered at night to lock the entrance. From Select Chicago Illustrated In Albertype, Copyright 1889 by A. Uittmann, N. Y. courtesy Chicago Historical Society.

in combination with the Illinois State Board of Agriculture. The next year the stockyards company constructed a 46 foot by 46 foot rough-faced limestone gate, at a cost of $12,000, with an iron grille at the center that could be lowered at night. The first refrigerator plant began operating in 1880 in a Chicago packinghouse.66 In 1884 market officials created the Chicago Live Stock Exchange.67 By the 1890s, control shifted toward the Vanderbilt family, who changed the name to Chicago Junction Railways and Union Stock Yards Company. Nevertheless, the old name remained carved in stone over the gate. Chicago was already receiving approximately thirteen million animals a year—a total the market maintained for half a century.68 In 1919, poor living conditions exacerbated tensions between the Irish and the African American communities. When these tensions escalated to

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the point that blacks could not walk through the Irish community to get from their own homes to the packing plants, a race riot broke out. In early August, the governor called in the National Guard to restore order.69 Among many years of record receipts at Chicago, a few stand out. In 1923 Chicago received 10,460,134 hogs. The next year total receipts of all livestock combined tallied 18,653,539. In a twenty-four-hour period on December 15, 1924, a record number of hogs—122,749—arrived. The livestock market remained the largest employer in the city in the third decade of the twentieth century, and 101 slaughtering and meat-packing establishments operated at the Chicago stockyards.70 Officials identified a Hereford steer on September 6, 1954, as the billionth animal to arrive at the Chicago Union Stock Yards.71 At one time the Armour plant in Chicago could boast of being the biggest in the world, with the capacity to slaughter twelve hundred hogs every hour. In a peak winter season the facility might run continuously for sixteen hours, two shifts, six days a week.72 Unfortunately for the continued endurance of the Chicago market, several large packers began closing down their outdated plants in the late 1950s and early 1960s as they built new structures in the country and bought more and more animals from local country auctions and directly from feedlots. Both Swift and Armour, considered for many years the biggest two of the Big Four packers, shut down their Chicago plants in 1959.73 In hopes of averting the decline in receipts, the Chicago stockyards undertook a $6 million renovation and modernization in 1959, but to no avail.74 Even though Chicago still received four million animals a year in 1965, the slide downward for the historic market continued rapidly. A Christmas Day commemoration of the yard’s 105th birthday in 1970 became more a wake for the ending of an era than a celebration, for the Chicago Union Stock Yards closed its doors July 17, 1971. That week, members of the Chicago Livestock Exchange announced the formation of


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Philip Danforth Armour— Born in 1832 at Stockbridge, New York, Armour traveled to California in 1852 but arrived too late to strike it rich. He returned to the East and entered the wholesale grocery business with a partner. In 1863, he formed a grain dealing and meatpacking partnership with John Plankinton, dealing in pork. In 1875, he moved to Chicago where a brother was operating a meat-packing firm. Armour and Company expanded, with interests in stockyards and meat packing at every important livestock market in the Midwest. He died in 1901. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

the Chicago-Joliet Livestock Marketing Center thirty-five miles to the southwest of Chicago. The land that the older stockyards occupied had become so valuable that continuing the operation in that location could not be justified financially.75 Other reasons officials cited for the closing were the changes in marketing in which large numbers of animals no longer passed through terminal markets. More efficient systems of marketing and slaughtering had developed near grain producing areas and feedlots away from the congestion of a big city. The massive rail connections that assured Chicago’s success in the beginning now fixed the market decline as railroads gave way to eighteenwheelers on the nation’s wide interstates.76 Developers constructed an industrial park on the square mile of land where those millions of livestock had arrived each year. Tourists still may

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view the famous entrance gate that proclaims: “Union Stock-Yard Chartered 1865.”77

C HAPTE R E IG HT

M I DWE STE R N M AR KETS Chicago and the eastern markets that had preceded the Windy City’s prominence early on faced competition from newer stockyards that meat packers and other businessmen constructed in the cattle country of the Great Plains. Railroads sold land to immigrants and other settlers who proudly established farms. Because of the Homestead Act of 1862, soon the Midwest became dotted with fields of grain and the holdings of small livestock producers who sent thousands of animals to market by rail. New stockyards that opened up in the 1870s and 1880s were located mostly in the midwestern states of Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and as far west as the Dakotas. To the south Texas markets developed in Fort Worth and San Antonio, largely due to the gathering of cattle in the southern part of the state and their movement northward on the Chisholm Trail. Even in the mining climate of Colorado, a stockyards operation developed in Denver, which needed meat to feed all those miners. Denver became the market center for cattle moving to northern ranges in Wyoming and Montana. Within less than two decades, over a dozen new stockyards opened in the Midwest, and workers began unloading animals from thousands of railroad cars. They fed and watered them in their pens, and welcomed the Big Four meat slaughtering giants who built modern plants nearby. Americans moved west rapidly in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and new livestock markets developed in the cities that grew from the population boom.

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M ILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN “Dairy Beef Capital of the World” was a distinction the Milwaukee stockyards enjoyed in recent years as Wisconsin’s major terminal market stood apart from smaller state auctions.1 The community developed prominence, however, during the Civil War as packers expanded their buying and slaughtering activities made possible by increased availability of livestock. John Plankinton, a packer who later became a partner of Philip Armour, began his activities in Milwaukee during the war years. Plankinton’s company remained the major packer in Milwaukee until 1962 when it closed its doors, but at that time the Swift interests owned it.2 In 1864, when Armour became a partner after returning a decade earlier from the California gold fields, the city began emerging as a major Midwestern packing center. Plankinton and Armour dominated the packing Below is a portion of the Milwaukee cattle pens with acres of wooden fencing, watering facilities for the “livestock hotel,” and packing plants in the background. Joseph Brown Photo, Courtesy Milwaukee County Historical Society.

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Edward Cudahy—Younger brother of Michael Cudahy, Edward became a partner with his brother and Philip Armour in a packing plant in south Omaha, Nebraska, in 1887. A town on Lake Michigan, located seven miles south of Milwaukee, was named Cudahy in honor of the family because of the slaughtering facilities and pens there. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

industry there by 1867; they employed one hundred men and killed a daily average of 1,200 hogs and 400 cattle. Even this number could not handle the trade, and they added extensions to their plant in 1870 and 1873.3 The stockyards in Milwaukee developed in 1869 at Haymarket Square on the city’s near north side near the Plankinton and Armour plant. By 1871, the Milwaukee market ranked fourth in hog receipts, which were booming. Brothers Edward and Michael Cudahy and other packers soon moved in, but in the 1877–78 season, Plankinton and Armour packed 255,970 hogs which represented sixty-nine percent of Milwaukee’s output.4 Hog processing, not beer, emerged early as the city’s top industry. A second site for the yards grew out of a railroad feed and watering facility near the Twenty-seventh Street viaduct. A yards area opened at that location on April 29, 1929, and owners built an exchange building at South Muskegon Avenue and West Canal Street.5

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By the 1950s, a dozen packing plants killed 500,000 hogs and 300,000 cattle each year. In May 1965, the Milwaukee Stockyards pioneered the first telephone auction of hogs at a terminal market. They sold 761 head in less than an hour on the first day, calling the new service “Tel-O-Market.”6 At one time in the 1960s processed meats were being shipped to every state east of Wisconsin and to Turkey, Greece, Spain, Japan, Finland, England, and France. Hides went to Holland.7 By the mid-1980s, most of the plants had closed, replaced by more modern facilities elsewhere, even though $150 million in livestock still passed through the yards in 1983.8 By that time, dairy cattle comprised the major product of the Milwaukee market, with approximately 138,000 animals. This represented twenty-three percent of the state’s livestock trade and kept Milwaukee, owned then by United Stockyards, the largest single market in the state.9 In 1985 Milwaukee was the largest veal and calf market in the world, receiving a total of 286,000 head of livestock that year.10 The Milwaukee Stockyards played a unique role as a marketplace for byproducts of Wisconsin’s vast dairy industry in veal calves, spent milk cows, and in recent years dairy-bred steers. Holsteins that didn’t produce milk were sold for meat.11 Milwaukee, one of seven markets owned by United Stockyards in the 1990s, continued to be an active market as the new century began, thanks to all those dairy cattle, but it was operated by commission firms on the market. Operations shut down at the Milwaukee site on October 28, 2004, and the livestock market was moved to Lowell, Wisconsin.12

KANSAS C ITY, M ISSOURI Trappers, hunters, farmers, and Indians met naturally in the willow flats on the east bank of the Kaw River from its mouth to the hills beyond to exchange grain, furs, and livestock. Those early settlers could have had no way of knowing that Kansas City, which emerged astraddle a river and


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touched two states, would be the second-largest livestock center in the world for many years.13 The Kansas-Pacific Railroad, building westward in 1862, began its roadbed west of the Kaw, so the traders centered their activity on the east bank at what became Twelfth Street. Soon energetic businessmen mapped off five acres for livestock trading and built eleven animal pens, but quickly as activity increased, the size of the area had to be tripled. A rough wooden building deflected the cold wind from the river and made trading more comfortable.14 The Kansas-Pacific Railroad, a branch of the Union Pacific, brought in 35,000 head of cattle in 1867, the first busy year of the cattle drives from Texas. The railroad built temporary pens where cattle could be unloaded for rest, feed and water. The number of cattle arriving doubled by 1868 and 1869, so the next year railroad officials of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad constructed eleven pens, fifteen unloading chutes and scales for the a hundred thousand head of cattle they expected. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad also assisted.15 Initially, Kansas City faced the same problems as many similar markets with small, locally owned packing plants that were poorly organized, reorganized, and abandoned, because of lack of capital and experience. However, in 1870, Philip Armour, a partner in Plankinton and Armour in Chicago, sent his brother to operate a plant in Kansas City. He was immediately successful, and Kansas City’s slaughtering capabilities grew from that point. In fact, the Armour family became quite dominant in Kansas City.16 Officials organized the first independent stockyards company in 1871, as a joint-stock company capitalized at $100,000. Called logically the Kansas Stockyards Company, the new facility was constructed on a tract of twenty-six acres on the east bank of the Kaw, south of the Kansas Pacific tracks. Owners built an exchange building at Twelfth Street and State Line. J. M. Walker of Chicago became stockyards president.17

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The opening of the new stockyards company made Kansas City the first western market other than Chicago and gave her first chance at all those Texas longhorns continuing to arrive up the trail. Eastern capital bought into the action in 1876, changing the name to Kansas City Stock Yards Company, and making Charles Francis Adams, Jr., of Boston, president. He remained in that position until 1902.18 By 1880, Kansas City served as the nation’s most vital transportation hub west of Chicago.19 Not leaving their growth to that development alone, the Kansas City Stock Yards organized a fat stock show to publicize their market, subscribing $5,000 capital. Organizers saw this first show open in November 1883.20 Soon experienced commission merchants from Chicago migrated southward to Kansas City to get a head start on the trade. They found offices in Cowboys rode horses to corral cattle in pens in Kansas City, but buyers and commission agents in suits and ties stood on wide fence rails to oversee the process. Photo courtesy The Wyandotte County Museum, Bonner Springs, Kansas.


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the imposing three-story brick-and-stone exchange building, 105 feet by 126 feet, completed in November 1876. The building straddled the MissouriKansas state line and featured a strip of colored tiles in the lobby to mark the boundary between the two states.21 The market formed its first authentic livestock exchange in 1886 with by-laws regulating business conduct, financial requirements, bonding of firms, and other protections for the shippers and buyers. The next year they practically doubled the size of the ten-year-old exchange building, providing room for a hundred offices for commission agents and other livestock interests. Swift and Company moved to Kansas City in 1886 with a $500,000 plant, its first branch outside Chicago, and the Kansas City Stock Yards Company made concessions to Swift, Armour, and four other packers for locating there.22 The Charles Francis Adams, Jr., group of owners kept expanding their facilities, and by the end of the 1890s had capitalized the yards at over $4 million. In 1896 active traders totaling 142 men formed a Traders Livestock Exchange at the Kansas City market. It became the first such organization in the world. Eventually a National Traders Exchange emerged and adopted most of the rules of the Kansas City group. Even with Texas cattle moving north, hog slaughtering remained important in Kansas City, especially in the years prior to 1900. Meat packing was the major industry of Kansas City for three decades, 1879–1909.23 With deals including stock bonuses, stockyards officials successfully induced all the major packers to locate at the yards. Besides Armour and Swift, Cudahy, Morrell, Morris, Schwarzchild and Sulzberger (later Wilson), and Jacob Dold, had all arrived by 1900.24 A total of fourteen plants produced an annual slaughter in the millions, requiring 35,000 workers in the meat-packing industry. Cattle generally represented seventyfive percent of the total receipts at the turn of the century, about two million

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The exchange building, right center, constructed in 1911, dominates this panoramic view of the massive Kansas City Stock Yards ca. 1950s. Photo courtesy The Wyandotte County Museum, Bonner Springs, Kansas.

head, but other livestock arrived as well. By that time the yard covered 185 acres.25 A huge flood on June 1, 1903, damaged the yards, causing cracks in the walls of the exchange building. Water rose to the second story of the structure and stood up to thirty feet deep in some places in the yards. An eleven-story exchange building—advertised as the largest livestock exchange building in the world—replaced the old one in 1911. It housed 475 offices related to the industry.26 The Boston owners of the stockyards sold their sixty-seven percent of the stock to Edward Morris, son of Nelson Morris, in 1912. The entire company, worth $8.2 million, still retained some packer ownership, but it was small. The Morris interests began a great rebuilding program in 1913 that lasted six years and cost $2.5 million, adding a Kansas City Connecting Railroad Company as track within the yards. They rebuilt and modernized


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the sheep barns, built new hog pens, and many new brick-and-concrete pens as well as a railroad office building.27 A fire on October 16, 1917, leveled more than half the yard area, killing 11,000 cattle and 6,000 hogs. Ownership of 12,000 other animals was lost, and owners were forced to sell them at auction to satisfy claims. After the rebuilding and expansion, the yards covered over two hundred acres and had become the largest stocker and feeder market in the world. Once federal regulation of the nation’s stockyards began with the Packers and Stockyards Act in 1921, Kansas City faced a frustrating problem. A competing company called the Mistletoe Yards opened. Because it was smaller, it did not face the federal rules and could draw trade from the larger market. Located about a mile from the main yards, the Mistletoe Yards accepted direct sales from producers, mostly in hogs, and steadily increased its receipts in the 1930s.28 The Kansas City Stock Yards still traded an average of eight million cattle yearly in the 1930s and 1940s.29 By 1945 the physical plant had expanded to 238 acres, with a total daily capacity of 175,000 animals. The market continued to rank second in the nation as a meat-packing and marketing center.30 Unfortunately, another fire in 1950 and an especially devastating flood in 1951 damaged the market extensively. Owners opened a new ultramodern auction pavilion on March 5, 1970, replacing a smaller facility that had been in use since 1957. The new auction barn seated five hundred. A popular feature of the stockyards in Kansas City was the Golden Ox Restaurant in the Exchange Building, featuring KC strips. The same owners opened similar restaurants in Washington, D.C., Denver, and Nashville— a way to sell more KC beef. Because of declining livestock sales, the restaurants soon began making more money than the stockyards. Receipts at the stockyards by the 1980s had declined to 400,000 head per year. Big eighteenwheelers began to carry livestock to newer, more modern packing facilities in Garden City, Kansas; Iowa City, Iowa; and Marshall, Missouri.31

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In 1984, local investors with a vital interest in the stockyards purchased the Golden Ox Restaurant, the exchange building, and adjoining facilities with plans to continue to operate as long as possible. Taxes, utilities, and other expenses made the operation of the Kansas City Stockyards economically unfeasible. The owners auctioned their equipment and held their last sale of 150 cattle in September 1991. A 120-year-old “grand old terminal market” shut down.32

ST. JOSEPH, M ISSOURI St. Joseph, a gateway community to the Oregon and California trails, began in 1843 at the site of an old trading post and soon became the westernmost city with eastern rail connections. Hog slaughtering began almost immediately. After the Civil War, Texas herds headed for St. Joseph because of the railroad. By 1873, a $1.5 million railroad bridge spanned the Missouri River, and other rail lines had reached the small city. St. Joseph business leaders urged someone with capital to build a stockyards and packing plant because of the city’s unique railroad connections and its location in rural farm country. Unfortunately, local citizens could not raise much money during the nationwide panic of 1873, but they nevertheless organized the St. Joseph Union Stock Yards, capitalized at only $30,000, which opened in the late summer. Only 24,616 animals came the next year. By 1880, however, 20,592 cattle, 102,150 hogs, and 5,990 sheep arrived.33 Because the small stockyards became overcrowded, James McCord, a partner in a mercantile company, urged construction of an expanded facility. He conferred with bankers and organized the St. Joseph Stock Yards Company on 413 acres south of town near the Missouri River. John Donovan, a local stockman and trader, worked with him. The new yards opened in December 1887, and six railroad companies agreed to ship there. Anticipated meat packers did not immediately come, and, as a result, the local men struggled. Some historians credit Donovan for persuading


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Gustavus Swift to visit and for driving him all around town in a buggy.34 Sure enough, Swift and Company bought into the St. Joseph operation. A reorganization occurred on August 1, 1896, with more capitalization, and by the end of 1897, Swift interests owned eighty percent of the shares of stockyard stock and increased the capital to $1.2 million. Other large packers came—George Hammond and Nelson Morris. When the large new plants opened in May 1898, residents celebrated for three days. Donovan, responsible for attracting much of the new investments, became the president.35 Later Armour and Company opened a plant as well. Immigrants from eastern Europe moved into a company town in South St. Joseph originally called St. George or Georgetown. The Armour and Swift plants alone employed 2,500 workers. The Transit House Hotel served the South St. Joseph area for ranchers who had brought their animals in on the rail cars. They ate their meals at the Hoof and Horn restaurant.36 The St. Joseph market averaged one-half million animals per year in the 1920s and 1930s, and Swift and Company retained its more than eighty Each market had its own distinctive exchange building. This four-story structure served the St. Joseph Stockyards for many years. Photo courtesy St. Joseph News-Press\Gazette.

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percent ownership of the St. Joseph Stock Yards for over three decades until federal legislation forced them to sell.37 By 1935 St. Joseph ranked as the eighth-largest cattle market in the country in total receipts, maintaining that ranking sporadically for several years. Receipts increased considerably during World War II, as was the case in other well-established markets, but they began a slow decline after the war. The Swift and Armour plants closed in the 1960s, affecting the stockyards receipts because packer demand thus declined considerably. By the 1970s and 1980s St. Joseph remained one of the string of stockyards owned and operated by United Stockyards, the company that acquired the Swift interests in stockyards. The market was still in operation as it entered the twenty-first century as one of three stockyards still owned by Canal Capital, which had acquired United. After the Sioux City, Iowa, yards closed in 2002, St. Joseph remained one of only two still owned by the former giant stockyards holding company.38

P EORIA, I LLINOIS Meat packers or railroad company personnel organized many of the early stockyards, but Peoria’s beginning differed uniquely. Thomas Neill, a partner in the distilling firm of Wickert and Neill, had the idea to establish a stockyards, planning to save money by feeding animals the byproduct, or slop, from his distilleries. The community of Peoria had originated a half-century earlier as a trading post on the banks of the Illinois River, and it grew when the Illinois and Michigan canal opened in 1840. The railroad had arrived in 1855.39 Neill began his Peoria Union Stock Yards in 1874.40 The first large packing company to locate near Neill’s stockyards, Peoria Packing Company, opened in 1892. By 1900, Peoria ranked as the second-largest city in Illinois with a population of 50,000.41


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This 1970 aerial view of the Peoria Union Stockyards on the banks of the Illinois River highlights its covered pens and railroad connections, then becoming obsolete. Photo courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library.

H. F. Embry and two partners, Talton Embry and B. E. Gregory, created a corporation on May 15, 1905. It leased the stockyards operation and changed the name slightly to the Peoria Union Stock Yards Company. The new incorporators eventually bought out the operations in 1923.42 Hogs continued to predominate on the farms surrounding Peoria, making the yards there the eighth largest hog market in the United States in 1952 with 1,161,157 receipts.43 Peoria later ranked sixth in hog receipts when the Chicago Union Stockyards closed in 1971; some of the business moved to Peoria.44 In 1992 stockholders of the Embry family sold out to a group of three new owners headed by Terry Sewell, one of the commission agents on the market.45 Sewell and Ronald Jenkins remained partners as the new century got underway and received a total of 215,663 animals, predominantly hogs, in the year 2001.46

I NDIANAPOLIS, I NDIANA In the early years of the nineteenth century, before a market developed at Indianapolis, hog farmers drove their animals to market or sent them on flatboats to New Orleans or Cincinnati.47 Indianapolis would soon find

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itself in a favorable trade location. Located on the West Fork of the White River where Fall Creek intersects, the city is 184 miles southeast of Chicago. The progressive “American System” of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay extended the National Road through Indianapolis by 1830. In 1847, when the Madison Railroad reached the community, the city gained a welcome outlet to the Ohio River. Because of the various river systems, livestock trade markets for pork packing developed all over the state, but busier communities than Indianapolis were Madison, Terre Haute, Lafayette, and Lawrenceburg.48 In 1850, only 8,091 people lived in Indianapolis, but a decade later the population had more than doubled to 18,611.49 Located in the very middle of the early-nineteenth-century Middle West, Indiana ranked ahead of the state of Illinois in hog slaughtering until the mid-1850s, but Ohio had held preeminence first. By 1856–57, both states lost to Illinois.50 Yet Indianapolis did not give up her meat-packing preeminence without a strong fight. In 1863 the Kingan Brothers opened the world’s largest pork-packing plant and later constructed a small stockyard near their facility. Their five-story plant, 185 feet by 115 feet, briefly dominated pork packing nationally with modern appliances that included a steam rendering plant. Unfortunately, the plant burned in 1865, but the Kingans began rebuilding immediately. The Irish Kingans owned a meat outlet in New York City for which they relied on their Indianapolis branch for livestock; they also exported to Europe. In 1867 they expanded into the adjacent stockyards.51 An associate of Kingan Brothers Packing named Nicholas McCarty toured the stockyards facilities in Chicago and St. Louis and encouraged a similar arrangement in Indianapolis, even putting up 110 acres of his farm on the old bayou in the southern part of the city.52 As early as 1871, Kingan and Company introduced ice packing, and by 1873 they were packing and shipping more hogs in the summer than in the


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winter.53 Needing rail transportation, local officials incorporated the Indianapolis Belt Railway Company on June 28, 1873, but the nationwide panic of that year halted construction. Incorporators retitled their company in 1876 as the Union Railroad Transfer and Stock Yards Company with the city lending $500,000 to complete the project. Mayor John Caves was responsible for negotiating the loan with the city and settling a right-of-way controversy that had proved troublesome.54 (Over the years he served five terms as mayor of Indianapolis, interrupted by a stint in the state senate.55) Both railroad and stockyards opened on November 12, 1877, with more than two hundred freight cars arriving on the first day. Four years later officials reorganized again and changed the name to the Belt Railroad and Stock Yard Company, and in 1882 they leased the Belt Railway facilities to the Indianapolis Union Railway Company for 999 years.56 Entrances featuring three arches became popular after Chicago built its limestone gate. This photo of the entrance to Indianapolis’s Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company was made in 1912. Indiana Historical Society Bass Photo Collection, Negative 27393.

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This low aerial view of the Indianapolis yards was taken in 1953. Indiana Historical Society Bass Photo Collection, Negative 298805F.

A name that stands tall in Indianapolis stockyards lore is Samuel E. Rauh, head of Moore Packing Company on the yards. He became president of the stockyards in 1897. Born in Bavaria in 1853, Rauh came to the United States at age thirteen and arrived in Indianapolis when he was twenty-one to open a branch of his father’s tanning and fur business, E. Rauh and Sons.57 Rauh served as president of the Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company from 1897 until 1929. The 1882 market report showed 5,319,611 hogs, 640,363 cattle, 849,936 sheep, and 50,795 horses arriving at the stockyards that year.58 In spring 1904 a fire destroyed nearly all the facilities except the three-story brick exchange building located at the north of the yards. By 1905 Indianapolis livestock interests moved into a modern new plant. Another disaster struck the market in 1913 when flood waters covered everything


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but one office building. Yard employees made boats out of lumber, covered them with canvas, and assisted workers’ families who needed food and other supplies.59 Over the years the stockyards operations expanded to 147 acres. At its peak in the 1930s and 1940s the market consistently handled three million animals a year. The decline in the packing industry that swept the entire nation also affected Indianapolis in the 1950s and 1960s. In an attempt to forestall the dwindling sales, the market reorganized, changing the name in 1964 to Indianapolis Stockyards Company, Inc.60 The Rauh family continued to direct the stockyards operations until 1967. When Sam Rauh retired in 1929, his son Charles S. Rauh ran operations until 1956. Then David L. Chambers, a grandson of Samuel, managed the market 1956–67.61 At that time the Rauh owners sold out to Eli Lilly and Company, which leased the Indianapolis Stockyards to United Stockyards of Chicago. The new owners moved the facility from the original location at 1400 Kentucky Avenue to a sixteen-acre site eleven blocks farther out, opening the new yards on December 16, 1973, with four acres under roof. Operators razed the old stockyards location to make room for an industrial center, a fate similar to that which overtook many of the large stockyards toward the end of the twentieth century. In 1974 they added a cattle auction on Thursdays. Two years later the market received 204,000 cattle and 420,000 hogs.62 The Indianapolis Stockyards, one of only seven owned by United Stockyards in 1991, still operated in the 1990s. Livestock production in the area continued strong, although receipts at the Indianapolis Stockyards declined. In 1991, from their field office in Indianapolis, officials of the P&SA regulated 184 auction markets and twenty commission firms at four smaller stockyards.63 These smaller auction markets finally drew sufficient sales away from the larger Indianapolis stockyards that the historic market closed by the end of the twentieth century.

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OMAHA, N EBRASKA The city of Omaha, was once called “the diamond stickpin in the bosom of the West.”64 The city was founded in 1854 as a ferry crossing on the west bank of the Missouri River, across from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and fifteen miles north of the river’s confluence with the Platte, a site that attracted settlers. Located 425 miles west of Chicago, Omaha soon became an important trade community. That the Union Pacific Railroad started building westward from Omaha in 1863 helped the community’s growth too. Small stockyards naturally emerged early as a consequence of the livestock trade. Two were the Bridge Yards and the Upper Yards. By 1877 a newly organized Board of Trade realized that the city needed more extensive stockyards, because pork packing had become important with three plants that slaughtered sixty thousand animals per year.65 However, two or three attempts to organize stockyards in the 1870s failed for a lack of capital. Even railroad financier Jay Gould tried to create a market in Omaha but failed. Into the situation stepped Alexander H. Swan, a Wyoming cattleman sometimes called “the best known man in the early cattle business from coast to coast and overseas.”66 Swan, born in 1831 as a farmer’s son in the hillbilly region of southwestern Pennsylvania, grew to maturity in Iowa. There he began dealing in livestock. In 1873 at age forty-two, Swan moved to Wyoming. Starting with 3,000 head of cattle on Chugwater Creek near Cheyenne, by 1879 Swan owned 19,000. His wealth and influence allowed him to start various companies, including stockyards. In 1883 he sold his herds to a ScottishEnglish syndicate, creating the giant Swan Land and Cattle Company, capitalized at $2,553,825. On August 30 that same year Swan and six Omaha businessmen organized the South Omaha Land Syndicate, and purchased 2,000 acres of land four miles south of Omaha. On December 1, 1883, they organized the Union Stock Yards Company.67


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Alexander H. Swan— Known more as a cattleman and rancher than a stockyards builder, Alexander H. Swan nevertheless was instrumental in putting together a financing package to organize the stockyards in Omaha. He had created the Swan Land and Cattle Company and wanted to ship cattle to Omaha rather than Chicago. Swan and six Omaha businessmen purchased land south of town and opened the Union Stock Yards Company in 1884. Although Swan later suffered financial reverses, the stockyards prospered. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

Swan wanted to avoid shipping his cattle to Chicago. The new stockyards opened for business on August 25, 1884. (One of the Omaha businessmen who had invested with Swan, John A. Creighton, later left an estate to his family who with it endowed Creighton University in Omaha.68) William A. Paxton was as important as the more famous Swan in the development of the Omaha stockyards. Kentucky-born Paxton grew up in Missouri but resettled in Omaha as a bridge builder. He began buying cattle for sale and also supplied beef to the Indian agencies. He invested in real estate and banking and helped build a stockyards across the river from Omaha in Council Bluffs. When the Union Stock Yard of Omaha organized in 1884, the investors bought out Paxton’s holdings in the small

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Council Bluffs transfer yard, and Paxton thus became a stockholder of the new Omaha Union Stock Yard Company.69 Until meat-packing facilities were available at the Omaha market, the yards simply became an intermediate feeding and watering station on the way to Chicago. The stockyards ownership later built two packing plants themselves and leased them to outside slaughterers before they finally persuaded the Big Four packers to come. The stockyards ownership constructed a three-story exchange building and a seventy-room hotel in 1885. Fortunately, the Union Pacific Railroad’s main trunk lines joined the yards. After accepting outlays of free land and bonuses, Cudahy, Armour, and Swift had decided to locate at the yards by 1887. By the early 1890s, Omaha was the third-largest livestock market in the United States.70 Sir Thomas Lipton, a London tea merchant, also tried his hand for five years at meat packing in Omaha, but after hog receipts lagged, he sold out in 1891 to an Armour-Cudahy combination. Actually, Michael Cudahy, an Irishman who came to America in 1849 with his family at age eight, began his own meat-packing business in Omaha. Cudahy earlier worked for Plankinton and Armour in Milwaukee and Chicago and wanted an interest in that company. Because Armour wanted to keep his business for his sons, he instead helped Cudahy get a start in Omaha. Armour also built a plant there himself.71 Just as the Omaha market that Swan helped organize was getting off to a good start, Swan himself stumbled. He rushed off to Scotland without paying a $25,000 note he had co-signed for a friend. While he was gone, the bank attached his company, and creditors demanded immediate payment. Swan was soon in bankruptcy and never recovered. He moved his family to Ogden, Utah, and attempted to recoup his fortune in real estate, but the boom collapsed. He died there, a poor man, in 1905.72 Meanwhile, the Omaha yards kept growing, and officials organized the Omaha Livestock Exchange in 1889. South Omaha became known as


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“the Magic City” because it grew so rapidly—to a town of 10,000 in three years. In 1916, with a population of 25,000, South Omaha proved too tempting for the larger city of Omaha to ignore—it annexed the smaller city. One-fourth of South Omaha residents worked for the stockyards or the meat-packing facilities.73 John A. McShane, a nephew of early investor John Creighton and in 1871 a Wyoming cattle dealer, was another major figure in the Omaha Stockyards. McShane moved to Omaha in 1874 and nine years later merged his interests with the Bay State Cattle Company. He became a director with Swan and others of the South Omaha Land Company and also a director of the First National Bank of Omaha. McShane initially invited Armour to come to Omaha, but Armour did not seem interested. McShane then went to Swift and got him to visit. A $100,000 cash bonus Michael Cudahy—Born in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland in 1841, Cudahy came to America at age eight with his parents. At fourteen he left school in Milwaukee and found a job in meat packing, later working his way up to a manager for Armour and Company in Chicago. In 1890, he purchased some Armour interests, changing the name to Cudahy Packing Company. Michael Cudahy died in 1910. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

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and $100,000 stock inducement brought Swift and Company to Omaha.74 As has been noted, Armour eventually built a plant there as well. Because McShane was the first president of the stockyards company, one of the packers, Hammond, in 1885, gave McShane the distinction of killing the first hog and first steer to be slaughtered in his packing plant. “I faithfully, if not scientifically, performed the duty of high executive on this memorable occasion,” McShane said.75 He served until 1894. (McShane later became a state senator in Nebraska, a United States congressman from Nebraska, and ran unsuccessfully for governor.) By 1907, Armour held most of the stock of the Union Stock Yards Company, so the vice president of Armour and Company became the president of the stockyards, even though he still resided in Chicago. Dual ownership and overlapping directorships became a nationwide pattern among the meat packers and their stockyards interests.76 Ten slaughterhouses with a combined capacity of 50,000 head per day operated in South Omaha by 1910. Immigrants flocked to South Omaha from central and eastern Europe and formed tightly knit ethnic communities. In fact, “new immigrants” inflated Omaha’s population from 140,452 in 1890 to 191,601 in 1920.77 Three of the major packers were still there— Armour, Cudahy, and Swift. Omaha ranked as the third-largest livestock market in the world in the first decade of the twentieth century, with fortyfive commission firms, twenty-three order buyers, and traders handling the 20,000 animals arriving each day.78 Cattlemen and their animals arrived from more than twenty states to trade at the Omaha market.79 Omaha residents boasted that the expanded exchange building dining room with four hundred seats was the largest in the state of Nebraska. Proud patrons paid $0.40 for a fresh steak and $0.05 for three homemade biscuits. Omaha soon ranked second only to Chicago; it had sixty-two commission firms, 13,000 employees, and annual receipts of seven million animals.80


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Omaha’s old exchange building stands in the right background with hog pens in front. ca. 1917. Photo courtesy Bostwick-Frohardt Collection, Western Heritage Museum, Omaha, Nebraska.

Everett Buckingham, born in 1858, served as general manager of the Omaha Union Stockyards and successfully launched a rebuilding program. When the previous president retired in 1924, Buckingham became president and began construction on a new exchange building. He died unexpectedly before the building was completed. In 1925 officials dedicated the new building to Buckingham. When the market celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1934, over 265 million head of livestock of all types had passed through the Omaha Stockyards. The next year, when meat packer Thomas Wilson leased an old Skinner-Dold Packing plant, all four of the “Big Four” packers finally operated there. Omaha thus became the only city in the world where all the “Big Four” meat packers—Armour, Swift, Cudahy, and Wilson—slaughtered three types of animals: cattle, hogs, and sheep.81 Momentum to surpass Chicago as the number one market grew in the 1950s as other stockyards began to decline. In October 1955, the Omaha stockyards sold more cattle in a single day—42,817—than any one yard and

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The new exchange building in Omaha dominates the stockyards scene in this photo, taken ca. 1927, looking southeast from “L” Street. Photo courtesy Bostwick-Frohardt Collection, Western Heritage Museum, Omaha, Nebraska.

by November had surpassed Chicago.82 That same year nineteen Omaha meat packers slaughtered 6,436,007 animals, nearly two million more than Chicago packed that year. Omaha’s market handled an average of $2 million every business day of the year.83 The market retained its distinction as the largest livestock center in the world for nearly two decades. Half of the employment in the city of Omaha depended in some way on the livestock industry, so the community strongly felt the nationwide livestock market decline. As elsewhere, Omaha’s packing plants were becoming outdated, and labor problems began to multiply. Consequently, Cudahy closed its plant in 1967, and Armour followed a year later. Swift shut down in 1969. After Wilson curtailed operations in 1976, the city had lost more than 10,000 jobs in less than a decade. After reigning as the number one livestock market in the country for eighteen years, Omaha lost that status in 1973. In addition, ninety years of local ownership ended that year


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when the Union Stock Yards merged with a New York City import/export firm, the Kay Corporation. Three years later, United Stockyards, which became the largest holder of stockyards in the nation, acquired Omaha and renamed it the Omaha Livestock Market, Inc. As Omaha moved into the 1980s, the livestock market ranked fourth overall in all animals. However, during the Omaha stockyards’ centennial celebrations in 1984 she regained the distinction as the number one cattle market in the country.84 For nearly seventy-five years from the late 1890s to the 1970s, the stockyards and the meat-packing plants jointly drove Omaha’s economy.85 In the 1990s, Omaha’s livestock market remained active, although with greatly reduced receipts. The ownership cleared a large portion of the former yards and turned the site into a shopping center.86 In 1998 the city purchased the remainder of the property, and the livestock operation moved to Red Oak, Iowa. The end of the once mighty Omaha market came in March 1999.87

S IOUX C ITY, IOWA Because three rivers converge at Sioux City—the Big Sioux and Floyd flowing into the Missouri—flooding is likely. (Three states—Nebraska, South Dakota, and Iowa also meet at this location.) Through the years the stockyards there have faced at least two devastating floods and numerous smaller ones. The river being low can also cause problems. The town was less than two decades old in 1871 when wind blew a shallow draft sternwheeler loaded with grain onto a sand bar in the Missouri River. The boat, headed for Sioux City, sprang a leak and the cargo of wheat was ruined. A fellow named James Booge saw an opportunity to turn an unfortunate situation into a profit. He bought the water-soaked grain at a bargain. Then he purchased a bunch of hogs to eat the grain before it ruined entirely, assuming that grain-fattened hogs would sell well. When nobody would buy his live hogs, Booge rented an empty building at Fifth and Water Streets, put a ring

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River and rail traffic connected the Sioux City Stock Yards to the world, but the water overflowed a few times as well. Photo courtesy Sioux City Public Museum.

in the floor to tie the hogs, and slaughtered them himself. He had to go door to door to sell his processed hog meat, but he sold it. A persistent man had brought meat packing to Sioux City. Booge bought more hogs and kept slaughtering.88 Eventually Booge expanded his operation to 350 hogs a day. The city grew, and in 1880 he moved out of the heart of the business and residential district to a plant south of town worth $500,000. He soon was slaughtering 2,500 hogs, a hundred cattle, and a hundred sheep each day with a yearly price tag of $2.5 million.89 By this time other Sioux City businessmen realized that they needed an official stockyards to receive livestock shipments. On January 21, 1884, they organized a Union Stock Yards Company, capitalized at $100,000. The owners needed more funding, so they increased the capital to $1 million before the stockyards opened in 1887. Daniel T. Hedges served as president.90 W. C. Gimmel of Canton, South Dakota, shipped the first load of hogs to the new stockyards when it opened October 31, 1887.91


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The stockyards company built packing plants to lease out as well. In 1892, Cudahy, the first major packer to arrive, chose Sioux City over St. Joseph and St. Louis because he believed it to be a better market.92 The same year Cudahy arrived, a devastating flood struck the yards on May 18, wiping out the pens. After the flood, the Union Stock Yards merged with a Central Stock Yards on higher ground but faced slower receipts because of the nationwide panic of 1893. Following a bankruptcy caused by the flood and the panic, a new company emerged and purchased the holdings of the old Union Stock Yards Company on July 1, 1895. A former banker from Montpelier, Vermont, F. L. Eaton, became president of the newly organized Sioux City Stock Yards Company, managing it for the next thirty years. The stockyards company, following a practice common in the industry, owned 870 acres of land near the yards that it sold as city lots, thus creating a company town. The company also organized the Livestock National Bank, capitalized at $100,000. To persuade Armour and Company to come to Sioux City in 1899–1900, the stockyards company gave a stock bonus of 4,000 shares and twelve-and-a-half acres of land on which to build their plant. Sioux City had been trying to get Armour to come for thirteen years.93 Swift eventually came as well. Because of its central location in the Midwest, Sioux City primarily received hogs, with 1,855,829 arriving in 1922 out of total receipts that year of 2,833,410 animals.94 In 1941, the Sioux City Stock Yards earned the distinction of being the first livestock center to start a Livestock Market Institute to publicize the market. After World War II, several other terminal markets organized such associations to prevent smaller country auctions from eroding their market.95 The second, more devastating flood at the Sioux City Stock Yards occurred June 8, 1953. The company lost its historical records as well as much of the physical plant. Rebuilding costs were put at $750,000.96

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The Armour and Company packing plant stands adjacent to acres of wooden pens and the railroad in this early Sioux City scene, illustrating the profitable partnership between the three industries— meat packing, stockyards, and railroads. Photo courtesy Sioux City Public Museum.

Other small meat packers continued to open plants, but on June 16, 1963, Armour closed its main facility at Sioux City. Armour had been routinely closing its operations in most of the large stockyards. The local stockyards company bought the Armour land, demolished the outdated slaughtering facility, and made the site available to the Floyd Valley Packing Company. A. D. “Andy” Anderson and C. J. Holman founded Iowa Beef Packers (later Iowa Beef Processors) in 1960 southeast of Sioux City at Denison, Iowa. Their new company became the largest beef processor in the nation by the 1980s, thereby moving some business away from Sioux City.97 The Sioux City Stockyards Company, not content to decline without a fight, completed their largest building project ever in May 1975. They unveiled a roofed cattle division costing $4 million that covered an area the size of seventeen football fields. Unfortunately, the large Swift plant on the yards closed that same year, and Swift moved to a new modern pork facility on the edge of town.98


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During its business heyday Sioux City handled about four million head of livestock annually worth an estimated $500 million and reached the rank of second in the country because of its location in the center of the greatest livestock feeding area in the world. By the mid-1980s Sioux City ranked as the largest stocker and feeder market in the corn belt.99 One of seven large stockyards owned by United in the 1990s, Sioux City remained in operation with greatly reduced sales as the twenty-first century began. The holding company of United, Canal Capital, resumed control in 1999. The Sioux City Stockyards ceased operations in April 2002.100

DENVER, COLORADO With the slogan “Pike’s Peak or Bust,” the ’59ers came to Colorado in search of gold. Those who “busted” sought other livelihoods if they wanted to stay. Joseph L. Bailey eventually decided that he could earn more money by selling meat to miners than he could by searching for the elusive yellow nuggets. He purchased a butcher shop on credit. In the first year and a half, Bailey cleared over $30,000, probably surpassing many a discouraged miner.101 Enough miners found enough gold to make Denver a boomtown, so inflated prices created a demand for beef. In 1865, Bailey opened what became Denver’s first stockyards, the Bull’s Head Corral, to hold incoming animals until he could butcher them for sale. Perhaps he copied the name of the Bull’s Head Yards in Chicago. Bailey’s stockyards actually served as only holding pens for livestock, but the site later became Denver’s Union Railroad Station. As the population increased and more homes and businesses were built, residents complained about the stock pens’ distinctive “aroma.” The pens were moved away from the heart of the growing mile-high city. Promoters built the second stockyards near Second Avenue and Broadway at what is

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now Broadway and Cherry Creek. Growth pushed past these yards as well, and a new stockyard soon emerged at Thirty-fifth and Wazee streets, where railroad facilities were available. Another move or two eventually landed the stockyards north of the city, but still south of the Platte River for many years. The site stretched between the Burlington and Union Pacific Railroads.102 In 1881 at least seven Denver businessmen joined to incorporate the yards under the name Denver Union Stockyards. These included: John A. Clough, a cattle dealer; Jacob Scherrer, F. P. Ernest, J. A. Cooper, J. M. Wilson, William B. Mills, and Samuel B. Wetzel.103 Four years later the Kansas City Stock Yard Company took over the Denver stockyards, claiming that the latter were too small to handle all livestock arrivals. At that time a new $250,000 incorporation changed the name slightly to Denver Union Stockyard Company and was regarded by many as a major milestone in the history of the Denver market. C. F. Morse became president and E. E. Richardson, secretary-treasurer; both were from Kansas City. The new owners built an exchange building and a two-story barn to accommodate five hundred head of horses.104 The stockyards grew steadily as herds of cattle soon began arriving by rail, rather than in cattle drives. Denver soon faced a problem that hampered most livestock markets—haggles over railroad rates. In a report to the Denver Chamber of Commerce, Clough wrote: “The railroads are thinking of making it unprofitable to drive cattle to market.” He knew that the issue had to be settled favorably for the market to continue to grow. Federal assistance came with the Interstate Commerce Act, which regulated railroad rates, and the market survived.105 The first packing facility established near the new stockyards was a Smith Brothers plant built across the Platte River. This plant imported hogs from eastern Nebraska and the Missouri River area. Because the few pioneers in the sparsely settled mining area of Colorado and the farmers of


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western Kansas raised hogs for home consumption and not for slaughter, the packing facility found it difficult to get enough animals to keep the plant operating.106 Other plants eventually opened near the Smith Brothers. Walters and Aicher operated a small slaughterhouse, as did Hoffer Brothers. Later Swift and Company constructed a plant on the Hoffer site. Not until 1892 when the Colorado Packing and Provision Company opened did a plant exist large enough to handle the new slaughter trade that included cattle. Charles Boettcher and Colonel D. C. Dodge opened Western Packing Plant in 1903.107 The Big Four meat-packing trust attempted to form the National Packing Company in 1905 and create a large conglomerate with activities in Denver, but anti-trust lawyers of the Justice Department disallowed National’s purchase of Colorado Packing and Provision and the Western Packing Plant. Armour and Company took over the two plants and created a new company called the Denver Union Stock Yard Company. Later Cudahy, Wilson, and Swift, other beef trust packers, arrived.108 By 1916, The sheep market at Denver had a good run the day this photograph was taken early in the twentieth century. Photo courtesy Colorado Historical Society.

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In the 1920s, the Denver Union Stock Yards Company operated from this building as did also the Denver Stock Yards Bank. Photo courtesy Colorado Historical Society.

owners had constructed a new exchange building at Forty-seventh Avenue and Lafayette Street.109 Denver eventually became headquarters for the American National Livestock Association, and a P&S Administration field office began operating in the exchange building in 1921.110 As a means to prevent the market from dwindling near the midtwentieth century, Denver stockyards owners ruled that any commission firms operating at their market could not do business elsewhere. Unhappy with the new rule, the affected firms filed a joint lawsuit that was appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court; Denver lost the case and had to repeal its ruling.111 As an example of Denver’s receipts, figures for 1958 included 862,000 cattle, 78,000 calves, 493,000 hogs, 1,400,000 sheep, and 549 horses and mules.112 In 1967 the market shifted to an auction to compete with local auctions in smaller communities. Nevertheless, the Denver stockyards closed


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its doors and pens in 1972.113 The P&S Administration office continued in operation in the former Denver Livestock Exchange building, monitoring numerous smaller markets in the Denver area.114 The office remained open as the twenty-first century began.

SOUTH ST. PAUL, M INNESOTA Around 1853, the first few white settlers began moving to a spot where an Indian village called Kaposia, meaning “light,” sprawled on the west bank of the Mississippi River, midway between its confluence with the St. Croix and Minnesota rivers.115 The city of St. Paul developed on this site. A few years later, Minnesotan A. B. Stickney, president and originator of the Chicago & Great Western Railroad had an idea for a livestock market at St. Paul. He called a meeting on May 3, 1886, at the Minnesota Club in St. Paul and invited local businessmen, western cattlemen, and fellow railroad officials. Stickney told them he had watched 75,000 cattle go through St. Paul to Chicago and come back by rail as slaughtered meat to be sold locally. He believed that St. Paul could become a profitable livestock center. Stickney told the group of men that he had met with western ranchers including Teddy Roosevelt, who owned land in North Dakota, and also with Montana cattlemen. The latter, in fact, had formed a Montana Livestock Company to build a feeding yard and market in St. Paul to serve their needs. The Montana plan fell through, but the ranchers’ initial interest helped convince the group of St. Paul officials to act. They took options on land two miles south of the St. Paul city limits and drew up their plans.116 Stickney could not have hoped for a better meeting. James J. Hill, who later completed the Great Northern Railway west to Seattle from St. Paul, immediately supported the idea of stockyards. He was already feeding livestock at his North Oaks estates. Hill believed that a cattle market would make St. Paul less dependent on wheat as a money crop and would increase traffic on his proposed railroad.

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The men wasted no time. By June 30, 1886, they had incorporated the South St. Paul Union Stockyards, raised financing, and purchased 260 acres of swampy land to be refilled.117 They designated eighty acres for a town site west of the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad track, saving the land east of the rails for industry, including forty acres for stockyards. Seventeen loads of steers arrived at the new South St. Paul Stockyards on September 30, 1887, the first day of business.118 The first packing plant opened in January 1888: the Minnesota Packing and Provision Company, a subsidiary of Fowler Brothers. Receipts for the first year of operation totaled 31,514 cattle, 2,210 calves, 272,712 hogs, 61,343 sheep, and 806 horses. Over five thousand rail cars deposited these livestock at the yards.119 The company struggled, however, because of the national Panic of 1893 and eventually went bankrupt. After receiving the inducement of stock in the

Although on a smaller scale, the entrance gate to the South St. Paul Stockyards was similar to the the larger gate at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, with a center traffic gate and two pedestrian gates on each side. ca. 1908. Photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society.


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local company, Swift and Company took over the plant on October 4, 1897. The stockyards company gave Swift a bonus of $1 million, and merchants of Minneapolis offered Armour a similar contract. Armour came in 1915, completing a modern plant in 1919.120 Job opportunities at the packing plants attracted immigrants who came to the area shortly after the turn of the century; some Rumanians came as early as 1904.121 The South St. Paul Union Stockyards owned the St. Paul Bridge and Terminal Railway Company so that they could move livestock efficiently to the St. Paul rail terminal, having built a bridge over the Mississippi River for this purpose. By the 1920s both Armour and Swift had located their largest modern plants at South St. Paul, and the market continued to attract large receipts. As the automotive industry grew and better roads expanded, more trucks delivered cattle to the market. World War II brought large gains to South St. Paul as well as other markets. The peak year of the South St. Paul Stockyards was 1943 with 6.7 million animals received.122 In 1955 South St. Paul ranked as the third-largest public livestock market in the world.123 During and after World War II United Stockyards bought out many of the large stockyards; St. Paul represented the largest in their chain.124 The market began an auction in 1964, also following the lead of most large stockyards. Although many markets declined rapidly in the 1970s, South St. Paul did not. In fact, 1974–81 it was the largest livestock market in the world before dropping to fluctuate between second and third in the mid-1980s.125 The South St. Paul Stockyards was the terminal market for livestock producers in twenty states, including the northwestern ranges, the dairy belt, and the feedlots of the corn country.126 Perhaps because the small city of South St. Paul was a one-industry town—stockyards and meat packing—the community was determined to hold on to that industry. The commercial dairy market in the area of St. Paul helped the South St. Paul market considerably, allowing it to continue to

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South St. Paul had become an industrial city by 1945, but the stockyards, located in the center of town, remained the largest industry. Photo by Kenneth Wright, Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society.

handle five million head of livestock annually in the 1970s and early 1980s. Joel Bennett, whose father was president of United Stockyards in the 1980s, served as president of the South St. Paul Stockyards.127 Bennett’s market director Curt Zimmerman credited their dairy business, the biggest cow market in the industry, with helping South St. Paul stay busy.128 Sales fell to 2.2 million animals in the mid-1980s. Armour, Swift, and Cudahy remained as major packer buyers. The St. Paul market celebrated its centennial in 1986 and began its second century of operation. United Stockyards sold the St. Paul yards to Central Livestock, and South St. Paul continued as a terminal market as the twenty-first century began.129

F ORT WORTH, TEXAS When the two largest of the Big Four meat packers—Armour and Swift— agreed to build modern plants in the heart of Texas cattle country in 1902,


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they, as well as the citizens of Fort Worth, believed that they could challenge and surpass Chicago. Both were mistaken, but the Fort Worth market ranked between third and fourth nationally in overall receipts for nearly a half-century. The Fort Worth story began in the 1860s as trail drives started north from South Texas toward Abilene, Kansas. The “Great Trail” or “Texas Trail” (later called the Chisholm Trail) passed through Fort Worth, a little settlement of about twenty cabins and two stores in 1868.130 Citizens began talking about packing plants as early as 1875, but they knew they needed a railroad first. After local efforts to help grade the roadbed for the incoming Texas & Pacific Railroad, the first train arrived on July 19, 1876, providing immediate rail service to points east.131 Stock pens sprang up near the railroad south of town. By the turn of the century Fort

Edward F. Swift—Son of Gustavus F. Swift, founder of Swift and Company, Edward F. Swift was vice president of his father’s company and also of a food line called Libby, McNeill and Libby that the Swifts acquired to allow efficient use of their refrigerator cars when not shipping meat. In addition, he was vice president of the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company shortly after reorganization in 1902 gave one-third ownership to Swift and Company. He died in 1932. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

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Worthians had induced at least nine more lines to come, some of them incorporated right in Fort Worth. Local attempts to build either pork-slaughtering or beef-packing plants failed in the early 1880s because of lack of capital. Local business leaders did charter the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards on open land north of town on July 26, 1887.132 Fort Worth businessmen, some of whom were associated with the stockyards, incorporated the Fort Worth Packing Company on April 30, 1890, with a capital stock of $200,000.133 The packing plant did not have enough ready cash to pay for the large herds that came through Fort Worth by rail, so many Texas producers continued to ship to St. Louis, Kansas City, or Chicago. Needing outside investors, the local men appealed to G. W. Simpson and Louville V. Niles of

Eight by ten white frame offices sat on the corner of wooden pens at the Fort Worth yards. The little houses, like this belonging to John Clay and Company, kept the rain and snow off the commission men but still could be cold in winter or hot in summer. Each commission company occupied one over their assigned pens. Photo courtesy Mr. and Mrs. Hilton Kutch, Fort Worth, Texas.


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Boston who, in 1893, incorporated the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company in West Virginia (to take advantage of easier rules for corporations) and on April 27, 1893, bought out both the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards and the locally owned packing plant for $133,333.134 Unfortunately for the new owners, that was the year of the nationwide panic. The Fort Worth market struggled for nearly a decade. The efforts of Simpson and Niles to interest Armour and Swift in Fort Worth in 1902 saved the stockyards from failure and sparked Fort Worth’s hopes of creating a market large enough to surpass Chicago. Simpson and Niles reorganized their company and gave Armour and Swift each one-third of the stock, keeping one-third for themselves. They gave each packer twenty-one acres of land on which to build modern plants. In exchange, both packers agreed to pay yardage charges for each animal they slaughtered, whether the animals went through the stockyards or not.135 Such arrangements became common among meat packers and stockyards by the twentieth century. Armour and Swift tore down an old wooden exchange building and hotel and, in 1903, built the large Spanishstyle stucco exchange building still in use.136 In addition, in 1902 they incorporated a city called North Fort Worth, but the larger city annexed it within seven years. In 1904 J. Ogden Armour predicted that Fort Worth might someday surpass Chicago and become number one. Armour owned no part of the Chicago Stockyards because Vanderbilt interests controlled it; therefore he and other packers wanted to build their own large, well-equipped stockyards and packing plants in the Southwest and West to divert trade and run Chicago out of business. The plot failed.137 With wealthy packers able to purchase every animal that arrived in Fort Worth and pay cash immediately, business began to boom. Meanwhile, stockyards officials clashed with the railroads over rates and with the Texas legislature that outlawed their livestock exchange in 1907 as “harmful to

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J. Ogden Armour—Born in Milwaukee in 1863, Jonathan Ogden Armour, son of Philip D. Armour, entered his father’s business in Chicago in 1883 and became president of the meat packing and stockyards interests after his father’s death in 1901. In 1906 the younger Armour wrote a book called The Packers, the Private Car Lines and the People to defend his industry against complaints by Upton Sinclair, whose book, The Jungle, issued the previous year was an attack on the meat-packing industry. Armour died in 1927. Photo Courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

legitimate industry,” “unjust and unfair in principle”—in other words, an organization to fix prices and control trade.138 The state terminated the livestock exchange charter and ordered the exchange to do no further business in the state.139 This eventually left Fort Worth as the only large terminal market in the country without an exchange to help police its own industry. Boom times nevertheless followed for Fort Worth. No other large packer besides Armour and Swift came because of small hog receipts on the market, but the two packers bought nearly all the cattle that arrived. In 1915, as World War I raged in Europe, Fort Worth became the largest market in the world for horses and mules. Uniformed officers of foreign governments came to purchase animals for both food and cavalry purposes.140 The year 1917 set a record that would stand for nearly thirty years: 1,646,110 cattle, 313,427 calves, 1,062,021 hogs, 405,810 sheep, and


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115,233 horses and mules—a total of over 3.5 million animals.141 Because of the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, Armour and Swift were forced to sell their stockyards interests. However, a company that Swift formed, United Stockyards, eventually acquired all of Fort Worth’s stock by 1944.142 United continued to own stock in the Fort Worth stockyards until the 1980s. World War II brought huge receipts to Fort Worth, and old records fell. Over 5.25 million animals of all types arrived in 1944, including over two million sheep. Texas led the nation in sheep production, and Fort Worth became the largest sheep market in the nation.143 Following the war local country auctions and a decline in rail shipments drew large numbers away from the Fort Worth market. Publicity, promotional gimmicks, and new Covered sheep and hog pens and the brick horse and mule barns dominate this scene from the Fort Worth Stockyards in the 1950s. To the left of Exchange Avenue one can see the coliseum, exchange building, and acres of cattle pens. Armour and Swift’s plants accepted livestock from wooden connecting ramps over the railroad tracks. Photo courtesy W. D. Smith, Inc. Collection, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Arlington, Texas.

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livestock organizations kept two million animals coming per year in the 1950s, but Armour closed its plant in 1962, and Swift shut down on May 1, 1971. Smaller plants continued to operate, but most market activity in Texas took place in small-town auctions or new modern packing facilities near feedlots in West Texas and the Panhandle. In order to compete, Fort Worth began an auction in 1959 but could not retain the huge market share it had enjoyed for over half a century. Although the market celebrated a century of operations in July 1987, for several years it remained open only for one short auction each Monday. After the last auction was held on December 21, 1992, Fort Worth ceased operations. Tourists now wander the stockyards area visiting its restaurants, shops, and nightclubs. The Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District is a western-themed tourist attraction celebrating Fort Worth’s “cowtown” image.

WICHITA, KANSAS The entire town of Wichita could be termed a stockyards as early as 1872 when the two-year-old settlement and trading post on the Chisholm Trail saw its first railroad, the Santa Fe, arrive. Citizens also worked to get the Western & Southwestern Railroad to connect to the Santa Fe and others. After its first year as a railhead, Wichita received 70,000 head of cattle worth at least $2 million.144 Stockyards and cattle thus became the “business that helped breathe the first breath of economic life into Wichita.”145 A threat to the new economic boom came when the Kansas legislature quarantined much of the state, including Wichita, against Texas cattle because of “Spanish fever” (no one yet realized it was caused by ticks). When the 1873 panic followed on the heels of the quarantine, Wichita fell on hard times. Locusts and drought ravaged the surrounding farmlands, contributing to the crisis. Livestock interests organized the Wichita Union Stock Yards Company in the early part of 1887 and opened for business October 18 that same year.


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Although silent now, the Wichita Live Stock Exchange saw tremendous activity during its busy years of service to the Wichita yards. Photo courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.

Unfortunately, on the night of the opening, a fire totally destroyed the yards, burning two carloads of cattle and one hundred tons of hay. The next day local men pledged enough money in forty-five minutes to begin rebuilding. By January 1, 1888, the yards had opened for business again.146 Because of the promise of economic activity, the population of Wichita boomed from nearly 5,000 in 1880 to 23,853 a decade later.147 When inducements to persuade meat-packer Jacob Dold to build a plant on Twenty-first Street succeeded, the stockyards interests decided to move their facility there. They constructed a stockyards hotel and exchange building, and by 1908 capitalization had reached $600,000.148 A second fire on June 2, 1904, destroyed both the yards and the stockyards hotel.149 After rebuilding, the company in 1906 gave meat-packer Cudahy one-sixth of the stock in exchange for a guarantee that Cudahy would continue to operate a packing plant in Wichita for at least ten years and continue to purchase all the livestock necessary for the plant from the Wichita yards. Cudahy kept increasing its percentage of ownership. By 1917 it owned one-third of the $1.4 million stockyards shares. Jacob Dold

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remained the other large packer, but several smaller ones bought slaughter livestock on the market as well.150 In 1913, Daniel C. Smith became president of the yards, beginning a long reign of management by one family. Smith had been general livestock agent for the Texas & Pacific and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas (Katy) railroads in Fort Worth when agents of the Wichita stockyards approached him. His son, Daniel C. Smith, Jr. (called Conlee Smith), in 1955 became president and general manager of the Wichita yards, succeeding his father. Dan C. Smith III began working in 1959 as vice president and assistant general manager.151 By 1921, the Wichita yards had a daily capacity of 18,000 cattle, 14,000 hogs, 5,000 sheep, 2,000 horses and mules. In 1928 Wichita claimed to be the “mule capital of the country,” because mule buyers came from places like Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi.152 Wichita was considered one of the eleven big livestock markets of the West in the 1930s, with a million head of livestock passing through her yards annually.153 Total receipts for 1942 included: 333,726 cattle, 53,694 calves, 446,390 hogs, 246,691 sheep and lambs, and 7,365 horses and mules. The stockyards, located on the north edge of Wichita, covered a hundred acres.154 By 1954, ninety percent of all livestock arrived by truck rather than rail, so stockyards officials remodeled the yards to make trucking access easier. As large commercial feedlots became a new feeding and marketing standard in the industry in the 1960s, Wichita was the closest market for some of these lots.155 In late November 1970, the Wichita-based Sierra Petroleum Company acquired the controlling interest in the Wichita Union Stock Yards Company. Dan Smith III resigned in December 1971, and R. B. “Dick” Thompson became president and general manager of the Wichita Union Stock Yards in January 1972. That year the stockyards hotel burned.156


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The Sierra Company replaced the ninety-year-old wooden pens with steel pens and renovated the 1910 exchange building. In 1975, H. R. “Herb” Michaelis served as president of the stockyards and Homer Pratt as general manager. The market still received over a million head of cattle per year at that time. In August 1975, ninety years of private treaty sales ended, and the market converted to an open auction, making Wichita no longer a terminal market according to a P&S Administration definition. To be a terminal market, stockyards needed commission companies; the companies were not needed at auction markets. Wichita was challenging the competition from country auctions all around the state.157 Receipts for 1977 included 60,000 cattle, 200,000 hogs, and 15,000 sheep. The total of 275,000 animals reflected quite a drop from an earlier average of a million head per year.158 In November 1979, the Wichita Stockyards stopped cattle trading; on August 1, 1980, hog sales stopped as well. Sierra Petroleum shut down the stockyards because it was losing money due to higher sewage costs, taxes, insurance, and decreasing receipts. “It’s sort of like trying to keep an old car. Things add up after a while,” Herb Michaelis said.159

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS Cattle have been important to San Antonio since 1718 when livestock fed the inhabitants of the Mission San Antonio de Valero, also known as the Alamo. Spanish ranchers grazed their herds on land surrounding the mission. Today, the streets of San Antonio radiate out like spokes from the hub of a wagon wheel because many of them originally began as 1860s cattle trails. Livestock trading took place on Military Plaza before any official stockyards opened.160 Railroads arriving in San Antonio in the late 1880s inspired a group of about ten South Texas ranchers and former trail drivers to build a stockyards in 1889 near the tracks on the southwestern fringe of San Antonio.

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Capitalized at $200,000, the thirty-eight-acre yards was called the San Antonio Stock Yards Company. After a financial reorganization in 1894, the name changed to Union Stock Yards, a popular name industrywide.161 Livestock men established the reorganized stockyards near where the rail lines intersected. Originally on the edge of town, as the city grew the stockyards found themselves close to the center of town. In 1894 Dr. Amos Graves, chief surgeon for the Southern Pacific Railroad, became the majority owner with five smaller investors. Ownership remained with descendants of Dr. Graves for five generations.162 Owners replaced the original exchange building, built in 1889, with one constructed nearby in 1938. G. Carlton Hagelstein headed the stockyards operation beginning in 1938, serving for the next three decades until his son Carleton Hagelstein, Jr., took over in 1966. At that time the market Cattle feed in pens while stockyards workers at the San Antonio yards either sit or stand around on the elevated wooden rails that were common at all the large stockyards. Photo courtesy Janie Hagelstein, Union Stock Yards, San Antonio.


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received 353,000 cattle and calves, 42,000 hogs, and 48,000 sheep and goats. In the 1950s, the Union Stock Yards handled from 200,000 to 400,000 head of goats per year from the ranches in West Texas.163 In 1958, following the pattern of other stockyards in the industry, San Antonio introduced its first auction. After first holding auctions in a tent, in 1960 officials constructed an air-conditioned building solely for these sales. Railroad shipments ended in the 1970s. San Antonio did not decline as rapidly as the larger terminal markets mainly because it had always been small. Close to downtown, the yards in the late 1980s was the largest livestock market in South or Southwest Texas and later became the last Texas stockyards to maintain “terminal” market status with commission companies, according to a P&S Administration definition.164 In 1988, the yards posted annual gross sales of $65,123,076, as 168,087 cattle and calves and 26,753 hogs arrived.165 Market area for the Union Stock Yards in San Antonio covered fifty to sixty surrounding counties and those counties south to the Rio Grande. Most cattle from the market moved north for feeding; only about ten percent were slaughtered locally.166 Fifth-generation owners/managers working at the market at its 1989 centennial and beyond included Janie Hagelstein, the daughter of Carleton, Jr., and son-in-law Mark Judson, who married Janie’s sister, Mary. Judson took over as president of the yards when Carleton, Jr., retired in June 1993.167 In the year 2000, auctions were still held Mondays and Wednesdays, four commission companies operated on the market, and the stockyards handled 74,000 animals.168 Judson was president and general manager in March 2001 when he announced that the 112-year-old stockyards would close the following month to make way for an industrial park. The last sale took place on April 18. The thirty-four-acre stockyard, reduced by four acres from its original size, was located in a prime industrial area and

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already had thirty warehouses as nearby neighbors. At one time fifteen meat-packing plants operated near the stockyards, but most of the big packers relocated near the feedlots in the Texas Panhandle.169

S IOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA Located 90 miles north of Sioux City, Iowa, 200 northwest of Omaha, and 250 miles southwest of South St. Paul, Sioux Falls was in close proximity to three larger, rival livestock markets. Sioux Falls residents might have wondered at the necessity for another market. At least eight states once shipped to Sioux Falls, however, including South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, and Idaho. Slaughter livestock left Sioux Falls on the hoof heading to packing plants in twenty-six states by the 1940s.170 Apparently a market did not have to be a huge packing center to see a lot of movement and activity at its stockyards. In 1883, E. G. Smith and A. B. Clampit opened a meat-packing establishment where they slaughtered hogs. Neighbors complained of the smell, so Smith and Clampit moved their business. Clampit bowed out, but Smith slaughtered hogs until October 1886, when fire destroyed his operation. He rebuilt, but the financial loss eventually rendered him bankrupt.171 In 1889, Sioux Falls businessman and first U.S. Senator from South Dakota, R. F. Pettigrew urged construction of a stockyards, helped incorporate one for $500,000, and bought a thousand acres of land.172 Workers constructed a seven-story granite packing house, 160 feet by 433 feet, so sturdy it lasted for fifty years, although it stood vacant for many of its last years. When Works Progress Administration workers tore the building down in 1940, they found a copper box in the cornerstone in which had been placed copies of several newspapers, photos of the Sioux Falls business district, and a lone penny.173 Pettigrew and his associates built the Sioux Falls Stockyards Company near the junction of Skunk Creek and the Sioux River. Before construction


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In 1891 the Sioux Falls Stockyards and adjacent packing plants were under construction. Photo courtesy Siouxland Heritage Museum, Sioux Falls.

was completed, financial difficulties brought a halt to their efforts. In 1895, the vice president, A. J. Pettingill reorganized with $2 million in capital, bought 1,800 more acres, and completed construction.174 He shut down in 1899. Meat packing did take place, despite the absence of profitable yards. John Morrell and Company arrived in 1909 and built a large plant in 1911.175 Three Denver businessmen were determined to incorporate a successful stockyards in Sioux Falls; they did so in 1915 under the laws of Colorado with $500,000 capitalization. They hired G. W. England, construction engineer of the Denver Stockyards, to supervise the building of a new Sioux Falls Stockyards. The yards opened September 13, 1917. Morrell and Company, accustomed to buying directly from producers, did not immediately want to use the stockyards. Eventually they agreed to do so.

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Larger packing companies sent representatives to Sioux Falls to buy livestock to ship to their plants.176 Livestock receipts in 1923 reached 25,631 cattle, 4,832 calves, 503,108 hogs, 5,197 sheep, and 389 horses and mules.177 Because Sioux Falls was the only stockyards in South Dakota in the mid-1920s, the company engaged in a busy trade as trucks used the newly constructed highways. Some shipments still arrived by rail. In 1924 a new Sioux City Stock Yards Company purchased the Sioux Falls stockyards and reorganized it under the laws of North Dakota, but Swift and Company bought it later that year. The John Morrell Company still operated at the market in the 1920s, employing 1,500 people and using twenty-two government meat inspectors.178 When Swift and Company created United Stockyards in 1936 to hold Swift’s stockyards shares, the corporation began buying up additional stock from other owners. Eventually, Sioux Falls became wholly owned by United, but in 1999 this management was transferred to the holding company of United, Canal Capital. Sioux Falls enjoyed good leadership and a strong exchange that maintained the integrity of the market.179 The yards continued in operation as a terminal market as the twenty-first century opened. In fact, in 2001 receipts the Sioux Falls Yards ranked number one of the few stockyards still open, with 547,465 animals.180

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After a substantial population shift westward provided a continuing demand in the American West and the Pacific coast, large livestock markets became necessary in those regions. Stockyards companies developed in Ogden (on the transcontinental railroad) and Portland in the 1890s and in South San Francisco in the early twentieth century. Citizens of Oklahoma City urged meat packers to come to their community to take advantage of the growing market demand there shortly after Indian Territory became the state of Oklahoma in 1907. Even into the Depression years new stockyards developed in Houston, Texas; Joplin, Missouri; and Billings, Montana. While most of these late markets remained small, some not reaching the status of the largest two dozen stockyards, their creation indicated that into the early twentieth century stockyards remained the way to market livestock. Promoters at that time wanted to become part of the nationwide livestock marketing network that included a stockyards complex in their city.

P ORTLAND, OREGON Located on the west bank of the Willamette River twelve miles from its junction with the Columbia, the community of Portland began in 1844 when Asa L. Lovejoy and William Overton established a claim to the land. Overton, a drifter, later moved on, and Lovejoy acquired another partner, Francis W. Pettygrove, who won a coin toss to name the community

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Portland after his hometown in Maine. William Gilpin later took credit for laying out the city that was chartered in 1851. The first movement toward a central livestock market for Portland came in the 1880s, but local leaders lacked sufficient backing. It was a familiar story.1 Success came in the 1890s when Louis Burke, of the Nebraska Burke livestock family, leased about two acres at Seventeenth and Northwest Vaughn and organized a Union Stock Yards Company. The new facility could accommodate from twelve to fourteen railroad cars of livestock. Burke set up a livestock commission business as well and began to receive shipments from all over the Willamette Valley and as far south as the California line. Five small slaughterhouses had previously provided meat for the city, but no regular stockyards or central market existed until Burke’s company opened. Eventually the Southern Pacific Railroad ran a spur to the yards.2 Burke sold his interests on January 1, 1897, to Warren Merchant and Allyn Yocom, two farmers from pioneer Oregon families. Two years later W. H. H. Morgan, one of the early feeders of good cattle on a thousandacre site called Morgan’s Landing, bought into the stockyards. By 1902 Morgan became sole owner and president of the stockyards. During the early years, the stockyards company acted as a commission business, but it relinquished that in 1905 when seven commission firms organized the Portland Livestock Exchange. Morgan sold his interests at about that time. Swift and Company purchased the Union Meat Company and thirtyfour hundred acres of land adjacent to the Columbia River, seven miles north of Portland, and in 1907 constructed a new, modern plant. Swift also invested in the Portland Union Stock Yards Company, with a new yards near the packing-house site. Stockyards ownership dismantled the old yards at Northwest Seventeenth and Vaughn, and the site became a baseball park. All livestock activity moved to the new site north of Portland at

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2524 North Marine Drive, where stockyards officials constructed a new hotel and livestock exchange building. The new stockyards opened September 15, 1909.3 Swift built houses for its workers, and the community of Kenton became a company town.4 To call attention to their market, promoters organized a stock show in 1911. D. O. Lively, who had livestock show experience in Fort Worth, arrived in Portland to manage the show and to become general publicity agent of the stockyards company. His job was to encourage more livestock shipments to Portland and to promote the stock show, a position many stockyards companies also funded. Two years later Lively left his job to take on the challenge of the livestock show of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Stockyards officials nationwide promoted their markets through livestock shows, 4-H, and Future Farmers of America activities.5 A three-story, brick Georgian-style exchange building in 1917 replaced the frame structure built eight years earlier. When the new exchange building opened next door, a commission house, constructed in 1908, was converted to a restaurant called the Red Steer Café. The red, wood-shingled restaurant survived for eighty-eight years.6 By 1934, half the animals marketed in Portland came by truck rather than by rail, anticipating a pattern that would affect major terminal markets nationwide. Numerous packers and slaughterers operating in Oregon, Washington, and California purchased all or part of their supply of livestock on the North Portland market in 1935. During World War II a portion of the Portland International Livestock Exhibition Center was used as an overtime assembly center and also for temporary homes for hundreds of interned Japanese Americans.7 By the 1950s, Portland had become essentially a market for slaughter animals, with few stockers and feeders.8 Only one major packing plant remained near the stockyards at that time: the Swift plant at North Portland

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This aerial view taken in 1959 of the Portland Stockyards on North Portland Road shows the largest livestock market on the Pacific Coast. Photo-Art Commercial Studio, Courtesy Oregon Historical Society.

that had employed fifteen hundred workers in its heyday. Other packing plants were located in the Kenton area between the Columbia Slough and the north city limits of Portland. Nearly thirty million animals of all types had passed through the Portland Stock Yards by 1958. Ranked as the largest market in a five-state area during its boom years, Portland’s bidding formed the basis of all livestock prices throughout the Pacific Northwest.9 One writer called the Portland stockyards “the largest and most heavily used stables in the Northwest.”10 The national decline in use of central stockyards for meat purchases struck Portland in 1966 when Swift & Company closed its operations.11 The stockyards remained open for a time but suffered rapidly declining receipts. The Portland market faced a threat from a garbage company after closing. Oregon Waste Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of Waste Management of North America, Inc., the world’s largest trash company, purchased the

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forty-seven-acre site in February 1989 from the then-owners of the Portland stockyards, Canal Capital Corporation of New York City. Plans called for the construction of a large regional waste transfer station on the stockyards site.12 The waste management company eventually sold the land. The City of Portland Landmarks Commission in 1995 voted unanimously not to oppose the demolition of the seventy-eight-year-old, threehundred-square-foot Georgian revival exchange building. By that time, however, S. F. Properties had purchased the last forty acres of the Portland stockyards located near Interstate 5 and redeveloped the site into a $50 million industrial park.13 The Kenton Action Plan, a neighborhood activist group, tried to save the exchange building, even hoping to move it to a nearby golf course as a clubhouse, but prohibitive costs doomed the efforts. The building was demolished in 1998. The Red Steer Restaurant, as the café was then called, had closed the year before. “It was very sad to see [the exchange building] come tumbling down,” commented one observer.14

SOUTH SAN F RANCISCO, CALIFORNIA The lure of gold and a superior harbor fueled the rapid rise of San Francisco as an “instant city” in 1849, even though an earlier brisk Spanish cattle trade had flourished there. New England ship captains stopped at sleepy mission towns along the California coast to trade with Spanish ranchers for cowhides and tallow. Jose Antonio Sanchez, who obtained his grant of land from Mexico in 1827, grazed hundreds of cattle on his hacienda that he called Rancho Buri Buri. That ranch later became the site of the city of South San Francisco.15 In 1853 Charles Lux purchased a 1,500-acre ranch from Sanchez’s son for $10,000. Lux and a partner named Henry Miller raised cattle, constructed barns, and also built cattle pens.16 Eventually the Chicago Swift meat packing interests entered the northern California ranching country. Some industry historians believe that Swift wanted to establish a West Coast unit in San Francisco, but a strong

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Gustavus Franklin Swift— Born in 1839 in Massachusetts, from age fourteen Swift worked for an older brother, a butcher who had his own business in the Boston area. Later, Gus peddled meat from house to house and built up his own clientele. He shocked his partner, J. A. Hathaway, when he slaughtered meat in Chicago and shipped it by rail to Boston in the wintertime. Swift moved to Chicago in 1875 and established Swift and Company, eventually pioneering the shipping of iced railroad cars carrying dressed meat. He led the way in the development of refrigerated cars. Swift died in 1903. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

organization of the city’s butchers kept that company out.17 Swift selected a site south of San Francisco. In 1889 Swift sent Peter E. Iler, who earlier had helped establish stockyards in Omaha, to direct the construction. Iler visited the ranch belonging to Miller and Lux and made a deal. Iler paid $750,000 for the land, but he persuaded Miller and Lux to invest in the project as well. Iler and his associates created two joint stock companies: South San Francisco Land and Improvement Company to sell both industrial and residential sites and the Western Meat Company as a stockyards and meat-packing plant.18 Iler brought out carriage loads of prospective buyers from San Francisco to view the residential and industrial sites. In 1892, he donated land for a right-of-way for a railroad, and, as a result, the Southern Pacific Company laid track and constructed a station. Henry Miller wanted to name a nearby

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Gustavus Franklin Swift, Jr.—Born in 1881 after his father moved to Chicago, Gustavus Franklin Swift, Jr., took over as president and chairman of the board of Swift and Company after his father’s death. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

community Baden after his birthplace in Germany. Swift, however, accustomed to stockyards towns adjacent to well-established cities being called South Chicago, South Omaha, South St. Paul, or even North Fort Worth, instead chose the name South San Francisco.19 Swift and his interests developed a water system and opened a rock quarry to obtain gravel for city streets. The earliest thoroughfares consisted of dusty trails or muddy bogs leading to settlers’ homes constructed in open fields. The new town developed fairly rapidly; by 1892 a post office, a public school, a newspaper, a fire company, a court and jail, and a board of trade existed. Citizens welcomed Swift’s gravel operation to improve their streets, as well as the jobs created by his meat packing plant. The nationwide panic of 1893 slowed land sales, but the project continued. The next year, Western Meat Company with its stockyards opened.

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Located on the Pacific Coast and featuring both open and covered pens adjacent to the Western Meat Company plant, the South San Francisco Stockyards Company closed in 1959. Photo courtesy South San Francisco Public Library, Local History Collection.

Other meat packers eventually moved into the area as well as other industries, including a pottery works, a paint factory, and even a steel manufacturing plant. Promoters incorporated the city in 1908.20 After a late reorganization, the South San Francisco Union Stock Yards Company emerged as a public livestock market on March 2, 1927, and the yards expanded two years later. Total livestock receipts for 1929 included cattle, 72,580; calves, 6,070; hogs, 259,029; sheep, 237, 212; and horses and mules, 3.21 Four commission firms operated on the market at that time. By 1938, thirty-five industrial plants employed workers in South San Francisco, but only four dealt with meat packing. Population of the stillindependent community at that time totaled only about seven thousand.22 The South San Francisco Union Stockyards closed in 1959.

OKLAHOMA C ITY, OKLAHOMA Oklahoma City began in April 1889, with a wild land rush that brought almost ten thousand settlers overnight and eventually half a dozen railroads. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, chamber of commerce officials in Oklahoma City recognized that

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Oklahoma farmers were shipping their hogs south to Fort Worth for processing. Officials thought cattle and hogs could be slaughtered locally instead.23 Sidney Brock, president of the local chamber of commerce, sent a letter to several northern and eastern meat-packing companies extolling the advantages of Oklahoma City. He piqued the interest of Nelson Morris’ company. When Executive Vice President Thomas E. Wilson arrived in town a few weeks later, Brock and his friends commandeered the only automobile in Oklahoma City to drive the important meat packer around. (Later Wilson would open his own business and become a Big Five meat packer himself.24) The delegation was frequently forced to push the borrowed car out of sand pits and deep ruts as they toured possible sites for a packing plant. They probably thought Wilson would never return to Oklahoma City. Actually, Wilson (and thus Morris) was interested, but he listed his conditions for building a plant: Morris and Company would get a $300,000 bonus as an inducement; the city would exempt the stockyards area from taxes for five years; the city would extend sewer and streetcar lines to the plant; a railroad belt line would be built to connect with four trunk lines already in existence; Wilson wanted a block of land southwest of the downtown business district adjacent to the Canadian River.25 Oklahoma City Chamber officials agreed to all terms. George Stone, the vice president of the Chamber, used $25,000 of his own money to purchase options on 575 acres of the land Wilson wanted. Other citizens formed a committee to raise the $300,000 bonus. Amid periodic cheering, the men pledged $427,000 in one-and-one-half hours.26 A few months after Thomas Wilson’s visit, a representative of another major packer, Schwarzchild and Sulzberger, offered to build a plant but wanted the same concessions the city had granted Wilson. In addition, the representative wanted a fire station near the site and 350,000 gallons of

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free water daily for five years. Excited at the prospect of becoming a major livestock marketing center, city officials readily agreed. Edward Morris, who inherited his father’s packing interests, opened his Oklahoma City plant on October 3, 1910, and also originated an adjacent stockyards, making livestock marketing Oklahoma City’s first major industry. Big crowds and great hoopla converged on Packingtown. Speeches and cheers from city leaders dedicated the facilities located on a 120-acre site two miles west of downtown.

Edward Morris, one of the sons of Nelson Morris, took over his father’s business interests after his father died. When federal legislation prevented meat packers from owning stockyards, most packers sold their stockyards. The Morris brothers chose the opposite route and divested themselves of their meat-packing operations and kept their interests in stockyards that they owned in several markets. They sold their packing facilities to Armour and Company. Photo courtesy Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center.

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“I’m glad to see you folks and I hope our shops over here will please you,” Morris told the fifteen thousand spectators.27 Morris, following the practice of other meat packers, had invested in more than just stockyards and meat packing; he was selling town lots for $150 to $300 each, opening a stockyards and a bank, and guaranteeing to connect them to the rest of the city by electric streetcar. The soon-booming yards provided four thousand jobs in a city that had grown to 60,000 people and influenced the choice of Oklahoma City as the state capital.28 Morris organized the Oklahoma National Stock Yards Company adjacent to the packing plants. Soon seventeen commission firms began operating and created a livestock exchange with other market interests. The S & S Company subscribed to part of the stockyards stock.29 Later Morris sold all meat-packing interests to Armour. The former Morris official who had traveled to Oklahoma City, Thomas Wilson, went into business for himself, purchasing the older S & S facility.30 The stockyards was centrally located where U.S. 66 and U.S. 77 crossed (much later becoming the intersection for highways I-40, I-35, and I-44). Because railroad transportation began to decline and truck marketing to increase, this crossroads location proved fortuitous for Oklahoma City. By 1935 ninety-two percent of all cattle receipts came by truck, more than at any other major market.31 By 1950, Oklahoma City emerged as a major market for stocker and feeder cattle. Rather than modernize a fifty-year-old building, Armour closed its packing plant in 1960. Wilson, however, tore down its original facility in 1963 and replaced it with a modern one. Yet, in 1979, Wilson discontinued cattle slaughter. The company ended its hog slaughter in 1981.32 Consistent with changes on the other major markets, auctions replaced or augmented private treaty sales by 1961. At first they occurred one day a week on Thursdays, but later officials expanded the schedule; a hog auction began in 1973.

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Sales of facilities and market reorganizations occurred in Oklahoma City as elsewhere. A Delaware-chartered corporation took over operations as Oklahoma National Stockyards in 1968. The corporation made numerous changes, installing metal panels in pens, rather than wood, and building a new dock and a new loading chute.33 Because Oklahoma City’s stockyards stand on the dividing line between a cow-calf area to the east and south and stocker-feeder wheat and grain country to the west, receipts did not decline as rapidly as at other major terminal markets. Its central location put the yards within fairly easy driving distance for producers from the surrounding area. In addition, Oklahoma, by the 1970s, had become the nation’s third-largest calfproducing state and was bounded by the two states that ranked first and second—Texas and Missouri. Thus, as other markets dwindled appreciably, Oklahoma received around one million animals yearly and ranked number one in cattle sales in 1977. By 1980, seventy percent of Oklahoma’s cash farm income came from livestock, mostly cattle, rather than agricultural crops. Commercial feedlots developed as well.34 A retired P&S Administration official, discussing the reasons Oklahoma City did not decline as rapidly as other markets, commented in the 1980s, “Oklahoma City brought in some college boys with training.” Sometimes other yards resented college-educated workers, he explained, making it so rough they would not stay. “They thought a man ought to shake hay on the yards twenty years before he could trade. Oklahoma innovated.”35 Unfortunately, a fire sparked by an electrical short destroyed the Spanish-colonial livestock exchange building in June 1980. The market, nevertheless, remained number one in cattle receipts in the early 1980s, averaging a million animals per year.36 Rob Fisher served as the fifth president of the Oklahoma City Stockyards, taking it into the twenty-first century as the nation’s largest stocker-feeder cattle market. Nine commission firms still operated, but the

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The Livestock Exchange Building constructed soon after the Oklahoma City Stockyards opened in 1910 burned in 1980 because of an electrical short. Photo courtesy Archives and Manuscripts Division of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

sales were ninety-nine percent auction. Receipts held at approximately 500,000 animals per year.37 Future plans called for efforts to promote “Stockyards City” as a place for restaurants, music, and tourists as well as cattle.38

O GDEN, UTAH Ogden’s first white settler and first livestock trader, Miles Goodyear, chose the general location for what would become a livestock marketing center in Utah.39 Of more importance, however, was the arrival of the first transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The line passed just north of Ogden, making the community the logical shipping point for livestock going either east or west. Soon commission agents opened offices, and eventually businessmen constructed large packinghouses. The first U.S. Cattlemen’s Congress met April 29, 1892, in Ogden.40

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Nestled in the valley west of the Wasatch Mountains, the Ogden stockyards benefited greatly from its transcontinental railroad connections. The wooden walkways above the pens were popular, as this photograph shows. Used by permission, Utah State Historical Society, all rights reserved.

Other railroads besides the Central Pacific and Union Pacific converged in Ogden. By 1916, the Southern Pacific Railroad shops provided the single greatest industry of the city, complementing the stockyards and pens. Eventually seven railroads converged there, and the area became a grain center as well.41 Livestock officials—most of them officers of the Ogden Packing and Provision Company—filed to incorporate a new stockyards on July 29, 1916, as the Ogden Union Stockyards Company, capitalized at $250,000. Among the incorporators were W. H. Wattis, Fred J. Klesel, S. S. Jensen, James Pingree, Lars Hansen, and Lester P. Whitlock. The new stockyards opened for business April 1, 1917.42 The modern concrete-floored stockyards, located on seventy acres west of the Weber River, employed 100 men, had the capacity to hold 300 railcar loads of livestock, including seventy-five of cattle, seventy-five hogs, and seventy-five each sheep and horses. Ogden provided a logical center of trade for the livestock ranges of Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, and

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Utah.43 Stockyards owners intended Ogden to become the “packing house and livestock center of the West,” the largest west of Omaha.44 As at most stockyards centers, owners promoted a livestock show. Called the Ogden Livestock Show, the trade fair began in 1918 and, in the early days, sometimes attracted three thousand entries. Later officials changed the name to Golden Spike National Livestock Show. In 1926, they constructed a Golden Spike Coliseum at a cost of $100, 000.45 By 1922, Ogden had become one of the larger western markets for cattle, hogs, and sheep. The Ogden Packing and Provision Company, Cudahy Packing Company, and several others sent buyers to the Ogden yards. Expansion of the stockyards in 1930 brought the daily capacity to 200 carloads of cattle, 250 of sheep, 150 of hogs, and 100 truckloads of all types of livestock. The yards at that time covered seventy-five acres, thirty of which held pens, barns, railroad switches, etc. The remaining land held an exchange building, parking, weigh scales, etc. Ogden ranked as one of the top ten stockyards of the nation during these years.46 The Ogden yards showed receipts in 1949 of $87 million, and in 1954 completed a yearlong modernization and expansion of its facilities, making the stockyards the largest west of Denver. The market ranked second in the nation in sheep and lambs for several years in the 1950s. Overall receipts for 1953 totaled: cattle and calves, 409,501; hogs, 315,000; sheep and lambs, 1,378,013; and horses, 4,826.47 Sales began dwindling by the 1960s to $40 million to $45 million each year because livestock marketing gradually changed. Packers began buying directly from individual stockmen, which cut stockyards receipts drastically. Even so, the local industry still employed seven hundred people in the mid-1960s.48 Commission agents closed operations on December 18, 1967, and the Weber Livestock Auction Company was formed to conduct Tuesday-only auctions. Eventually the Denver Union Corporation bought out the Ogden

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stockyards. One of the largest packers, Swift, closed its plant November 14, 1970, and other major packers shut down in the 1970s as well. The Ogden livestock yards officially closed January 31, 1971, but local interests leased the facilities and continued to hold limited sales into the 1980s. Ogden served as the livestock capital of the Intermountain West for over a century.49

HOUSTON, TEXAS Ironically, Houston’s Port City Stockyards did not arrive on the stockyards scene until well into the twentieth century, even though since the time of Spanish occupation South Texas had produced millions of Texas longhorn cattle. Trail drives began in South Texas. As late as 1900, several of the Gulf Coast counties each produced 40,000 head per year. Railroad companies built stock pens near their switching facilities in the heart of Houston and other area communities to accommodate South Texas producers who gathered herds for shipment north. In those early days several large livestock producers shipped their animals by rail to Kansas City or Fort Worth. In 1931, J. W. Sartwelle decided to change things to benefit his hometown and his own interests. Sartwelle practiced law in Houston, but he also raised cattle. Earlier, while general manager of a San Antonio ranch, he had imported cattle from India, so he organized and became the first secretary of the new American Brahman Breeders Association. While appraising some Houston land, he met Ed Druett, who wanted to sell his Gulf Coast Packing Company, southeast of Houston. The Houston Belt and Terminal Railroad had constructed some holding pens near Druett’s plant for use as feed, water, and rest facilities. When Sartwelle saw the land, he envisioned a terminal railroad market in Houston similar to the large Kansas City and Fort Worth stockyards. He knew that local livestock raisers would be encouraged to increase their production if a dependable local market existed and was served by the railroads already there. Therefore, Sartwelle convinced some of the larger ranchers

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to invest in a large stockyards company, and he agreed to manage the new market the first year to spur its growth.50 Similar to what happened 1887–90 in Fort Worth, Houston area investors organized two locally owned corporations at the same time: the Port City Stock Yards Company and the Port City Packing Company. Sartwelle served as president and general manager of both.51 Large cattle producers agreed to sell at Houston if the price was as good as at the northern markets. If not, Sartwelle promised that they could forward the cattle north with no charge for their stopover in Houston.52 When the new stockyards opened March 16, 1931, it ranked thirty-seventh out of thirty-seven large terminal markets. In the beginning the stockyards had no local market news service and relied on a daily telegram from the Fort Worth stockyards for information on prices. Finally, in 1936, Houston owners convinced the federal Livestock Market News Service to station a man at their yards. During the first ten years Sartwelle and his friends on the board poured nearly all the profits back into expanding and improving the facilities. They installed one of the first electric scales in the Southwest in 1938 and constructed a red brick masonry exchange building the following year. The Port City Stock Yards did not hesitate to try new avenues of livestock sales. Taking advantage of the Houston ship channel as early as 1937, they exported animals by ship. In 1948, they began exporting animals by air to Guatemala City and other places. In fact, they flew the largest air shipment of livestock ever attempted at that time, 291 head of cattle, Brahman bulls, quarter horses, mules, sheep, and goats. The government of Guatemala purchased the animals as part of a long-range livestock improvement program. Working with Skytrain Airlines, the Port City Stockyards handled live cargo on a regular basis. At first the airlines insisted that every animal be crated individually before loading. The first load consisted of Brahman bulls, mules, and donkeys. In later shipments the loaders

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This aerial view of the Port City Stock Yards in Houston was taken in 1939. Photo courtesy Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Sartwelle, Jr., Sealy, Texas.

found it easier to put a crate on the plane and walk the animal into it. Later they simply walked animals into a stall on the airplane. By 1955, the Port City Stock Yards handled twenty percent of all cattle exported from the United States.53 Sample years of cattle receipts include: 1938, 201, 257; 1942, 430,144; 1948, 332,924; 1952, 235,588; and 1955, 345,847. Because sheep and hog production was less important in the Houston area, the Port City Stock Yards received mostly cattle and calves and, by 1940–55, ranked among the top ten markets in the nation in calf receipts.54 Four packing plants had built facilities adjacent to the yards by 1955, but thirty-four different companies and sixty-four meat dealers that year bought cattle and hogs for slaughter.55 Sartwelle did not give up his job after one year after all, but remained active as manager until 1946 when his son, J. D. Sartwelle became executive

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vice president and general manager of the Port City Stock Yards. The elder Sartwelle remained as president and also headed the Houston Fat Stock Show for sixteen years, helping shape it into one of the nation’s best.56 The Port City Stock Yards Company moved out of the city of Houston on June 1, 1968, to operate with an auction format at Sealy, some fifty miles west on Interstate 10. Continuing to manage the operations in the twentyfirst century is J. D. Sartwelle, Jr.57

JOPLIN, M ISSOURI Fifty-two businessmen in Joplin, Missouri, took a bold and courageous step during the early 1930s. They pooled their money and built a stockyards to create more economic activity for their community. Located in western Missouri, Joplin could draw livestock from farmers and producers in a fourstate area, the businessmen suggested. Oklahoma and Kansas to the west had a great deal of range country with cattle grazing. The rest of Missouri to the east and Arkansas to the south represented a considerable dairy region. Thus, from a one-hundred-square-mile area, Joplin could count on fairly steady livestock receipts year round. As per the men’s predictions, on the first full day of business, August 31, 1931, truckers brought in livestock from all of these states.58 First president of the Joplin Stock Yards was L. P. Buchanan, a retired mine operator who had led the local campaign to raise the money for the yards. Other board members included J. C. Finke, president of Joplin Furniture Company; Cowgill C. Blair, manager of Joplin Globe Publishing Company; James E. Harsh, vice president and general manager of the Empire District Electric Company; and W. H. Landreth, head of Landreth Machinery Company.59 These board members were not primarily cattlemen. Could they make it work? They hired Harve R. Patterson, a well-known stockman and stockyards operator, to supervise construction of the yards and run the

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operation after it opened. The businessmen originally capitalized the yards at $100,000, but by the time their facilities opened, their outlay reached $250,000.60 Located on an eighty-acre tract in the northeast outskirts of Joplin at Turkey Creek, the yards featured hog, sheep, calf, and mule divisions under roof, pens of crown-pointed concrete, and roofed holdover pens. In addition, the Joplin yards included a livestock exchange building, a grain mill, and a lunchroom.61 Although the builders planned the facility mainly for smaller truckload lots, the Missouri Pacific Railroad’s switching facilities made the stockyards available to five other rail lines as well. The businessmen located their new facility on the U.S. Highway 66, running east to west, and U.S. 71, running north to south. Because they assumed that farmers might bring their families with them when they brought a pick-up load of livestock to market, stockyards planners laid out a park with picnic tables, benches, and grills located in some woods near the yards.62 When the facility opened, it immediately became the third largest livestock market in Missouri and had a capacity of 9,000 animals of all types. Soon other businesses such as hide yards, a wool plant, lumberyard, tractor sales, and feed companies also located in the area, as well as packing companies and a Stockyards Café. The businessmen’s decision to start the Joplin stockyards proved a wise one, for in the first five years of operation the market handled over a million animals and paid over $15 million to area farmers, even during the midst of the Great Depression.63 Because of Joplin’s proximity to many dairy cattle, a weekly dairy auction became a special feature of the market. When company president Buchanan died in 1939, George N. Spiva took over management. The original stockholders sold out in 1945 to three men who formed a partnership to purchase the yards—Allan McReynolds, a Carthage, Missouri, attorney and former state senator; his son Allan

L ATE R

STOC KYARDS

153

Joplin businessmen began the stockyards in their community during the 1930s Depression to help boost the local economy. Over seven decades later, the market was still in operation but in a new facility fifteen miles away from the original site. Photo courtesy Midwest Photo Agency for the Joplin Globe Publishing Company.

McReynolds, Jr., a registered shorthorn cattle breeder; and Hal R. Patterson, general livestock agent of the Frisco Railroad. These three men became the new officers. Their gross sales for 1946 totaled $10,385,550; they received 72,658 cattle, 43,605 calves, 63,581 hogs, 25,859 sheep, and 2,933 horses and mules.64 The Joplin market, in the heart of Midwest farm country, encouraged and sponsored 4-H and Future Farmers of America livestock shows for rural youth for many years.65 Joplin closed its outdated facility, built new yards fifteen miles away, and moved operations to Carthage in July 1995. As Joplin Regional Stockyards, the cattle auction and video market handled 498,000 animals in 2001, making it the nation’s second largest auction market.66

C HAPTE R TE N

OTH E R S TOCKYAR DS

While twenty-four or so major markets dominated livestock sales for a century, smaller yards often played a vital role too. Many cities built stock pens and thus, under a broad definition—stockyards—near their rail lines or operated more official stockyards companies for various periods of time. Large cities like Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Evansville, Memphis, Atlanta, Nashville, and Tulsa needed regular and substantial livestock shipments to feed their inhabitants. They often ranked as important markets, but their names are not closely associated with livestock marketing. To the north, Toronto became an important livestock marketing center for eastern Canada. Livestock interests in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, developed packing and stockyards facilities in the 1870s. Promoters in Ottumwa, Iowa, built a stockyard in 1877 when John Morrell and Company moved there from Chicago. Businessmen in Burlington, Iowa, built extensive yards as early as 1867 and made additions and improvements in later years. The South St. Paul Union Stock Yards Company built a sales yard at West Fargo, North Dakota, in 1935. The stockyards there received nearly 800,000 animals of all types in 1954 and welcomed over one million by 1964. The West Fargo market, once owned by United Stockyards, was still open and being operated by Central Livestock as the twenty-first century began. Dale Wilder persuaded the South St. Paul Union Stock Yards to sponsor a public market at Billings, Montana, the Billings Union Stock Yards,

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which opened September 20, 1940. Wilder served as manager until 1957. When it opened, the yards had three commission companies and several packer buyers and order buyers.1 Billings remained active as the twenty-first century began. After the Chicago yards closed in 1971, Joliet, Illinois, assumed much of the state’s livestock trade. Joliet’s livestock facilities closed in 1989.2 Late in the nineteenth century the city of Los Angeles became the center of California and southwestern meat packing because it was near a shipping point and was accessible to the large cattle and sheep ranges of the Southwest. Cudahy opened a packing plant there in 1892. Stockyards of California, other than South San Francisco and Los Angeles, started in the 1920s. By that time slaughterers had been buying direct for seventy years and were not inclined to change just because stockyards owners wanted them to do so. Stockton, California, nevertheless became an important secondary market. In the 1950s, Stockton ranked as the fifth market in volume receipts in the West, supplying meat for the Greater San Francisco area and drawing livestock from farms in northern and North Central California.3 In 1982, it was one of eleven stockyards owned by United Stockyards Corporation, but in 1987 the company sold the facility. The top five ranking stockyards in the West in the late 1950s in order were Portland, Los Angeles, South San Francisco, Spokane, and Stockton.4 As the second half of the twentieth century began, producers were marketing their cattle directly in feedlots, so small farmers in southern California had no reason to sell them in Los Angeles as they had previously. The Los Angeles market closed in the early 1960s.5 In the East, Jersey City, New Jersey, directly west across the Hudson River from New York City, supplied meat to the big city through its Jersey City Stock Yards Company, located at the foot of Sixth Street in the early twentieth century. Generally, animals crossed the Hudson River to Jersey

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157

Located at the foot of Sixth Street, the McPherson Stockyards in Jersey City, later the Jersey City Stockyards Company, provided meat to New York City across the Hudson River. ca. 1892. Photo courtesy Jersey City Public Library.

City at that time by barge, but during a February 1946 tugboat strike, trucks carrying livestock added additional traffic to the Holland Tunnel.6 The city of Pittsburgh developed at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers as the two waterways united to form the Ohio River. An island called Herr’s Island lies in the Allegheny River about two miles north of its junction with the Monongahela. There the Pittsburgh Provision Company and Joint Stockyards operated. Beginning in 1903 the Pennsylvania Railroad operated the stockyards as a subsidiary, owning it in conjunction with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad until 1933 when it bought complete control. Livestock trains from Chicago to the eastern markets used the stockyards on Herr’s Island as a feed and rest stop. The last train arrived in August 1966, and the packing plants closed earlier that same year.7 The century-long era of stockyards has come to an end. Cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and mules no longer are marketed exclusively through large

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facilities located strategically at junctions of railroad lines nor adjacent to six-story (or taller) meat slaughtering plants. The great livestock marketing boom in America, sparked by the triangular partnership between railroads, meat packers, and stockyards, survived for over a century. The stockyards era served its purpose by providing a central marketplace for the sale of the nation’s livestock. The development of modern methods of slaughtering animals and freezing meat, as well as better transportation and communication technology caused the abandonment of the century-old system. As meat suppliers march into the twenty-first century with packaged beef, prepared chicken filets, and select cuts of the “other white meat,” they no longer need the big stockyards. With the exception of a few scattered yards, those well-loved livestock hotels no longer house any guests.

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Appendix 1 TA B L E I Big Five Proportion of Interstate Slaughter, 1916 Stockyard Terminal Market

Percent of U.S. Interstate Slaughter Hogs Sheep Cattle

Big Five Share of Interstate Slaughter Hogs Sheep Cattle

Chicago

18.4

28.5

24.5

67.3

96.5

87.1

Kansas City

7.6

10.6

14.7

98.6

99.8

99.6

Omaha

5.7

15.9

10.2

100.0

100.0

100.0

St. Louis

7.1

9.8

8.7

64.2

97.8

89.0

New York City

1.4

8.4

5.2

—

59.9

97.7

St. Joseph

5.0

5.0

3.9

99.8

100.0

99.4

Fort Worth

2.1

1.4

4.6

100.0

100.0

100.0

St. Paul

3.8

1.2

2.9

93.4

99.9

100.0

Sioux City

3.0

1.7

2.6

90.0

95.0

95.0

Oklahoma City

1.7

0.6

2.2

100.0

100.0

100.0

Denver

0.9

0.9

0.7

100.0

100.0

100.0

Wichita

1.3

—

0.8

50.2

87.4

77.8

58.0

78.5

81.0

81.0

94.3

94.4

Totals

Totals will not be 100 percent because other meat packers besides the Big Five were operating on these markets. Source: Federal Trade Commission, Meat Packing Industry, Part I, pp. 121-22, as cited in Robert Aduddell and Louis P. Cain. “Location and Collusion in the Meat Packing Industry,” in Louis P. Cain and Paul J. Uselding, editors, Business Enterprise and Economic Change (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1973), p. 107.

A PPE N DIX

161

TA B L E II Big Five Representation in Major Stockyards, 1917 CHICAGO

Armour

ST. JOSEPH

Armour

Armour

(Hammond)

(Hammond)

Morris

Cudahy

Swift

(Headquarters only) Morris

FORT WORTH

Swift

Armour Swift

Wilson ST. PAUL KANSAS CITY

Armour

Armour

Morris

Cudahy

Swift

Morris Swift

SIOUX CITY

Wilson

Armour Cudahy Swift

OMAHA

Armour Cudahy

OKLAHOMA CITY Morris

Swift ST. LOUIS

Armour Morris

Wilson DENVER

Armour Swift

Swift Source: Federal Trade Commission, Meat Packing Industry, Part II, pp. 52-55, as cited in Robert Aduddell and Louis P. Cain, ibid.

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Appendix 2 C O M PA R AT I V E L I V E S T O C K R E C E I P T S Salable Receipts at Leading Markets in Cattle, Calves, Hogs and Sheep 1904

1921*

Billings Chicago 15,270,060 Cincinnati 1,493,410 Denver 946,606 Fort Worth 1,156,772 Indianapolis 2,033,426 Jersey City Kansas City 5,394,740 Lancaster Louisville Milwaukee Ogden Oklahoma City Omaha 4,998,184 Peoria Pittsburgh Portland St. Joseph 3,039,087 St. Louis 3,716,924 San Antonio Sioux City 1,472,934 Sioux Falls South San Francisco South Saint Paul West Fargo Wichita *Cattle and calves only

113,239 3,539,558 453,974 481,502 983,802 483,097 843,928 2,469,442 205,297 246,003 438,720 315,113 1,434,576 745,100 119,911 558,040 1,077,260 151,050 620,373

1934 12,996,166 1,897,303 4,597,136 2,168,208 2,704,280 2,714,849 5,916,874 756,047 1,446,565 2,673,035 1,151,638 7,063,539 1,148,413 2,290,575 578,334 3,542,767 5,509,408

984,826

4,666,514 744,917 559,550 5,808,852

284,815

1,112,081

A PPE N DIX

1944 10,701,059 1,404,634 4,461,585 5,277,496 3,328,402 276,315 6,119,258 956,274 1,026,999 2,062,765 7,689,358 1,173,948 528,715 3,620,316 6,026,457 1,126,915 5,179,618 556,691 6,829,309 1,139,613 i

163

1954

1964

1974

369,877 5,009,803 1,064,133

358,826 863,047

178,069

1,844,793 2,931,540

705,382 2,034,074

269,992 685,725

2,253,368 457,537 833,804 894,856

2,094,812 289,408 724,686 556,638

1,085,240

1,152,036 4,908,338 1,214,543

989,846 5,178,319 1,086,474

1,161,841 2,581,841 2,077,100

379,849 2,203,629 3,778,070 763,330 3,528,640 1,324,198

279,299 2,359,963 3,143,537 849,976 3,800,987 1,871,127

4,666,037 790,499 684,794

4,083,068 1,092,633 685,647

155,935 359,121

1,600,292 1,921,588 3,103,163 2,422,165 3,192,094 747,314 425,251

No numbers cited should not imply that no livestock arrived. Some figures were unavailable. For 1904, Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Convention of the National Live Stock Association, Denver, Colorado ( January 10-13, 1905), pp. 370-379 in Library, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; for 1921, Rudolph Alexander Clemen, The American Livestock and Beef Industry (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1923; reprint: New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966), pp. 256-257; for 1934-1974, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, Livestock, Poultry, Grain and Seed Division, Salable Receipts at Public Stockyards, 1924-1980, material mailed to author from Jim Clark, program assistant, Livestock Market News Branch, 1981.

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M A J O R S T O C K YA R D S D U R I N G 1860s–1960s

A

C E N T U RY

OF

PROMINENCE

Acknowledgments Lloyd Lyman deserves my first thanks. Several years ago, while he was the director of Texas A&M University Press, he suggested that I begin a book that would identify the major stockyards and explain their common story. Unfortunately, I became sidetracked by other projects and never got back to him with a manuscript before he retired. This was always the research on the back burner, pursued for years only when the conventions of the Western History Association carried me to many of the stockyards cities. My thanks go to the numerous librarians in those cities who, in some instances, before computers made searches easier, pulled old manila folders with clippings, pamphlets, and typewritten articles about “their” stockyards. I offer my apologies to all those librarians for not writing down their names. In the 1980s, I corresponded with Catherine T. Eagle, then reference librarian at the Colorado Historical Society, and Fran Zedney, librarian, nonfiction department, Weber County Library, Ogden, Utah. More recently, Linda Bailey, reference librarian of the Cincinnati Historical Society Library, and Judy R. Green, research associate for the Oregon Historical Society, graciously sent me information on Cincinnati and Portland. In addition, Michelle Ranck, a reporter for Lancaster Farming, mailed me her series of articles on the Lancaster market. I also want to thank L. Van Kuhl, who served as president of the American Stockyards Association in the mid-1980s. He graciously wrote an introduction to my book, Livestock Legacy: The Fort Worth Stockyards, 1887–1987, and also offered to ask owners of member stockyards to send him a history of their yards. He forwarded these histories, sometimes consisting only of a typed page or two. Eula Penry, in 1989 president of St. Louis National Stockyards, sent me information on the St. Louis Stockyards.

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Over twenty years ago, at a WHA convention in San Diego, Harmon Mothershead critiqued an early paper of mine on the Fort Worth Stockyards. He later shared with me his own research prior to publication on the Omaha, St. Joseph, and Kansas City yards, for which I express my appreciation. I consulted a couple of livestock insiders—Tom Spencer of the Circle T. Cattle Company in Pueblo, Colorado, and Allan W. McGhee, a journalist for forty years with livestock newspapers including The Drovers’ Journal, published in Chicago and later Kansas City. They both consented to read an early copy of the manuscript. Also, thanks to all those executive directors of the state livestock associations who answered my questionnaire about the attitudes of their membership toward government regulation. Their comments really helped. Finally, Dan Van Ackeren of the Packers and Stockyards Administration has heard from me periodically during the long years of my off-and-on research on this project. I met him in the 1980s when he worked for the regional P&SA offices in Fort Worth, as I was finishing up my work on the local yards. He told me his dad had worked for the Omaha Stockyards for five decades. Later when I needed to know which stockyards had closed, I found Dan again in the Washington, D.C., P&SA offices. He continued to update me as more and more of the “grand old markets” closed. Thanks, Dan. I suppose that I should be grateful for all those distractions that delayed my finishing the stockyards manuscript until the beginning of the twentyfirst century. While I am saddened that most of the yards have now closed, this is a much better time to write the full story of their significant rise, prosperous operation, and slow, agonizing decline. The history of the stockyards century can now be covered more accurately.

Notes I NTRODUCTION 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

Harmon Mothershead, “The Stockyards, a Hotel for Stock or a Holding Company?,” Nebraska History 64 (winter 1983): 518. Harmon Mothershead, letter to author, Nov. 7, 1983. Mary Yeager, Competition and Regulation: The Development of Oligopoly in the Meat Packing Industry, p. xxiv; Mothershead, “The Stockyards,” pp. 512–20. Louise Carroll Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century, p. xiii. Ralph Hinman, Jr., “Stockyards Functions As Hotel: Room, Meals, Even Manicure,” clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kans. Rudolf Alexander Clemen, The American Livestock and Meat Industry, p. 205; Joe M. Reynolds, ed., Saint Louis National Stockyards, National Stock Yards, Illinois: A Review 1873–1938 of the Live Stock Industry, pp. 4, 8.

C HAP TER 1 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

Ed C. Walsh, “The Livestock Hotel,” pamphlet produced for the Fort Worth Stockyards, 1938. Jerry Klein, “Peoria’s $80 Million Business Run Like Waterfront Hotel,” Peoria Journal Star, Nov. 1, 1959, p. 1B, from Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library, Peoria, Ill. Mothershead, “The Stockyards,” p. 519. Annual Report to Stockholders, 1982, Canal-Randolph Corporation, in author’s possession; Mothershead, “The Stockyards,” p. 517. “Good Selling Service Here,” Joplin News Herald, Aug. 31, 1931, p. 1. Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History, p. 13; David Ward, Cities and Immigrants, p. 121; Selwyn K. Troen and Glen E. Holt, eds., St. Louis, p. 58. Robert A. Slayton, Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy, pp. 232–35. Ward, Cities and Immigrants, pp. 117, 52. Slayton, Back of the Yards, p. 15. Wade, Chicago’s Pride, pp. 229, 374. Wade referred to Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel of the meat-packing industry, The Jungle, that depicted filth and dangerous working conditions in turn-of-the-century Chicago packing plants. Alan M. Kraut, The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880–1921, p. 72. Slayton, Back of the Yards, p. 90. Jimmy M. Skaggs, Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the United States 1607–1983, p. 117; Troen and Holt, St. Louis, p. 158. Alma Herbst, The Negro in the Slaughtering and Meat-Packing Industry in Chicago, pp. 28–29.

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15. Ibid., pp. xviii, 112. 16. Skaggs, Prime Cut, p. 117; Leslie F. Orear, “The Chicago Stock Yards on the Eve of the CIO,” (1936) http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/stkyards.html 17. William E. Leuchtenberg, the perils of prosperity, 1914–32, pp. 178, 201; Herbst, The Negro in the Slaughtering and Meat-Packing Industry, p. 50. 18. The restaurant is Joe T. Garcia’s, a popular eating place in the tourist area of the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District. 19. Tom Spencer, Circle T. Cattle Company, Pueblo, Colorado, telephone interview with author, Nov. 11, 1995. 20. Gary Allen, Fort Worth Stockyards Company, interview with author, Feb. 22, 1982, Fort Worth, Tex.; Leon Ralls, Fort Worth Stockyards Company, interview with author, Mar. 29, 1982, Fort Worth, Tex.; see also “Port City Stockyards,” 17page pamphlet (published in 1956) supplied to author by Port City Stockyards, pp. 6–11; Wade, Chicago’s Pride, p. 188; Jerry Klein, “Meet the Folks at Livestock Hotel,” undated clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library, Peoria, Ill.; Klein, “Peoria’s $80 Million Business Run Like a Waterfront Hotel”; and Eva L. Atkinson as cited in Mothershead, “The Stockyards,” p. 517. 21. “Port City Stockyards,” pp. 9, 11. 22. Robert Aduddell and Louis Cain, “Location and Collusion in the Meat Packing Industry,” in Business Enterprise and Economic Change: Essays in Honor of Harold P. Williamson, ed. by Louis P. Cain and Paul J. Uselding, pp. 85–117. 23. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest, pp. 333–34.

C HAP TER 2 1.

“The Oldest Stockyards,” The Fort Worth Daily Live Stock Reporter, Jan. 19, 1911, p. 1. 2. Stewart H. Fowler, The Marketing of Livestock and Meat, p. 219; Willard F. Williams and Thomas T. Stout, Economics of the Livestock-Meat Industry, pp. 6–7; Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625–1742, pp. 32–33. 3. Jimmy M. Skaggs, Prime Cut, p. 34; Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, p. 29. 4. “County Livestock Center Since Days of the Pioneers,” Lancaster Intelligencer, Mar. 13, 1959, n. p., clipping from Library of Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., Lancaster, Penn. 5. Skaggs, Prime Cut, pp. 13–14. 6. Gary S. Dunbar, “Colonial Carolina Cowpens,” Agricultural History 35 (1961): 125–30. 7. Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, p. 55. 8. Skaggs, Prime Cut, p. 11; Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, p. 193. 9. Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, p. 353; Oscar Theodore Barck, Jr., and Hugh Talmage Lefler, Colonial America, 2nd ed., pp. 341, 371. 10. Frederick Jackson Turner, Rise of the New West, 1819–1829, p. 85; Margaret Walsh, The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 7; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, pp. 3–4.

N OTE S

169

11. Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 6, and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, p. 24. 12. Harper Leech and John Charles Carroll, Armour and His Times, p. 61. 13. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, pp. 23, 89–90, 33; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 4. 14. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 15. 15. Ibid., p. 42. 16. Yeager, Competition and Regulation, pp. 11–12; Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 13. 17. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, pp. 57, 67. 18. Sue Flanagan, Trailing the Longhorns A Century Later, p. 55.

C HAP TER 3 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

Charles L. Wood, The Kansas Beef Industry, p. 164. Gene M. Gressley, Bankers and Cattlemen, pp. 296, 277. Chandler, Visible Hand, pp. 1, 6, 11–12. George R. Leighton, Five Cities: The Story of Their Youth and Old Age, p. 175. Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 77; Leighton, Five Cities, pp. 175–76. Yeager, Competition and Regulation, pp. 233, 242. Aduddell and Cain, “Location and Collusion,” p. 102. Ibid., p. 107. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, ed., Who Were the Progressives? p. 49. Ibid., pp. 4, 12. Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State 1877–1917, pp. 159–60; also Gilmore, Who Were the Progressives? pp. 20, 194. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, p. vii. Lewis Corey, Meat and Man: A Study of Monopoly, Unionism, and Food Policy, p. 74; Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West 1900–1939, p. 325; G. O. Virtue, “The Meat Packing Investigation,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 34 (Aug. 1920): 626, 648. U.S. Congress, Food Investigation: A Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Summary of Report of the Federal Trade Commission on the Meat Packing Industry, H. Doc. 1297, 65th Cong., 2d session, 1918, p. 3. Ibid., p. 16, 72–75. Also “Stockyards Divorcement Plan Accepted,” Fort Worth Daily Live Stock Reporter, Apr. 13, 1921, p. 1; Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, p. 177; Richard J. Arnould, “Changing Patterns of Concentration in American Meat Packing, 1880–1963,” Business History Review 45 (1971): 19–34. Robert M. Aduddell and Louis P. Cain, “Public Policy Toward ‘The Greatest Trust in the World,’” Business History Review 55 (1981): 224, 234; Chandler, Visible Hand, p. 401. “Licenses Required for Stockyards and Livestock Dealers,” Fort Worth Daily Livestock Reporter, June 24, 1918, p. 1. Virtue, “The Meat Packing Investigation,” p. 680. It was the Sims Bill, H.R. 13324, 65th Cong. 3d sess. (1918).

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C HAP TER 4 1. 2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Wade Choate, Swappin’ Cattle, p. 116. Charles E. Ball, The Finishing Touch: A History of the Cattle Feeders Association and Cattle Feeding in the Southwest, pp. 47–49; Gressley, Bankers and Cattlemen, p. 168. Bertram B. Fowler, Men, Meat and Miracles, p. 128. “The Forty-Fourth Annual Convention,” Cattleman 6 (Apr. 1920): 68. Also “Kleberg Says Placing of Packers and Their Agencies Under Control of Government Will Be Ruinous to Packer, Meat Producer, Consumer,” Fort Worth Daily Live Stock Reporter, Aug. 6, 1919, p. 4. Clemen, American Livestock and Meat Industry, pp. 16–17; also James A. Wilson, “Cattlemen, Packers, and Government: Retreating Individualism on the Texas Range,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 74 (Apr. 1971): 531. The court ruled on June 16, 1932, that Swift and Armour must transfer their stockyards shares to a trustee who would dispose of their financial interests in all stockyards. Legal delays added several years until all interests such as banks and loan companies, as well as stockyards were sold. Swift v. United States 276 U.S. 311 (1928), and United States v. Swift & Co. et al., 286 U.S. 106 (1932). James H. Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919–1923, p. 155. Orville Merton Kile, The Farm BureauThrough Three Decades, p. 92. Packers and Stockyards Act, Statutes at Large, vol. 42, chap. 64, pp. 159–69 (1921). Ibid., p. 161. Skaggs, Prime Cut, p. 55; Sara Wright, “During our 70 years, we’ve ensured fair trade practices in the industry,” USDA News 50 (Oct. 1991): 7. Packers and Stockyards Administration, History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary Responding to the Challenge of Excellence, USDA Packers and Stockyards Administration (Sept. 17, 1991), Headquarters, pp. 1–2. In 1927 the agency became a part of the USDA’s (then) Bureau of Animal Industry. In more than eight decades of its history the P&S Administration has been a division four times, a branch once, and a part of two USDA agencies. Since June 1981, the P&S Administration has been a separate USDA agency; Wright, p. 7. Stafford v. Wallace, 258 U.S. 495 (1922). U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, Hearings on A Bill to Amend the Packers and Stockyards Act S. 1089, 68th Cong., 1st sess., 1924, p. 7. Ball, Finishing Touch, p. 49. Charles O’Donel to Dwight B. Heard, Sept. 24, 1925, as cited in David Remley, Bell Ranch Cattle Ranching in the Southwest, 1824–1947, p. 243. Mary Whatley Clarke, A Century of Cow Business: A History of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, p. 192. Prospectus, United Stockyards Corporation, $4,500,000. Fifteen Years Collateral Trust 4 1/4 Bonds, Series A, Oct. 1, 1936, p. 3. Ball, Finishing Touch, p. 50. Nellie Irene Snyder Yost, Call of the Range: The Story of the Nebraska Stock Growers Association, p. 249. Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, pp. 268–69.

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22. Ellis W. Hawley, “Herbert Hoover and Economic Stabilization, 1921–1922,” in Herbert Hoover As Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice, ed. by Ellis W. Hawley, pp. 43, 48; Joan Hoff Wilson, “Herbert Hoover’s Agricultural Policies, 1921–1928,” also in Herbert Hoover As Secretary of Commerce, p. 138. 23. Roy Parks to W. L. Pier, Oct. 20, 1954, Texas Beef Council File, Pier Correspondence, Fort Worth Stockyards Company Collection, University of North Texas Archives, Denton. 24. Joe Fohn, “100th anniversary San Antonio Union Stock Yards: still the center of agribusiness in South Texas,” San Antonio Express News, May 21, 1989, pp. 1K, 8K. 25. Michelle Ranck, “Before the Internet There Was the Stockyard,” Lancaster Farming, Jan. 20, 2001, p. 36A.

C HAP TER 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

Kit Miniclier, “Changing faces: Demise of stockyards reflects new cattle operations in West,” Denver Post, Jan. 7, 1985, p. 4A. Charles E. Ball, The Finishing Touch, p. 83. “Competitive Markets Finally Join Hands to Give More Bargaining Power,” The Fort Worth (Weekly) Livestock Reporter, Sept. 8, 1966, pp. 1, 5. Ball, Finishing Touch, pp. 9, 17, 20, 29. Ed Uvacek, Jr., “Big Changes in Livestock Feeding, Marketing,” The Drovers Journal 100th Anniversary Issue, 100 (Dec. 1972): 16. Carol Holderby Welsh, “Cattle Market for the World: The Oklahoma National Stockyards,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 60 (1982): 55. Skaggs, Prime Cut, p. 179. Ed Uvacek, “The Dynamically Changing Industry,” The Cattleman 51 (Aug. 1964): 41; also U.S. Department of Agriculture, Number of Feedlots by Size Groups and Number of Fed Cattle Marketed 1962–1964, pp. 2–3; “Texas Feedlot Directory, 1969,” The Cattleman 56 (Nov. 1969): 107–14; Raymond A. Dietrich, “The Texas Cattle Feeding Industry,” Texas Business Review 43 (Oct. 1969): 193; Ball, Finishing Touch, p. 101. Norman Udevitz, “Stockyards Aid Area Economy,” Denver Post, Nov. 18, 1971, p. 28. Dean H. Becker, Financing the Commercial Cattle Feedlot Operation in Kansas By Commercial Banks, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking conducted by the American Bankers Association at Rutgers, pp. 141, ii. Skaggs, Prime Cut, p. 180; Mark Lambert, “Peoria stockyards adapts to changes,” Peoria Journal Star, Sept. 8, 1987, clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library, Peoria, Ill. John T. Underwood, “Feeding Continues to Expand,” The Cattleman 56 (Feb. 1970): 22. A. V. Krebs, Heading Toward the Last Roundup: The Big Three’s Prime Cut, p. 7. Ball, Finishing Touch, p. 39. Robert M. Aduddell and Louis P. Cain, “The Consent Decree in the Meat Packing Industry, 1920–1956,” Business History Review 55 (1981): 259–61, 377–78.

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16. Ball, Finishing Touch, pp. 93, 99, 149. 17. Packers and Stockyards Administration, History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary Responding to the Challenge of Excellence, Sacramento, p. 3. A 1987 change added similar bonding to poultry as already existed for livestock. Wright, “During our 70 years, we’ve endured fair trade practices in ‘the industry,’” p. 7. 18. “Regulations and Statements of General Policy Issued Under the Packers and Stockyards Act,” U.S. Department of Agriculture Packers and Stockyards Administration, July 1989, pp. 14–15, 40. 19. Packers and Stockyards Administration, History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary Responding to the Challenge of Excellence, Fort Worth, p. 2. 20. Ibid., Portland, p. 2. 21. Ibid., Headquarters, p. 2; Leah Akbar, public relations, Packers and Stockyards Administration, Washington, D.C., telephone interview with author, Nov. 4, 2002. 22. Skaggs, Prime Cut, pp. 190–91; Dale C. Tinstman and Robert L. Peterson, Iowa Beef Processors, Inc.: An Entire Industry Revolutionized, p. 7; Wayne Swanson and George Schultz, Prime Rip, p. 177. 23. Krebs, Heading Toward the Last Roundup, pp. 22–23; Tinstman and Peterson, Iowa Beef Processors, p. 10; and Swanson and Schultz, Prime Rip, p. 180. 24. Skaggs, Prime Cut, pp. 9, 194. 25. Krebs, Heading Toward the Last Roundup, pp. 12, 14–15. Also Ball, Finishing Touch, p. 125. 26. Harry Schaff, P&S Administration, Denver, telephone interview with author, Jan. 23, 2001; Barry Shlachter, “Tyson put division headquarters here,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Nov. 1, 2002, pp. 1C, 10C. 27. Ball, Finishing Touch, p. 3. Also Packers and Stockyards Administration, History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary Responding to the Challenge of Excellence, Omaha, p. 3. 28. Harry Schaff, interview with author, July 21, 1993, Fort Worth, Tex. 29. Packers and Stockyards Administration, History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary Responding to the Challenge of Excellence, Omaha, p. 3. 30. Ranck, “Before the Internet,” p. 37A.

C HAP TER 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Chapter 1, reprint of 1893 essay, The Frontier in American History, p. 2. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, p. 151. Ibid., p. 129. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, p. xiii. Ibid., p. 384. Joe Fohn, “An Industry Under Attack,” San Antonio Express-News, Feb. 18, 1990, p. 1K, clipping courtesy the San Antonio Public Library. Jim Simons, Texas Livestock Marketing Association, interview with author, Jan. 19, 1995, Fort Worth, Tex. Ibid.

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16.

17. 18.

173

Harry Schaff, P&S Administration Regional Office, Denver, telephone interview with author, Jan. 23, 2001. Paul Bellows, Texas Livestock Marketing Association, interview with author, Jan. 10, 1995, Fort Worth, Tex.; Paul Branch, Superior Livestock Auction, Inc., interview with author, Nov. 4, 2002, Fort Worth, Tex. Ball, Finishing Touch, p. 93. Ibid. Choate, Swappin’ Cattle, p. 109. Paul Branch, Superior Livestock Auction, Inc., telephone interview with author, Jan. 24, 2001. Larry Ayers, “Indiana Livestock Exchange: A Year in Review,” Michigan Livestock Exchange, 1994 Annual Report, p. 5. The Indiana Livestock Exchange had joined with the Michigan Livestock Exchange, which represents four states. Barry Shlachter, “Beef: it’s what the ‘check off ’ beef is about, as U.S. producers are torn over the program results,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram (February 3, 2000), A1, 17; Gina Holland, “Supreme Court Justices hear beef ad suit,” Fort Worth StarTelegram, (December 9, 2004), pp. 1C, 8C. Ed Uvacek, Jr. “Big Changes in Livestock Feeding, Marketing,” p. 15. Allen W. McGhee, letter to author, August 24, 1995

C HAP TER 7 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

“Populations of United States Colonies and States, 1650–1990,” Atlas of American History, p. 59. “County Livestock Center Since Days of the Pioneers,” Lancaster Intelligencer, Mar. 13, 1959, n. p., clipping from Library of Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. Ibid.; B. J. Andrew Frantz, “History of Cattle and Stock Yards in Lancaster County Prior to 1800,” Papers Read Before the Lancaster County Historical Society Friday, Mar. 7, 1924, p. 44. Ibid. “County Livestock Center,” n.p. Telephone interview with Bill McCoy, Lancaster, January 29, 2001. Frantz, “History of Cattle and Stock Yards in Lancaster County,” p. 41. “Stock Yard Co. Is Stocker and Feeder Capital of East,” Lancaster Intelligencer, June 1954, n. p., clipping from files of Library, Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. Rick Sauder, “Lancaster Stockyards Becomes Prime Target For Development,” Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, Nov. 28, 1986, p. 7. McCoy interview. Telephone interview with Bill McCoy, Aug. 20, 1993. Ranck, “Before the Internet,” p. 36A; McCoy interviews, Jan. 29, 2001, and Nov. 1, 2002; interview with John Dunbar, City of Lancaster zoning officer, Jan. 14, 2004. Michelle Ranck, “Still Selling at the Stockyards,” Lancaster Farming, Feb. 10, 2001, p. 36A. Louis Unfer, “Swift and Company: The Development of the Packing Industry,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1951, p. 7.

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15. Willard F. Williams and Thomas T. Stout, Economics of the Livestock-Meat Industry, p. 12. 16. Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Cincinnati: Story of the Queen City, pp. 191–92. 17. Ibid. 18. Unfer, “Swift and Company,” p. 8; Henry Peter Michael Homenuck, “Historical Geography of the Cincinnati Pork Industry 1810–1883,” Master’s thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1965, pp. 31, 34. 19. Carl John Abbott, “The Divergent Development of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago and Galena, 1840–1860: Economic Thought and Economic Growth,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1971, p. 133; Williams and Stout, Economics of the Livestock-Meat Industry, p. 10; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 7. 20. Abbott, “Divergent Development,” p. 133; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 9; Unfer, “Swift and Company,” p. 8. 21. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 11. 22. Abbott, “Divergent Development,” pp. 139, 90, and 97; Homenuck, “Historical Geography,” p. 50. 23. Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 11. 24. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 48; Abbott, “Divergent Development,” p. 68. 25. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, pp. 75, 81. 26. Homenuck, “Historical Geography,” p. 43. 27. Charles Jackson, “City stockyards were famous,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec. 20, 1988, n.p., “Meat Packing Industry” file, Collections and Research Library, Cincinnati Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. 28. Carl E. Kramer, 1834–1984 Drovers, Dealers and Dreamers—150 Years at Bourbon Stock Yards, pp. 1–3. 29. Ibid., pp. 6–7. 30. Ibid., pp. 8–9. 31. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 58. 32. Ibid., p. 66. 33. Kramer, 1834–1984 Drovers, Dealers and Dreamers, p. 14. 34. Ibid., pp. 15–17; Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 75. 35. Kramer, 1834–1984 Drovers, Dealers and Dreamers, p. 32. 36. Ibid., p. 30. 37. Ibid., pp. 81, 89, 96–97. 38. Dale F. Runnion, Dr. Harlan D. Ritchie, Dr. Richard Willham, Places for Dreams: A History of the Saddle and Sirloin Club, p. 27. 39. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 33. 40. Ibid., pp. 66–67. 41. Reynolds, ed., Saint Louis National Stock Yards, p. 1. 42. Ibid., p. 4. 43. “National Stock Yards Location Ideal for Trade,” St. Louis Star-Times, June 6, 1934, p. 14. 44. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 74.

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45. “National Stock Yards Location Ideal,” p. 14; Reynolds, Saint Louis National Stock Yards, p. 4. 46. Ibid. 47. Louis F. Swift with Arthur Van Vlissingen, Jr., The Yankee of the Yards, p. 132. 48. “The Stockyards,” St. Louis of To-day, 1889, courtesy the Missouri Historical Society, p. 271. 49. The City of St. Louis and Its Resources, p. 137; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, pp. 121, 126–27; “Souvenir National Stock Yards,” 3-page pamphlet, Jan. 1897, photocopy in files of Saint Louis Stock Yards, sent to author from stockyards. 50. Reynolds, Saint Louis National Stock Yards, p. 13. 51. Troen and Holt, St. Louis, p. 140. 52. James Floyd, “The nation’s red meat capital St. Louis National Stockyards is booming since beef cattle operations have been snowballing in Missouri’s Ozark counties,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 1, 1972, n.p., clipping courtesy stockyards; also “National Stockyards Co.” St. Louis Commerce (Apr. 1973): 28. 53. Repps Hudson, “Stockyards Survivors Look to the Future,” St. Louis Post Dispatch (December 31, 1997), n.p.; telephone interview with Rob Fisher, Oklahoma City Stockyards, January 29, 2001. 54. Unfer, “Swift and Company,” p. 9; Fowler, Marketing of Livestock and Meat, p. 220; Kramer, 1834–1984 Drovers, Dealers and Dreamers, p. 10; Louise Carroll Wade, “Something More Than Packers,” Chicago History 2 (1973): 224. 55. “The Union Stockyards, December 25, 1865,” Chicago History 7 (winter 1965–66): 291. 56. Williams and Stout, Economics of the Livestock-Meat Industry, pp. 14–15. 57. “The Union Stockyards,” p. 292; Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 73. 58. Abbott, “The Divergent Development,” p. 90; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 14; Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 82. 59. Dale F. Runnion, Dr. Harlan D. Ritchie, Dr. Richard Willham, Places for Dreams: A History of the Saddle and Sirloin Club, pp. 39, 108. 60. Fowler, Marketing of Livestock and Meat, p. 221; “The Union Stockyards,” 293–94; Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 60; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 15. 61. Wade, “Something More Than Packers,” pp. 221, 224–25; Fowler, Marketing of Livestock and Meat, pp. 222–23. 62. Winthrop Jordan, Leon Litwack, Richard Hofstadter, William Miller, and David Aaron, The United States Becoming A World Power, p. 430. 63. Aduddel and Cain, “Location and Collusion in the Meat Packing Industry,” p. 95. 64. Herbst, The Negro in the Slaughtering and Meat-Packing Industry, p. 16. 65. Wade, Chicago’s Pride, p. xi–iii. 66. Aduddell and Cain, “Location and Collusion in the Meat Packing Industry,” p. 93. 67. Wade, Chicago’s Pride,, pp. 85, 88, 177. 68. Leech and Carroll, Armour and His Times, p. 199; Wade, Chicago’s Pride, pp. 177, 186–87; Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, p. 259. 69. Herbst, The Negro in the Slaughtering and Meat-Packing Industry, p. 45. 70. Ibid., pp. xxi, 3.

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71. Fowler, Marketing of Livestock and Meat, pp. 225–26; and “The Union Stockyards,” p. 296. 72. Leslie F. Orear, “The Chicago Stock Yards on the Eve of the CIO,” (1936) http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/stkyards.html 73. Fowler, Marketing of Livestock and Meat, pp. 95, 97. 74. Ernest Shiner, “Pace-Setting: Terminal Markets Have Competition for Volume,” The Farmer Stockman 72 (Feb. 1959): 38. 75. Stephen Longstreet, Chicago, 1860–1919, p. 60. 76. “Chicago Stockyards Close,” The Cattleman 57 (Dec. 1970): 94. 77. Wade, Chicago’s Pride, p. xi.

C HAP TER 8 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

Lee Bergquist, “Patch of Country Endures in City,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 21, 1984, part 4, p. 1. Gene Divine, “Stockyards Hold Specialty Title,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 24, 1964, no page cited, from folder on Milwaukee Stockyards, at Milwaukee Public Library, Milwaukee, Wis. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, pp. 67, 83. Ibid., p. 84. Loren H. Osman, “Milwaukee Stockyards, Facing Key Decision, Looks to a New Era,” Milwaukee Journal, Apr. 24, 1979, pp. 8, 11; Divine, “Stockyards Hold Specialty Title.” “Hogs Are Auctioned by Phone Hookup,” Milwaukee Journal, May 26, 1965, no page cited, clipping in Milwaukee Stockyards folder, Milwaukee Public Library, Milwaukee, Wis. Lillian E. Heffernan, “Good times at the yards,” Milwaukee Journal, Apr. 26, 1985, p. 1. Bergquist, “Patch of Country Endures in City,” p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Heffernan, “Good times at the yards,” p. 1. Osman, “Milwaukee Stockyards,” p. 8; also Maurice D. Wozniak, “‘Voice of the Stockyards’ Will Sell Instead of Tell,” Milwaukee Journal, Apr. 2, 1971, no page cited, clipping from Milwaukee Stockyards folder, Milwaukee Public Library, Milwaukee, Wis. Telephone interview with Gary Sutherland, Milwaukee, WI, September 27, 2004. “The History of the Kansas City Livestock Market and the Kansas City Stock Yards Company 1871–1984,” 14-page typewritten manuscript in the files of the Kansas City Stock Yards Company, p. 2. Robert Macy, “KC’s stockyards reduced to a shell,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 26, 1981, p. 33A. “The History of the Kansas City Livestock Market,” p. 2; Harmon Mothershead, “The Stockyards: A Hotel for Stock or a Holding Company?” typewritten manuscript courtesy Mothershead, p. 1. G. K. Renner, “The Kansas City Meat Packing Industry Before 1900,” Missouri Historical Review 55 (Oct. 1960): 20–21; also Mothershead, “The Stockyards,” p. 5.

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17. Cuthbert Powell, Twenty Years of Kansas City’s Live Stock Trade and Traders, pp. 15, 17; “History of the Kansas City Livestock Market,” p. 2; Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, p. 45. 18. Eva L. Atkinson, “Kansas City’s Livestock Trade and Packing Industry, 1870–1914: A Study in Regional Growth,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 1971, p. 280. 19. Lawrence H. Larsen, The Urban West at the End of the Frontier, p. 9. 20. “75 Years of Kansas City Livestock Market History,” p. 7; “History of the Kansas City Livestock Market,” p. 4. 21. Macy, “KC’s stockyards reduced to a shell,” p. 33A; “History of the Kansas City Livestock Market,” p. 3; Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 77. 22. Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, p. 49; Unfer, “Swift and Company,” p. 59. 23. Atkinson, “Kansas City’s Livestock Trade and Packing Industry,” pp. 252, 274–75. 24. Yeager, Competition and Regulation, pp. 22, 127; also Macy, “KC’s stockyards reduced to a shell,” p. 33A. 25. Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, pp. 49, 45. 26. Ibid., p. 161. 27. Ibid., p. 165; and “History of the Kansas City Livestock Market” pp. 7–8. 28. Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, pp. 276, 272. 29. Macy, “KC’s stockyards reduced to a shell,” p. 29A. 30. “75 Years of Kansas City Livestock Market History,” p. 24. 31. Macy, “KC’s stockyards reduced to a shell,” p. 29A. 32. “Kansas City stockyards close down,” Des Moines Sunday Register, Sept. 29, 1991, p. 2J. 33. Frank S. Popplewell, “St. Joseph, Missouri, As a Center of the Cattle Trade,” Master’s thesis, University of Missouri, 1937, pp. 36–38; Lawrence H. Larsen, The Urban West at the End of the Frontier, p. 10. 34. Popplewell, “St. Joseph, Missouri,” p. 66. 35. Susan Mires, “Meatpacking Cattle industry brought jobs to South Side residents,” St. Joseph News-Press, Sept. 26, 1999, http://www.ponyexpress.net/~special/business/meatpacking.htm. 36. Ibid. 37. Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, p. 177. 38. Reginald Schauder, New York offices of Canal Capital, telephone interviews with author, Mar. 8, 2001, and Nov. 7, 2002; Bernie Sichmeller, Sioux Falls Stockyards, telephone interview with author, Oct. 31, 2002. 39. Daniel J. Elazar, Cities of the Prairie: The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics, p. 83. 40. “Union Stockyards Organized,” 2 typed pages in A. W. Oakford Collection, courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library, Peoria, Ill.; Bob Bill, “Important Peoria Livestock Market Traces Back to Trading Post in 1824,” The Peoria Star, Oct. 22, 1953, clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection. 41. Elazar, Cities of the Prairie, p. 84.

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42. Jerry Klein, “Meet the Folks at Livestock Hotel,” undated clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection; Elden Waldron, general manager of Peoria Union Stockyards for forty years, telephone interview with author, Aug. 20, 1993. 43. Bob Bill, “Important Peoria Livestock Market.” 44. Mark Lambert, “Peoria stockyards adapts to changes,” Peoria Journal Star, Sept. 8, 1987, clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection. Also “Interstate producers reduce stockyards role,” Peoria Journal Star, Aug. 17, 1988, clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection. 45. Elden Waldron interview. 46. Special collections librarian, Bradley University Library, Peoria, Illinois, telephone interview with author, Mar. 16, 2001; Terry Sewell, Peoria, Ill., telephone interview with author, Nov. 4, 2002. Actual receipts for 2001 were hogs, 210,653; cattle, 4,510; and sheep, 500. 47. Bernard A. Hewes, “The Rise of the Pork Industry in Indiana,” Master’s thesis, Indiana University, 1939, p. 45. 48. Ibid., p. 53. 49. Abbott, “The Divergent Development,” p. 90. 50. Hewes, “The Rise of the Pork Industry in Indiana,” p. 58. 51. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 83. 52. Paul Brockman, “Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company Records 1874–1968,” p. 1. Apr. 1984, typed list of records courtesy L. Van Kuhl; B. R. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, p. 168. 53. Walsh, Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, p. 85. 54. Brockman, “Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company Records,” p. 1. 55. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis, p. 210. 56. Brockman, “Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company Records,” p. 2. 57. “Stock Yards Becomes $126,000,000 Business,” The Indianapolis Star, Dec. 31, 1947, no page cited, clipping courtesy Indiana Historical Society; Brockman, “Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company Records,” p. 3. 58. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis, p. 168. 59. “Stock Yards Becomes $126,000,000 Business.” 60. Brockman, “Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company Records,” p. 2. 61. Ibid., p. 3. 62. Brockman, “Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company Records,” p. 2; “History of Indianapolis Stockyards Since mid-1860s,” Osgood Journal, Nov. 29, 1977, no page cited, clipping courtesy Indiana Historical Society. 63. Packers and Stockyards Administration, History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary Responding to the Challenge of Excellence, USDA Packers & Stockyards Administration (Sept. 17, 1991), Indianapolis, p. 4. 64. Jerry Flemmons, Amon: The Life of Amon G. Carter, Sr., of Texas, p. 106. 65. Clemen, American Livestock and Meat Industry, pp. 455–56. 66. Helena Huntington Smith, “The Rise and Fall of Alec Swan,” The American West 4 (Aug. 1967): 21. 67. Alysia W. Smith, 100 Omaha Stockyards A Century of Marketing Commemorative Book 1884–1984, pp. 2–3, 4; also Mothershead, “The Stockyards,” p. 3. 68. Smith, 100, p. 2.

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69. Lawrence H. Larsen and Barbara J. Cottrell, The Gate City: A History of Omaha, pp. 72–74. 70. Clemen, American Livestock and Meat Industry, p. 457; Alfred Sorenson, The Story of Omaha from the Pioneer Days to the Present Time, p. 604; Aduddel and Cain, “Location and Collusion,” p. 106. 71. Sorenson, Story of Omaha, pp. 606–607. 72. Smith, “Rise and Fall of Alec Swan,” pp. 66, 68. 73. Smith, 100, p. 14. 74. Sorenson, Story of Omaha, p. 606. 75. Ibid., p. 605. 76. Smith, 100, p. 14. 77. Gilmore, Who Were the Progressives? p. 5. 78. Smith, 100, p. 14. 79. “Omaha’s once great stockyards opened up a nation,” The Holland Sentinel, Mar. 14, 1999, http://www.celebrate2000.brainerddispatch.com/stories/031499/hisomaha.shtml 80. Smith, 100, p. 16; Sorenson, Story of Omaha, p. 608. 81. Smith, 100, p. 24. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid., pp. 30, 32. 85. “Omaha’s once-great stockyards.” 86. Packers and Stockyards Administration, History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary Responding to the Challenge of Excellence, USDA Packers & Stockyards Administration (Sept. 17, 1991), Omaha, p. 3. 87. “Omaha’s once-great stockyards”; Dan Van Ackeren, Packers and Stockyards Administration, telephone interview with author, Jan. 25, 2001; Reginald Schauder, Canal Capital Corporation, telephone interview with author, Nov. 12, 2002. 88. “Story of the Sioux City Stock Yards,” (1961) 2 typewritten pages in the files of the Sioux City Stock Yards Company, sent to L. V. Kuhl to give to author, p. 1; “Sioux City is Important Live Stock and Packing Center,” 8 pages from unnamed magazine dated 1923 from Sioux City Stock Yards, p. 29. 89. “Siouxland’s Finest: The Story of the Sioux City Stock Yards and Meat Packing Industry,” The Wahkaw 3 (winter 1983): 3. 90. Ibid., pp. 3–4; also “Stock Yards and Packing Houses,” 2-1/2 pages in Sioux City Stock Yards files sent to L. V. Kuhl, sent to author, p. 1. 91. “Twenty Years Ago Today Stock Yards Began Business,” unidentified newspaper clipping dated Oct. 31, 1907, in Sioux City Stock Yards Company files, sent to L. V. Kuhl to give to author. 92. Clemen, American Livestock and Meat Industry, p. 458. 93. Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 27. 94. “Sioux City is Important Live Stock and Packing Center,” p. 32. 95. L. Van Kuhl, president of American Stockyards Association, interview with author, Oct. 23, 1984, Fort Worth, Tex.

180

96. 97. 98. 99.

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Ibid.; Mrs. John M. Lewis, interview with author, Nov. 21, 1983, Fort Worth, Tex. “Siouxland’s Finest,” p. 14. Ibid. Untitled, 5-page, typed manuscript provided to L. Van Kuhl by Sioux City Stock Yards Company and subsequently given to author. 100. Bernie Sichmeller, Sioux Falls, telephone interview with author, Oct. 31, 2002; Reginald Schauder, Canal Capital Corporation, New York City, telephone interview with author, Nov. 12, 2002. 101. “Denver Stockyards Born in 1865,” Rocky Mountain News, Apr. 19, 1959, p. 20C. 102. Ibid.; “New Methods That Have Done Away With the Bull Punch and Other Instruments of Torture—Future of Cattle Shipping in the West,” The Colorado Graphic, Oct. 30, 1886, p. 5, typed reproduction courtesy Colorado Historical Society, Denver. 103. “Denver Stockyards Born in 1865,” p. 20C. 104. “New Methods,” p. 5. 105. “Denver Stockyards Born in 1865,” p. 20C. 106. Ibid., 21C. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid. 109. William C. Jones and Kenton H. Forrest, Denver: A Pictorial History 2nd ed., page not cited, photocopied page sent to author by Denver Historical Society. 110. Clemen, American Livestock and Meat Industry, p. 460. 111. L. Van Kuhl, interview with author, Oct. 23, 1984, Fort Worth, Tex. 112. “Denver Stockyards Born in 1865,” p. 21C. 113. William G. Tomek, “Price Behavior on a Declining Terminal Market,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 62 (1980): 437. 114. Harry Schaff, regional director, P&SA, interview with author, July 21, 1993, Fort Worth, Tex.; Schaff, telephone interview with author, Jan. 23, 2001. 115. “Facts about South St. Paul,” South St. Paul: Southeast Metro Chamber of Commerce, 1971, p. 3; untitled pamphlet on South St. Paul, published Sept. 2, 1958, in Minnesota Cities and Towns folder, St. Paul Public Library, St. Paul, Minn. 116. “The South St. Paul Livestock Market Its History and Growth Since 1886,” 4page mimeographed pamphlet obtained at South St. Paul Stockyards, p. 1. 117. Ibid., p. 2. 118. Ibid. 119. Ibid. 120. Ibid., p. 3; Unfer, “Swift and Company,” p. 67. 121. “News and Comment,” Minnesota History 26 (1945): 182. 122. Interview with Curt Zimmerman, market director, South St. Paul Stockyards, October 11, 1984, South St. Paul. 123. Oliver Towne, “Column,” St. Paul Dispatch, Jan. 19, 1955, no page cited, from clipping file in St. Paul Public Library. 124. Annual Report, United Stockyards Corporation, year ending Oct. 31, 1956, p. 3, United Folder, Dies Correspondence, Fort Worth Stock Yards Company

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181

Collection, University of North Texas, Denton; Annual Report, United Stockyards Corporation, year ending Oct. 31, 1951, p. 6. 125. “The South St. Paul Livestock Market: Its History and Growth Since 1886,” p. 4; Curt Zimmerman, market director, South St. Paul Stockyards, interview with author, Oct. 11, 1984, South St. Paul. 126. “Facts About South St. Paul,” pp. 1, 4–5. 127. Joel Bennett, president of South St. Paul Stockyards, interview with author, Oct. 11, 1984, South St. Paul. 128. Zimmerman interview. 129. Dan Van Ackeren, P&SA, telephone interview with author, Jan. 25, 2001; Bernie Sichmeller, president, Sioux Falls Stockyards, telephone interview with author, Feb. 20, 2001. 130. W. Henry Miller, Pioneering North Texas, p. 114; Wayne Gard, The Chisholm Trail, p. 78. 131. The Fort Worth Democrat, July 22, 1876, p. 1. 132. Charter No. 3402, Fort Worth Union Stock Yards Company, filed July 26, 1887, Office of Secretary of State, Austin, Tex. 133. Charter No. 4581, Fort Worth Packing Company, filed Apr. 30, 1890, Office of Secretary of State, Austin, Tex. 134. Copy of an agreement by which G. W. Simpson bought the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards, Apr. 27, 1893, Union Stock Yards Folder, Gary Havard personal collection, Fort Worth, Tex. 135. Copy of a contract between Fort Worth Stock Yards Company and Swift and Company, Jan. 25, 1902, unmarked folder, Havard collection. Similar agreements were made at other stockyards as well. 136. “The Live Stock Exchange,” The Texas Stock Journal, Apr. 28, 1903, p. 1. A stockyards museum and gift shop as well as headquarters for Superior Livestock Auction are among the building’s tenants. 137. Charles Edward Russell, The Greatest Trust in the World, pp. 22–23; J. Ogden Armour, The Packers, The Private Car Lines, and The People, p. 336. 138. “An Outside View,” The Texas Stockman Journal, May 2, 1906, p. 4. 139. “Trust Suit is Settled,” Southwestern Farmer and Breeder, Oct. 11, 1907, p. 4. 140. James C. Miles, “Fort Worth and World War I,” Master’s thesis, Southern Methodist University, 1946, p. 31. 141. Annual Report for 1917, Fort Worth Stock Yards Company, Fort Worth Stock Yards Company Collection, University of North Texas, Denton. 142. Annual Report, United Stockyards Corporation, year ended Oct. 31, 1944, United Folder, Dies Correspondence, Fort Worth Stock Yards Company Collection, University of North Texas, Denton. 143. Comparative Statement of Five Competitive Markets for Twelve-Month Period Ending Dec. 31, 1945, and 1944, Dies Correspondence, Fort Worth Stock Yards Company Collection, University of North Texas, Denton. 144. “Cattle from Southwest to Wichita Yards,” unidentified clipping in folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards,” Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kans.; Bruce Behymer, “Wichita is One of Main Packing Centers of West; Army of Workers Used,” Wichita Eagle, Apr. 25, 1937, no page cited, clipping in folder “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards,” Wichita Public Library.

182

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145. Seth Effron, “Once Wichita’s Mainstay, Stockyards to Shut Down,” Wichita Eagle June 20, 1980, no page cited, clipping in folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards,” Wichita Public Library. 146. Untitled article, Wichita Eagle, Sept. 25, 1921, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards,” folder, Wichita Public Library. 147. Untitled article, Wichita Eagle, Sept. 25, 1921, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder; Larsen, Urban West, p. 116. 148. Harry Savage, “Terminal Has Brought City from ‘Cow Town’ to 14th Biggest Mart,” Wichita Eagle, Oct. 14, 1962, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library; Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, p. 46. 149. “Today in Wichita History,” unidentified clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards,” folder, Wichita Public Library. 150. Wood, Kansas Beef Industry, p. 165. 151. Savage, “Terminal Has Brought City”; Ralph Hinman, Jr., “Stockyards Function As Hotel: Room, Meals, Even Manicure,” Wichita Beacon, Oct. 18, 1959, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library. 152. “Wichita Remains Mule Capital of Entire Country,” unidentified clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library. 153. Behymer, “Wichita is One of Main Packing Centers.” 154. “Facilities for 21,000 cattle, 15,000 Hogs, 5,000 Sheep Are Offered in Area of 100 Acres,” Wichita Eagle, July 25, 1943, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards’ folder, Wichita Public Library. 155. “Wichita Stockyards Completely ‘Remodeled’ in Five-year Project,” Wichita Morning Eagle, Aug. 15, 1954, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library. 156. Bruce Sankey, “Sierra Contract of Stockyards Brings Pledge,” Wichita EagleBeacon, Nov. 28, 1970, n. p.; “2 Smiths Resign Top Stockyards Co. Posts,” Wichita Eagle, Dec. 16, 1971, n. p.; and Dave Mackie, “Dick Thompson Heads Stockyards Operations,” Wichita Eagle, Jan. 11, 1972, no page cited, clippings in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library. 157. Dave Mackie, “Stockyards Brings Bounty to North End,” Wichita Independent, Jan. 24, 1975, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library; Steve Cornett, “Union Stockyards Ending 90-Year Sales Tradition,” Wichita Eagle, Aug. 28, 1975, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library. 158. Karen Freiberg, “Union Stock Yard Just a Hog’s Heaven,” Wichita Eagle, Aug. 27, 1978, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library. 159. Dirck Steimel, “Auction Ring Silenced At Wichita Stockyards,” Wichita Eagle, Aug. 1, 1980, no page cited, clipping in “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards” folder, Wichita Public Library. 160. Warren Jennings, “Old Firm (1894) Used Mod Methods,” The San Antonio Light, Mar. 18, 1973, p. 6F, clipping courtesy the San Antonio Public Library, San Antonio, Tex. 161. “Union Stock Yards San Antonio,” The Businesses That Built San Antonio (1985), photocopies page sent to author by owner of San Antonio Union Stockyards, p. 1.

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162. Ibid. 163. Jennings, “Old Firm (1894) Used Mod Methods”; Bill Cunningham, “Stock Yards part of family tradition,” San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 26, 1986, pp. 1K, 7K; Hart Stilwell, “Texas Trails: Cattlemen Cling to the Past,” San Antonio Light, April 1, 1967, clipping courtesy San Antonio Library, San Antonio, Tex.; Paul H. Carlson, Texas Woollybacks: The Range Sheep and Goat Industry, p. 212. 164. Stilwell, “Texas Trails.” 165. Janie Hagelstein, letter to author, Feb. 3, 1989. 166. Joe Fohn, “100th Anniversary San Antonio Union Stock Yards Still the center of agribusiness in South Texas,” San Antonio Express-News, May 21, 1989, pp. 1K, 8K; Mark Judson, telephone interview with author, Aug. 20, 1993. 167. John Jeter, “Taking stock of family ties; Former duchess bullish on career,” San Antonio Express-News, Feb. 3, 1985, p. 1G, clipping courtesy San Antonio Public Library. 168. Mark Judson, telephone interview with author, Jan. 24, 2001. 169. “112-year-old stockyards in San Antonio to close,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Mar. 22, 2001, p. 2B; “News” KRLD Radio 1080 AM, Dallas/Fort Worth, Apr. 18, 2001. 170. “History of Sioux Falls Stock Yards Company,” dated Apr. 17, 1947, 1-page, single-spaced, typewritten sheet provided by Sioux Falls Stock Yards Company. 171. Charles A. Smith, A Comprehensive History of Minnehaha County, South Dakota, p. 226. 172. “Old Building Gives Up Box of Souvenirs,” 1940 clipping courtesy Siouxland Heritage Museum, Sioux Falls, S.Dak.; also Dana R. Bailey, History of Minnehaha County, South Dakota, p. 384. 173. “Old Building Gives Up Box of Souvenirs.” 174. Smith, Comprehensive History of Minnehaha County, p. 227. 175. Ibid., pp. 227–28. 176. “Sioux Falls Stock Yards History Bicentennial Edition,” 4-page, typewritten article provided by Sioux Falls Stock Yards to L. V. Kuhl who gave it to author, pp. 1–2; “Date of Origin and Early History of the Sioux Falls Stock Yards Company,” 2-page, typewritten sheet provided by Sioux Falls Stock Yards to L. V. Kuhl and then to author, p. 1; “The Sioux Falls Stockyards,” The Sioux Falls Journal 52 (Mar. 8, 1924): 52. 177. “Sioux Falls Stockyards,” The Sioux Falls Journal, 62. 178. “John Morrell & Co.,” The Sioux Falls Journal 52 (Mar. 8, 1924): 41. 179. L. Van Kuhl, interview with author, Oct. 23, 1984, Fort Worth, Tex. 180. Dan Van Ackeren, P&SA, telephone interview with author, Jan. 25, 2001; Reginald Schauder, Canal Capital Corporation, telephone interview with author, Mar. 8, 2001; Bernie Sichmeller, president, Sioux Falls Stockyards, telephone interviews with author, Feb. 20, 2001, and Oct. 31, 2002.

C HAP TER 9 1. 2.

Larsen, Urban West, p. 14. George A. Peirson, “Livestock Marketing Portland, Oregon,” 8-page, typed unpublished manuscript (1937) courtesy Portland Stockyards.

184

3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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Ibid., p. 5; Joe Bianco, headline missing, The Oregonian, Jan. 5, 1958, n.p. Clipping courtesy Multnomah County Library, Portland, Oreg.; E. L. Potter, The Portland Union Stock Yards: A Case Study in Livestock Marketing, p. 3; “New Portland Stockyards,” The Fort Worth Daily Livestock Reporter, Sept. 10, 1909, p. 1. Eugene Rashad, “Kenton taking stock,” The Oregonian, June 8, 1995, p. F1. Peirson, “Livestock Marketing Portland Oregon,” pp. 6–8. “The Red Steer Restaurant,” The Oregonian, Jan. 18, 1996, p. 6; Jonathan Nicholas, “Portland: Wild West or Mild West? You make the call,” The Oregonian, Oct. 24, 1997, p. 1E. Eugene Rashad, “Landmarks panel OKs demolition of Portland Stockyards,” The Oregonian, Sept. 12, 1995, p. 2B. John M. Lownsdale, “Union Stock Yards Survey: 25 Years of Operation,” The Oregonian, Feb. 1, 1935, p. 1; Potter, Portland Union Stock Yards, p. 8. Lownsdale, “Union Stock Yards Survey,” p. 1. Eugene Rashad, “Group will discuss fate of stockyards,” The Oregonian, June 8, 1995, p. 7F. Rashad, “Kenton taking stock.” Michael Rollins, “N. Portland trash transfer station eyed,” The Oregonian, Jan. 14, 1988, p. 1C; “Garbage firm buys stockyards site,” The Oregonian, Feb. 3, 1989, p. 5E; Oregon Waste Systems, telephone interview with author, July 18, 1991. Rashad, “Landmarks panel OKs demolition”; Randy Gragg, “Law allows stockyards landmark to slip away,” The Oregonian, Nov. 23, 1997, p. 3F. Randy Gragg, “What can hold up a building? Bucks,” The Sunday Oregonian, June 14, 1998, p. 4F; Judy R. Green, research associate, Oregon Historical Society, letter to author, Apr. 3, 2001; interview with Judy Green, September 21, 2004. Larsen, Urban West, pp. xi–xii. Frank M. Stanger, “The Beginnings of South San Francisco,” La Peninsula Journal of San Mateo County Historical Association 16 (May 1971): 11–12. Ibid., p. 7. Linda Kauffman, “It Was Not By Chance,” La Peninsula Journal of San Mateo County Historical Association 16 (May 1971): 4–5. Stanger, “The Beginnings of South San Francisco,” p. 12. Untitled article in South San Francisco Enterprise Journal, Oct. 30, 1958, Golden Jubilee Edition, p. 5. Third Annual Report, 1930, South San Francisco Union Stockyards Company, South San Francisco, Calif. Stanger, “The Beginnings of South San Francisco,” pp. 13, 15. Bonnie Stahlman Speer, Historic Stockyards City and Oklahoma National Stockyards: Where the Real West Still Begins, p. 1. Carol Holderby Welsh, “Cattle Market for the World: The Oklahoma National Stockyards,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 60 (1982): 42. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid. Ibid., p. 44. Ibid.

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29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

185

Clemen, American Livestock and Meat Industry, p. 460. Welsh, “Cattle Market for the World,” p. 43. Jimmy M. Skaggs, ed., Ranch and Range in Oklahoma, p. 117. Speer, Historic Stockyards City and Oklahoma National Stockyards, p. 50. Jay Nixon, “World’s Largest Market—how it got that way, how it serves today,” Western Live Stock Journal 46 (Aug. 1968): 27; Welsh, “Cattle Market for the World,” pp. 48–51. Welsh, “Cattle Market for the World,” pp. 51, 12. Bill Ball, former P&SA official, telephone interview with author, Sept. 17, 1983. L. Van Kuhl, president, American Stockyards Association, interview with author, Oct. 23, 1984, Fort Worth, Tex. Telephone interviews with Rob Fisher, president, Oklahoma City Stockyards, Jan. 29, 2001, and Nov. 1, 2002. Bud Kennedy, “Oklahoma City puts out its own cattle call,” Fort Worth StarTelegram, Aug. 23, 2001, p. 1B; Speer, Historic Stockyards City and Oklahoma National Stockyards, p. 7. Richard C. Roberts, Ogden: Junction City, p.140. Ibid. Richard C. Roberts, “The Ogden Union Station as an Architectural Reflection of Ogden City History and Cultural Values,” unpublished research paper courtesy Weber County Library, Ogden, Utah, p. 38; E. J. Cameron, “Ogden’s Livestock and Packing Facilities Largest In Intermountain West,” Ogden StandardExaminer, Aug. 31, 1930, p. 12D. “Work on New Stockyards Is To Commence At Once; Awaiting Plans For Plant from Chicago Architect,” Ogden Examiner July 30, 1916, p. 18; Cameron, “Ogden’s Livestock and Packing Facilities,” p. 12D; “Big Packing Plant and Stockyards,” Ogden Standard, Mar. 6, 1916, p. 1. “Work on New Stockyards,” p. 18. “Big Packing Plant and Stockyards,” p. 1. Roberts, “Ogden: Junction City,” pp. 140, 143. Cameron, “Ogden’s Livestock and Packing Facilities,” p. 12D; Bert Fox, “Oncethriving Stockyard Stands Deserted,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, July 15, 1974, p. 11A. “Ogden Stockyards Completes Big Expansion Program, Making Local Facility Largest West of Denver By Far,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, Oct. 10, 1954, p. 14B. Fox, “Once-thriving Stockyard,” p. 11A; Roberts, Ogden: Junction City, p. 141; “Livestock” Photo Section Ogden Standard-Examiner, Apr. 5, 1966, p. 7. Roberts, Ogden: Junction City, pp. 140, 143. Houston Edward Smith, “Operational Analysis of the Port City Stockyards,” Master’s thesis, Texas A&M University, 1957, pp. 11–15. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. “Port City Stockyards,” 17-page pamphlet supplied to author by stockyards, published 1956, pp. 10–11. Smith, “Operational Analysis,” pp. 17–18.

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55. Ibid., p. 20. 56. Ibid., p. 108. 57. J. D. Sartwelle, Jr., telephone interviews with author, Nov. 13, 2002, August 2, 2004. 58. Bill Caldwell, archivist, Joplin Globe, interview with author, Aug. 3, 1993, Joplin, Mo.; “Joplin Stock Yards . . . No. 14 of a series,” The Livestock Marketeer, clipping courtesy Joplin Globe library, no date, p. 4; “Scenes At New Stockyards Yesterday, The First Day Opened For Business,” Joplin Globe, Sept. 1, 1931, clipping from Joplin Public Library, Joplin, Mo. 59. “Joplin Stock Yards,” p. 4; “Patterson to Manage Yards,” Joplin News Herald, Aug. 31, 1931, p. 1. 60. “Builders of Stockyards,” Joplin News Herald, Aug. 31, 1931, p. 2; “Good Selling Service Here,” Joplin News Herald, Aug. 31, 1931, p. 1. 61. “Joplin Stock Yards,” p. 4; “Good Selling,” p. 1. 62. “Capacity Is 9,000 Daily,” Joplin Globe, Aug. 31, 1931, p. 1; “Joplin Stock Yards,” p. 4; “Stockyards Park,” Joplin News Herald, Aug. 31, 1931, p. 2. 63. “Capacity Is 9,000 Daily,” p. 1; “Joplin Stock Yards,” p. 4; G. K. Renner, Joplin: From Mining Town to Urban Center, p. 66. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Bernie Sichmeller, telephone interview with author, Feb. 20, 2001; Chris Byerly, Joplin Regional Stockyards, telephone interview with author, Nov. 1, 2002.

C HAP TER 10 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

F. H. Sinclair, “Down the Trail with a Range Rider,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 16 (summer 1966): 62. L. Van Kuhl, president of the American Stockyards Association, interview with author, Oct. 23, 1984, Fort Worth, Tex. Annual Report to Stockholders, 1982, Canal-Randolph Corporation, New York City. Clemen, American Livestock and Meat Industry, p. 460; Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 116; Joe Bianco, headline missing, The Oregonian, Jan. 5, 1958, n.p. Clipping courtesy Multnomah County Library, Portland, Oreg. Kuhl interview. Jersey City Directory, 1907–1908; Joan D. Lovero, New Jersey Room librarian, letter to author, July 10, 1991. Fred R. Herr, “Herr’s Island,” The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 53 ( July 1970): 214–15.

G LOSSARY 1.

General Market Terms and Definitions, “Miscellaneous Folder, Pier Correspondence,” Fort Worth Stockyards Company Collection, University of North Texas, Denton. Also “Stock Yards Slang,” The Cattleman 16 (Dec. 1929): 41, and (Apr. 1930): 42. See also Russell T. Prescott, “Language of the Livestock Mart,” American Speech 10 (Dec. 1935): 269–72.

Glossary Participating in a typical day at a functioning, major stockyards required a certain vocabulary. Activity consisted of thousands of assorted livestock milling about in pens; cattle association inspectors in their Stetsons, checking for stolen animals; Packers and Stockyards Administration officials enforcing regulations; producers releasing their livestock to their favorite commission firms who then dealt with packer representatives by private treaty, order buyers, and dealers. Some words in common usage at the time seemed to be more slang than accepted dictionary terminology. Terms cited below deserve historic presentation because they represent expressions common at stockyards during the high point of the 1940s. Many of the terms relate to animals destined for slaughter.1 account of sale—a form completed by the commission company that indicated all the transactions in connection with the sale of a consignment of livestock. It showed all deductions, charges, and other information used in figuring net proceeds to the shipper or consignor. active—a market in which there is a demand with perhaps some increase in price. baby beef—steers fifteen months old or younger that had been under forced feeding from birth, weighing 950 pounds or less. baby dolls—attractively finished yearling steers or heifers. bacons—hogs of the Yorkshire or Hampshire breeds that are known for their bacon. beef bulls—mature bulls of one of the beef breeds that usually weighed more than 1,200 pounds and carried a fair amount of flesh. Good and choice kinds were mostly the heavier bulls scaling more than 1,300 pounds. beeves—plural term for beef, generally used to mean cattle. belts—Hampshire hogs. blackie—a black or brown sheep, usually selling at a reduced price. bloom—spoken of as “having bloom” or “lost their bloom”; said of lambs showing milk fat or just losing it. bob veal—flesh of an unborn calf from a slaughtered cow: prematurely born or very young calf; unmarketable. boggy ham—a soft, flabby ham. bow-wow—a small, stunted, aged steer with no quality, unsuited either for beef or feeder purposes; utilized sometimes as canners or cutters; same as tripe or canner yearlings. broken mouthed—aged ewes or sheep that had lost some of their teeth. broker —a clearing firm for traders and speculators that handled business connected with clearance for the trader. It put up loans and furnished the necessary bookkeeping services for a stockyards speculator not connected with a particular firm. Generally a broker charged a flat rate per head for services.

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bums—almost worthless animals. burry—sheep whose fleeces carried the burrs of various weeds; usually sold lower because of damage to wool. bust—a hog that was ruptured. butcher barrows and gilts—barrows or gilts of any weight that were sold for slaughter. butcher bulls—well-bred young bulls, usually of one of the beef breeds weighing generally from 900–1,100 pounds; usually showed some effects of grain feeding and carried good smooth finish; sold in a wide range of prices, depending upon weight, condition, and current demand. butcher cattle—steers and heifers intended for immediate slaughter or more suitable for slaughter than for any other purpose. Older butcher cattle grades were prime, choice, good, commercial, and utility. cake fed—stock that were pastured and given a supplementary feeding of compressed protein cubes made from high-protein meals such as cottonseed, peanut, or soybean meal. canner and cutter cows—old, thin cows from which the meat was “boned out” for sausage and canned food products; also called strippers by packers. cash v.— to sell; to exchange for money. central market—also called terminal market, one that was open on an equal basis to everyone who desired to buy or sell livestock. It was federally regulated and supervised under the provisions of the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. The stockyards company provided facilities and services but did not buy or sell livestock for its own account or as the agent of others. At the central market the livestock-selling function, for the most part, was performed by independent market agencies known as commission companies. choice lots—high-quality livestock. chopper—aged ewes in medium flesh, not good enough to grade as fat. classes of cattle—market class for any kind of livestock, determined by its age and sex. The classes for cattle were steer, heifer, cow, bull, and stag. clear the yards—to sell all the livestock offered for sale on a particular day. clipped—shorn; descriptive of sheep or lambs after the wool had been removed. comebacks—lambs returned to market from which they had previously been shipped for feeding and fattening. commission company or firm—a market agency that represented the shipper or consignor in the sale of livestock. The commission firm did not take title to the livestock, and its only revenue was the commission it received for the sale. The commission agent always knew the latest market quotations and tried to get the best price for the producer. common—a grade below fair but above canners and cutters. condemned—an animal that government inspectors pronounced unfit for food; to be slaughtered and sent to the fertilizer tanks. condition—to put cattle in condition for shipping by feeding them a lighter ration to reduce shrinkage in transit.

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conformation—shape of animal. counterfeit—cattle of good color giving impression of good breeding that they did not possess, e.g., cattle bearing Hereford markings but lacking Hereford conformation and quality. cull—lowest grade of animal. custom feedlot—any facility used entirely or in part for the purpose of feeding livestock for the accounts of others. cut— to sort out certain individual animals. cutbacks—lambs that had been cut out of a bunch when buyer got a percentage cut; the ones that did not come up to contract. cutter cows—aged beef or dairy-bred cows in thin flesh. The loins, ribs, and other better cuts could be sold as fresh meat; the other parts of the carcass were boned out for sausage or canned meat. Usually referred to as canner or cutter. deacon—a young calf, too young to be used as food. dealer or trader—any person not a market agency engaged in the business of buying and/or selling in commerce livestock at a stockyards either on his own account or as the employee of another. Dealers took title to bought livestock; their only revenue came from an increase in price and/or weight of purchased livestock. direct buying—meant that packers or dealers purchased directly from livestock producers either in the country or at special receiving areas near or at their slaughtering operation, rather than through any type of market. directs—animals unloaded at the stockyards and delivered to some consignee located at or near the stockyards or slaughtering plant. dockage—shrinkage, a specified weight reduced from stags and pregnant sows. On sows the dock was forty pounds; on stags, seventy pounds. dogs—very poor, inferior animals. dopey—hog that was droopy, dumpy or possibly sick. downer—an animal that for any reason could not stay on its feet; crippled. fed cattle—cattle fed high-energy, formulated rations containing feed grains or substitutes and feed supplements to slaughter weight, as opposed to cattle permitted to graze on grass, wheat land, or other pasture areas. feedlot operation—a practice that had existed previously but expanded rapidly in the 1960s whereby producers concentrated cattle in large pens holding thousands of cattle and fed them grain until ready to sell them for slaughter. fill—a stomach full of water or water and some feed to increase weight. finish—quality and distribution of fat on the animal. fleshing—fatness or finish. forward contracting—agreement by which a packer or other buyer signed a contract to buy cattle for future delivery, made a small down payment, and normally hedged by contracting to a future sale at a profit or a break-even price. full-feed—to feed as much as an animal will eat.

190

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freemartin—heifer born twin with a bull, imperfectly sexed and barren as a rule. gilt—a young female hog, not having born pigs. governments—animals thrown out by government inspectors. grades of cattle—the final subdivision in a classification for marketing any kind of livestock; indicated the relative degree of excellence of an animal or group of animals. The number of grades varied with the different kinds, classes, ages, and weights of livestock and with the purposes for which they were to be used. By 1940 the USDA grades of cattle were fancy, choice, good, medium, common, inferior, canner, cutter. grades of hogs—hogs were not graded as closely as cattle, but the following grade terms did apply: fat-type choice, meat-type choice, good, and fair or medium, and cull. grassy—cattle grazed on range or pasture alone. gummers—old sheep that had lost their teeth; a class better than broken-mouths, always carried more flesh. half-fats—half-fattened livestock. handy weight—barrows or gilts that fell into the weight range being demanded by buyers, usually around 190–240 pounds, or beef cattle averaging around 1,100–1,300 pounds. hard feeder—an animal that could not be fattened easily. hat racks—Nellies, old thin cows. heavies—very heavy beef cattle, older than two years. heffs—beefers. heretics—calves that were too big for veal and not big enough for beef; inbred cattle between the veal and yearling age, weighing generally 150–300 pounds. holdovers—stock not sold on the day of arrival, leftovers, the opposite of fresh receipts. horsey—an animal plain in quality, coarse and larger than the types of animals demanding top price, usually underfinished. hot house lambs—very early spring lambs marketed in advance of the general run of spring lambs. in-between kinds—stock that did not easily fit into any one class. For example, cattle that were too fleshy for feeders and hardly good enough for beef. If corn fed they might be described as “warmed-up” or “near-beef.” infusion—that which is introduced, added, or mixed, e.g., an infusion of Shorthorn blood in ranch steers. integration—the packer practice in recent decades of getting into the feedlot business to assure a continuing supply of animals at the grade and weight needed to please supermarket customers. jackpot—mixed cattle, usually of common quality. kickbacks—animals in a lot that are refused by the buyer for any cause. killer—a packer; anyone who slaughtered meat animals, or, applied to animals fit for slaughter.

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killing cattle—cattle in the condition to be slaughtered. kosher—clean, lawful, as kosher meat, animals slaughtered according to Hebrew or Talmud law. Kosher buyers were those who bought for the kosher trade or kosher cattle, those bought for the kosher trade. lead goats—goats trained to lead sheep; also called “Judas goat” when he led them to slaughter. lights—lightweight stock, lighter than medium and heavies. livestock exchange—a voluntary association of livestock producers, shippers, packers, bankers, and commission men organized to promote integrity, orderliness, and uniformity in the customs and business at a market; to facilitate the speedy and equitable adjustment of disputes, and, generally, to promote the welfare of the market. A board of directors controlled the exchange. livestock hotel—a term used to describe physical facilities and functions of the stockyard company because the producer was charged a fee for pens, water, feed, sometimes overnight until the cattle sold. livestock marketing agency—principal function was to represent the producer or consignor in selling livestock. He used aggressive field service, which included solicitations, appraisal of livestock, and help for producers marketing and production program. locals—animals from nearby territory. long-fed cattle—cattle that had been on corn or other concentrated feed a sufficient time to make finished beef, six to nine months or longer. long yearling—an animal older than one year but younger than two years. lunger—an old, wheezy sheep that has lost one lung, a common occurrence. marbling—flecks of fat in the muscle, not seam fat. market agency—any person engaged in the business of buying and/or selling livestock at a stockyard on a commission basis. meat packing—originally to preserve fresh cuts of meat slaughtered animals were placed in large vats of pickle brine for several hours before they were packed in barrels for shipment. Before refrigeration, meat packing as a business generally lasted from November 1 until the spring thaw. After refrigeration techniques developed in the last half of the nineteenth century, the process shifted from “packing” the meat in barrels to an industry involving the packaging of slaughtered and processed meat, but the term “meatpacking” or “packers” still was used; later applied to all the functions performed by meat processing firms. mediums—mediumweight stock between lights and heavies. mongrels—scrubs. natives—common-bred cattle without the characteristics of a particular breed, or cattle or sheep coming from nearby farming sections. near beef—cattle that have been partly fattened or warmed up. near packer—a hog that is good but rough, selling at twenty-five cents to fifty cents a hundred pounds below packer. Nellies—canners, because they were so thin they were only good for canned meat.

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nurse cows—milch cows that furnished additional supplies of milk for feeding calves not their own to give better flesh and finish. odd head—unclassified stock, sold individually. old-crop lambs—last years’ lambs that were ready to shed baby teeth. They were between new-crop lambs and yearlings. The classification was for butchering and feeder purposes. old line firms—the prefix “old line” when attached to the name of a commission firm signified that the firm was engaged in the business as an individual unit and not along cooperative lines. order buyer—a market agency whose function was to buy livestock on an agency basis for a principal. The order buying firm did not take title to the livestock and its only source of revenue was the order buying tariff. Commission companies also provided order buying service for their customers if they also were registered as order buyers. outs—usually short on weight as well as quality and might be crippled by disease or injury. outsiders—buyers who ship special kinds of livestock to other markets. packer buyer—a buyer who represented a slaughtering firm such as Armour or Swift. He bought with an eye for the dressed carcass and the quality of meat the animal would produce. He could estimate the percentage yield of the carcass and give the weight of the animal to within ten pounds after dress. packing sows—sows that because of age, weight, or quality were not suitable for use as fresh meat and therefore were made into pickled, canned, or processed meats. Packers and Stockyards Administration—the agency created in 1921 by the Packers and Stockyards Act. Its representatives enforced fair practices at stockyards, and the agency approved any increase in service charges or tariffs. In 1958 country auctions came under the jurisdiction of the Packers and Stockyards Administration for the first time. paunchy—too big a stomach from fill, etc. peewees—small stunted pigs or lambs. pelter—ewe or sheep so old as to be of no value other than for its pelt. pen holder—an animal left in a pen to hold it and keep other animals from being turned into it. pigs—usually applied to swine weighing under 140 pounds. plant—livestock placed by a yard trader for resale. possum belly—a large cattle truck so called because the middle of the truck was closer to the ground. It held animals on two or three levels and carried up to 50,000 pounds. price basing point—If a market had sufficient volume, it was a price basing point. If it did not, then whatever happened on that market was only of local significance. Most of the larger stockyards markets served this purpose for over a century. primes—high-grade, fattened animals, above the choice grade. private treaty—referred to the method of buying and selling on central or terminal markets through use of commission companies or order buyers rather than by auction.

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Individual buyers examined animals and bid on them to the commission agent. The commission company handled the sale by taking the offer of the highest bidder. The expression was actually an old legal term in English law that simply meant one-on-one bargaining, negotiating, or private selling. public auction—a sale of livestock to the highest bidder after livestock was shown in the auction ring. The animals could also be shown in pens before coming into the auction ring. At some auctions buyers had to be registered and bonded before they could bid. The country auction phenomenon to sell livestock multiplied in the country in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, although auctions were as old as the nation itself. quarantine division—section of the yards set apart for stock that for some reason had to be segregated, often for tick dipping or disease reasons. rail splitters—hogs that were built on a long frame with long noses and impossible to fatten. rangers—unfattened lambs or other stock from the range territory. rangy—lanky, thin, spare in frame, usually applied to cattle. reactors—cattle that reacted to a tuberculin test. reputation cattle—animals raised by a breeder who had a reputation for producing uniform quality cattle. See also, standardized cattle. runs—going to market, especially in rather large quantities. salable receipts—(of stockyards) those animals that were offered for sale on the stockyards as opposed to those that were only fed and watered and then shipped elsewhere. sappy—lambs carrying milk fat, generally marketed at four months; also, calves and feeder cattle showing bloom. scalawags—shells, stock that was thin and emaciated. scale ticket—filled out by the weighmaster, it showed the weight of the animal or animals, the price, the name of the seller and the buyer and the name of the commission company handling the sale. It was from the scale ticket that the remittance to the shipper was figured. Title changed from the seller to the buyer the moment that the weight was stamped on the scale ticket. scalper—one who buys feeder cattle and sells to farmers and feeders at a profit, a speculator. schedule—meant a tariff of rates and charges filed by stockyards owners and market agencies with the Packers and Stockyards Administration. scratch top—one particular load that happened to sell higher than anything else. scrubs—same as mongrels. seedy belly sow—old and rough sows that had been used as brood sows. selects—grades of especially high quality, above the ordinary. shambles—the slaughterhouse or packing plant. shee stuff or she-stock—cows and heifers. shells—poor and thin stock. short yearlings—cattle too old to be calves but less than a year old.

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shrinkage—weight an animal might lose because of lack of water or insufficient feedings, etc. between the time it left the pasture and finally was sold; simply, loss in weight between any two points or time periods. skip—a light, trashy, common pig or lamb. slapstick—a piece of canvas tubing fastened to a short handle, used instead of a whip in driving cattle. slaughter cattle—in later terminology, animals about to leave the feedlots. Earlier, they were animals destined for the large packing plant adjacent to the stockyards. slunk—a prematurely born animal, unmarketable; bob veal. soft and oily—meaning the flesh was soft and fat; oily layers of fat on hogs fed peanuts, cotton hulls, mash, etc. sold “subject”—meant that an animal might be sold at a certain price, subject to a postmortem inspection or sold subject to the inspection with the value to be determined after slaughter. If the animal was found to be unfit for human consumption, the shipper received only salvage or tankage price for it. solid mouths—young ewes having all their teeth. spec—a speculator or scalper. spots—dairy cattle such as Holsteins on the beef cattle market. springer—a cow due to calve. stag—a male castrated after developing advanced male or male-like characteristics, generally heavy and rough, showing the appearance of masculinity in the head and shoulders. stale—stock that had been held over on the yards for several days or a week; often applied to stocker and feeder cattle; any cattle that had traveled the market circuit. stockers—animals suitable for farm or ranch breeding herds. stockyards company—any company engaged in the business of operating a stockyards, furnishing facilities for marketing, feeding, watering, holding, delivery, shipment, weighing, and handling livestock. The stockyards company did not participate in either the buying or selling of livestock and its only sources of revenue were the small yardage charges that were collected on each animal coming through the market as well as a percentage markup on feed given to the animal. Rental fees for offices in the exchange building also provided revenue; a public market where livestock were kept for sale or shipment. string sale—inferior stock to sell attached to a high-quality group. “I’ll sell you these, but you have to take these others.” This type of agreement concerned Packers and Stockyards Administration officials because it lowered the price and might not represent the best interests of the consignee. strippers—stock from which meat had to be stripped off the bone; more generally applied to milk cows not completely dried up before sale; also known as canners. strong—a good market with prices ten to fifteen cents higher per hundredweight than on the previous day. suspects—animals that were suspected by government ante-mortem inspector as having some disease (cholera, pneumonia, etc.), and not expected to pass inspection.

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This caused the buyer to take these animals subject to government inspection, i.e., “sold subject.” tariff—schedule naming charges for marketing of livestock and for buying and selling livestock, services to be rendered and definitions of pertinent terms. At one time this schedule had to be approved by and on file with the secretary of agriculture. T-B’s—cattle that had been found to be reactors by the tuberculin test. terminal market—central market; called “terminal” because it generally represented the last stage in the marketing of livestock, especially if slaughtering plants were the final destination; also often railroad terminals existed at the market; several selling agencies operated and anyone could buy and sell who wished to do so. Also called public market, central market, central public market, and public stockyards. Packers and Stockyards officials did not consider a market a “terminal market” unless two or more commission firms existed on it. through stock—stock received and counted in the day’s total receipts but not offered for sale, being consigned to other points; also called throughs or transit. They stopped at the stockyards merely for feed, water, and rest. total receipts—included all livestock receipts at a market, directs, through, or salable stock. tripe—same as canners. truck waybill—document furnished by the stockyards company and filled out by the shipper or his representative which showed ownership of the animals, brands, or marks of identification, commission company to which animals were consigned, date and time of arrival at market, trucker’s name and other pertinent information concerning the livestock. The waybill served primarily as a receipt for the shipper and as a positive means of identifying the livestock. It was made in triplicate with one copy going to the shipper, one copy going with the animals to the commission firm, and the other copy staying with the stockyards company for a permanent record. There were variations on these details. two-way cattle—cattle that might go either to the slaughter because they had enough finish on them or back to the farm for further finishing. The decision depended also on market conditions and market out look in the future. They usually were wheat pasture or grass fat cattle. ups and downs—any kind of stock in a bunch that some were large and some were small. vealers—calves suitable for veal. vertical integration—under single ownership or control there existed at least two segments of the operation involved in producing and/or marketing livestock. For example, vertical integration would exist if a feeder owned a slaughtering operation, or a meat packer owned a stockyards company or railroad cars in which livestock or refrigerated meat was shipped. warmed up—cattle that had been on corn feed just long enough to show feed effects, but not long enough to be desirable beef. washy—descriptive of feed such as new grass or other freshly grown vegetation that had a clearing effect upon the digestive tract but did not make good hard flesh; applied to animals fed on such feed; soft; green.

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weigh-back—an animal sold and weighed with other stock but cut out and weighed back to the seller. wet cows—cows being suckled; cows still giving milk. wooled—unshorn sheep. yardage—the fee that paid for stockyards facilities; in a “livestock hotel” it could be referred to as “room rent” charges paid for food, watering, and weighing when the sale took place. yearlings—cattle or sheep beyond the calf or lamb stage and under the two-year-old class, generally a year old. Yorker—a hog weighing 160–190 pounds, smooth, choice, popular with butchers in New York City.

197

Bibliography P RIMARY S OURCES Business Collections Annual Report for 1994. Michigan Livestock Exchange. Annual Report to Stockholders, 2001. Canal Capital Corporation. New York City. Annual Report to Stockholders, 1982. Canal-Randolph Corporation. New York City. Fort Worth Stock Yards Company Collection. University of North Texas Archives, Denton. Gary Havard Collection. Fort Worth, Texas. Copy of an agreement by which G. W. Simpson bought the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards, April 27, 1893. Also copy of a contract between Fort Worth Stock Yards Company and Swift and Company, January 25, 1902. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Convention of the National Live Stock Association. January 10–13, 1905. Denver, Colo. Third Annual Report,1930. South San Francisco Union Stockyards Company. South San Francisco, Calif. Government Documents Austin, Texas, Charter No. 3402. Fort Worth Union Stock Yards Company, filed July 26, 1887, Office of the Secretary of State. Austin, Texas, Charter No. 4581. The Fort Worth Packing Company, filed April 30, 1890, Office of Secretary of State. 1867–1990 Texas Historic Livestock Statistics. Austin: Texas Agricultural Statistics Service, 1991. Jersey City, New Jersey. City Directory, 1907–1908. Packers and Stockyards Act, Statutes at Large, vol. 42, chap. 64 (1921). Packers and Stockyards Administration. History of Regional Offices, 70th Anniversary, Responding to the Challenge of Excellence. USDA Packers and Stockyards Administration, September 17, 1991. “Regulations and Statements of General Policy Issued Under the Packers and Stockyards Act.” U.S. Department of Agriculture. Packers and Stockyards Administration, July 1989. “70 Years of Meeting the Challenge.” Packers and Stockyards Administration News and Information 2, no. 3 (October 1991): 1–4. Swift v. United States, 276 U.S. 311 (1928). U.S. Congress, House. Food Investigation: A Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Summary of Report of the Federal Trade Commission on the Meat Packing Industry, H. Doc. 1297, 65th Cong., 2d sess., 1918. U.S. Congress, House. Report of the Federal Trade Commission on the Meat Packing Industry, H. Doc. 1297, 65th Cong., 2nd sess., pt. 2, 1918.

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U.S. Congress, House. Sims Bill, H.R. 13324, 65th Cong., 3rd sess. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Hearings on a Bill to Amend the Packers and Stockyards Act, S. 2089, 68th Cong., 1st sess., 1924. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Marketing Service, Livestock, Poultry, Grain and Seed Division, Washington, D.C. Records sent to author, June 1981. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Number of Feedlots by Size, Groups, and Number of Fed Cattle Marketed 1962–1964. Washington, D.C.: Statistical Reporting Service, Crop Reportive Board, June 1966. United States v. Swift & Co., 286 U.S. 106 (1932). Letters Green, Judy R., research associate, Oregon Historical Society. Letter to author, April 3, 2001. Hagelstein, Janie, Union Stock Yards, San Antonio. Letter to author, February 3, 1989. Lovero, Joan D., New Jersey Room librarian, New Jersey Public Library. Letter to author, July 10, 1991. McGhee, Allan W., editor-emeritus, The Drovers Journal. Letter to author, August 24, 1995. Mothershead, Harmon. Letter to author, November 7, 1983. Pratt, Charlie. Letter to author, June 23, 1995. Sherman, Jill E., Missouri Historical Society. Letter to author, February 14, 1990. Tutt, Mary Lee. Letter to author, July 13, 1995. Interviews Akbar, Leah. Packers and Stockyards Administration, Washington, D.C. Telephone interview with author. November 4, 2002. Allen, Gary. Fort Worth Stockyards. Interview, February 22, 1982, Fort Worth, Tex. Ball, Bill. Former Packers and Stockyards Administration official. Telephone interview with author, September 17, 1983. Bellows, Paul. Texas Livestock Marketing Association. Interview with author, January 10, 1995, Fort Worth, Tex. Bennett, Joel. President of South St. Paul Stockyards. Interview with author, October 11, 1984, South St. Paul, Minn. Branch, Paul. Superior Livestock Auction, Inc., Fort Worth, Tex. Telephone interviews with author, January 24, 2001, November 4, 2002, and November 11, 2004. Byerly, Chris. Joplin Regional Stockyards, Joplin, Mo. Telephone interview with author. November 1, 2002. Caldwell, Bill. Archivist, Joplin Globe. Telephone interview with author, August 3, 1993. Cleveland, Wesley. Texas Livestock Marketing Association. January 10, 1995, Fort Worth, Tex. Dunbar, John. City of Lancaster zoning officer. Telephone interview, January 10, 2004. Fisher, Rob. Oklahoma City Stockyards. Telephone interviews with author, January 29, 2001, and November 4, 2002. Hall, George. Oklahoma Stockyards. American Stockyards Association. Telephone interviews with author, February 19, 2001, and November 4, 2002.

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Ingram, Keith. Packers and Stockyards Administration. Omaha, Neb., Regional Office. Telephone interview with author, August 20, 1993. Judson, Mark. President, San Antonio Stockyards. Telephone interviews with author, August 20, 1993, and January 24, 2001. Kuhl, L. Van. President, American Stockyards Association. October 23, 1984, Fort Worth, Tex. Lewis, Mrs. John M. Interview with author, November 21, 1983, Fort Worth, Tex. Little, Anita. Secretary, Port City Stockyards. Telephone interview with author, June 29, 1993. McCafferty, Sue. President, North Fort Worth Historical Society. Interview with author, December 30, 1992, Fort Worth, Tex. McCoy, Bill. President, Lancaster Stockyards Company. Telephone interviews with author, August 20, 1993, January 29, 2001, and November 1, 2002. Ralls, Leon. Interview with author, March 29, 1982, Fort Worth, Tex. Rogers, Grover. Former Swift Employee. Interview with author, February 26, 1982, Fort Worth, Tex. Sartwelle, J. D., Jr. Port City Stockyards. Telephone interviews, November 13, 2002, and August 2, 2004. Sauer, Sharyl. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Denver, Colo. Telephone interview with author, November 4, 2002. Schaff, Harry. Regional Director. Packers and Stockyards Administration. Interview with author, July 21, 1993, Fort Worth, Tex., and telephone interview with author, January 23, 2001. Schauder, Reginald. Canal Capital Corporation. New York City. Telephone interviews with author, March 8, 2001, and November 12, 2002. Sewell, Terry. Peoria Union Stockyards. Telephone interview with author, November 4, 2002. Sichmeller, Bernie. President, Sioux Falls Stockyards. Telephone interviews with author, February 20, 2001, and October 31, 2002. Simons, Jim. Texas Livestock Marketing Association. Interview with author, January 19, 1995, Fort Worth, Tex. Spencer, Tom. Circle T. Cattle Co., Pueblo, CO. Telephone interview, November 11, 1995. Van Ackeren, Dan. Packers and Stockyards Administration, Washington, D.C. Numerous telephone interviews, 1991–95, and January 25, 2001. Von Feldt, Angela. Office Staff, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Telephone interview with author, January 29, 2001. Waldron, Elden. Retired General Manager. Peoria Union Stockyards. Telephone interview with author, August 20, 1993. Zimmerman, Curt. Marketing Director, South St. Paul Stockyards. Interview with author, October 11, 1984, South St. Paul, Minn. Pamphlets and Unpublished Manuscripts Brockman, Paul. “Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company Records 1874–1968.” Typed List of Records, April 1984. “Date of Origin and Early History of the Sioux Falls Stock Yards Company.” 2 typewritten pages provided by Sioux Falls Stock Yards.

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“Facts About South St. Paul.” South St. Paul: Southeast Metro Chamber of Commerce, 1971. 6 pages. “The History of the Kansas City Livestock Market and the Kansas City Stock Yards Company 1871–1984.” 14-page, typewritten manuscript in files of Kansas City Stock Yards Company sent to L. V. Kuhl to send to author. “History of Sioux Falls Stock Yards Company.” dated April 17, 1947, 1 single-spaced typewritten sheet provided to L. V. Kuhl by Sioux Falls Stock Yards Company, given to author. Kester, Warren W. “History-Terminal Markets.” 2 typewritten pages. September 1962. “Oklahoma National Stockyards Company.” n.d. Pamphlet courtesy Oklahoma City Stockyards. Peirson, George A. “Livestock Marketing Portland, Oregon.” 8-page unpublished manuscript dated 1937 sent to L. V. Kuhl by Portland Stockyards and sent to author. “Port City Stockyards,” 17-page pamphlet supplied to author by stockyards, published 1956. Potter, E. L. The Portland Union Stock Yards: A Case Study in Livestock Marketing. Corvallis, Oreg.: Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 536. Oregon State College, 1953. Roberts, Richard C. “The Ogden Union Station as an Architectural Reflection of Ogden City History and Cultural Values.” Unpublished research paper courtesy Weber County Library. Ogden, Utah. “Saint Louis National Stock Yards, National Stock Yards, Illinois: A Review 1873–1938 of the Live Stock Industry.” St. Louis: The Hollis-Reynolds Company, 1938. “75 Years of Kansas City Livestock Market History.” Kansas City: The Kansas City Stock Yards Company, 1946. “Sioux City is Important Live Stock and Packing Center.” 8-page article from an unnamed magazine dated 1923, from Sioux City Stockyards. “Sioux Falls Stock Yards History Bicentennial Edition.”4-page typewritten article provided by Sioux Falls Stock Yards Company. “South St. Paul.” Pamphlet. September 2, 1958. Folder, “Minnesota Cities and Towns.” St. Paul Public Library. “The South St. Paul Livestock Market: Its History and Growth Since 1886.” Fourpage mimeographed pamphlet. Courtesy South St. Paul Stockyards. “Souvenir National Stockyards.” Three-page pamphlet, “Issued to Celebrate the Breaking of Four Records.” January 1897. Photocopy in files of St. Louis Stockyards, sent to L. V. Kuhl to be sent to author. “Stock Yards and Packing Houses.” Two and one-half pages. Courtesy Sioux City Stock Yards. “Stock Yards, The.” St. Louis of To-day, 1889. p. 270-271. Photocopy provided by Missouri Historical Society. “Story of the Sioux City Stock Yards.” Two typed pages, dated 1961, in files of Sioux City Stock Yards Company sent to L. V. Kuhl and sent to author. “Union Stockyards Organized.” Two typed pages, A. W. Oakford Collection, Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library. Peoria, Ill. Untitled, five-page typed manuscript. Sioux City Stockyards Company.

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Media “News.” KRLD 1080, Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas. April 18, 2001. Oklahoma Digest. KXXY, Oklahoma City, July 25, 1993. Appearance of Chris Wilson, Project Director, “Stockyards City, U.S.A.” Weekend Edition. KERA. Public Radio Broadcast. Fort Worth, Tex. May 27, 1990.

S ECONDARY S OURCES Books Aikman, Duncan, ed. The Taming of the Frontier. New York: Minton, Balch & Company, 1925. Armour, J. Ogden. The Packers, The Private Car Lines, and the People. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Co., 1906. Bailey, Dana R. History of Minnehaha County, South Dakota. Sioux Falls: Brown & Saenger, 1899. Ball, Charles. The Finishing Touch: A History of the Cattle Feeders Association and Cattle Feeding in the Southwest. Amarillo: Texas Cattle Feeders Association, 1992. Barck, Oscar Theodore, Jr., and Hugh Talmage Lefler. Colonial America, 2nd ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968. Becker, Dean H. Financing the Commercial Cattle Feedlot Operation in Kansas By Commercial Banks. New Brunswick: The State University, 1969. Boeck, George A., Jr. Texas Livestock Auctions: A Folklife Ethnography. New York: AMS Press, 1990. Bridenbaugh, Carl. Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625–1742. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. Cain, Louis P., and Paul J. Uselding, eds. Business Enterprise and Economic Change Essays in Honor of Harold F. Williamson. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1973. Carlson, Paul H. Texas Woollybacks: The Range Sheep and Goat Industry. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982. Caruso, John Anthony. The Appalachian Frontier: America’s First Surge Westward. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1959. Chambrun, Clara Longworth. Cincinnati: Story of the Queen City. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939. Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. Choate, Wade. Swappin’ Cattle. San Angelo, Tex.: Newsphoto Publishing Co., 1990. The City of St. Louis and Its Resources. St. Louis: The St. Louis Star-Sayings, 1893. Clark, Fred E., and Louis D. Weld. Marketing Agricultural Products in the United States. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932. Clarke, Mary Whatley. A Century of Cow Business: A History of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Fort Worth: Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, 1976. Clemen, Rudolph Alexander. The American Livestock and Meat Industry. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1923. Reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966.

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Corey, Lewis. Meat and Man: A Study of Monopoly, Unionism, and Food Policy. New York: Viking Press, 1950. Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991. Elazar, Daniel J. Cities of the Prairie: The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1970. Flanagan, Sue. Trailing the Longhorns: A Century Later. Austin: Madrona Press, 1974. Flemmons, Jerry. Amon: The Life of Amon Carter, Sr., of Texas. Austin: Jenkins Publishing Company, 1978. Fowler, Bertram B. Men, Meat and Miracles. New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1952. Fowler, Stewart H. The Marketing of Livestock and Meat. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Printers and Publishers, Inc., 1961. Furer, Howard B., ed. Chicago: A Chronological and Documentary History 1784–1970. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1974. Gard, Wayne. The Chisholm Trail. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954. Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth, ed. Who Were The Progressives? Readings Selected and Introduced by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Gressley, Gene M. Bankers and Cattlemen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. Hawley, Ellis W., ed. Herbert Hoover As Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1981. Hayes, Dorsha B. Chicago: Crossroads of American Enterprise. New York: Julian Messner, Inc., Publishers, 1944. Herbst, Alma. The Negro in the Slaughtering and Meat-Packing Industry in Chicago. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1932; Reprint, New York: Arno & The New York Times, 1971. Hill, Lowell D., ed. Role of Government in a Market Economy. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1982. Holli, Melvin, and Peter d’A. Jones. Ethnic Chicago. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977, rev. 1984. Hubbard, Gideon Burnham. The Life and Travels of Gideon Burnham Hubbard: A Texas Cowboy’s Autobiography. Edited by Byra Dean Moore. Burnet, Tex.: Nortex Press, 1980. Jones, William C., and Kenton H. Forrest. Denver, A Pictorial History. 2nd ed. Denver: Colorado Historical Society, 1985. Jordan, Winthrop, Leon Litwack, Richard Hofstadter, William Miller, and David Aaron. The United States Becoming a World Power. Vol. 2 of 2. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982. Kile, Orville Merton. The Farm Bureau Through Three Decades. Baltimore, Md.: The Waverly Press, 1948. Kramer, Carl E. 1834–1984 Drovers, Dealers and Dreamers—150 Years at Bourbon Stock Yards. Louisville, Ky.: Bourbon Stock Yard Company, 1984. Kraut, Alan M. The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880–1921. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1982. Krebs, A. V. Heading Toward the Last Roundup: The Big Three’s Prime Cut. Des Moines, Iowa: Prairie Fire Rural Action, 1990. Larsen, Lawrence H., and Barbara J. Cottrell. The Gate City: A History of Omaha. Pueblo, Colo.: Pruett Publishing Co., 1982.

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Larsen, Lawrence H. The Urban West at the End of the Frontier. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978. Leech, Harper, and John Charles Carroll. Armour and His Times. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1938. Leighton, George R. Five Cities: The Story of Their Youth and Old Age. New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1936. Leuchtenberg, William E. the perils of prosperity 1914–32. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; Reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Longstreet, Stephen. Chicago, 1860–1919. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1973. McCoy, Joseph G. Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest. Kansas City: Ramsey, Millett and Hudson, 1874; Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. McConnell, Grant. The Decline of Agrarian Democracy. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953. McCurry, Dan C., and Richard E. Rubenstein, eds. Bankers and Beef. New York: Arno Press, 1975. McReynolds, Edwin C. Missouri: A History of the Crossroads State. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. McWhiney, Grady. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988. Miller, W. Henry. Pioneering North Texas. San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1953. Pate, J’Nell L. Livestock Legacy: The Fort Worth Stockyards, 1887–1987. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988. Porter, Glenn, and Harold C. Livesay. Merchants and Manufacturers Studies in the Changing Structure of Nineteenth Century Marketing. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971. Powell, Cuthbert. Twenty Years of Kansas City’s Live Stock Trade and Traders. Kansas City, Mo.: Pearl Printing Co., 1893. Ragsdale, Crystal Sasse. The Golden Free Land. Austin: Landmark Press, 1976. Remley, David. Bell Ranch: Cattle Ranching in the Southwest, 1824–1947. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Renner, G. K. Joplin: From Mining Town to Urban Center. Northridge, Calif.: Windsor Publications, Inc., 1985. Reynolds, Joe M., ed. Saint Louis National Stock Yards, National Stock Yards, Illinois: A Review 1873–1938 of the Live Stock Industry. East St. Louis, Ill.: The HollisReynolds Company, 1938. Roberts, Richard C. Ogden: Junction City. Northridge, Calif.: Windsor Publications, 1985. Runnion, Dale F., Dr. Harlan D. Ritchie, and Dr. Richard Willham. Places for Dreams: A History of the Saddle and Sirloin Club. Louisville: Kentucky State Fair Board, 2003. Russell, Charles Edward. The Greatest Trust in the World. New York: The RidgewayThayer Co., 1905. Saloutos, Theodore, and John D. Hicks. Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951. Sanders, Elizabeth. Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

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Scott, Angelo C. The Story of Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City: Times-Journal Publishing Co., 1939. Shideler, James H. Farm Crisis, 1919–1923. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. Simpson, James R., and Donald E. Farris. The World’s Beef Business. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: The Viking Press, 1905; Reprints 1906, 1933, 1946. Skaggs, Jimmy M. Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the United States, 1607–1983. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986. ———, ed. Ranch and Range in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1978. Slayton, Robert A. Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Sloan, Bill. In and By. Austin: Nortex Press, 1987. Smith, Alysia W. 100 Omaha Stockyards A Century of Marketing Commemorative Book 1884–1984. Omaha: Omaha Livestock Market, Inc., 1984. Smith, Charles A. A Comprehensive History of Minnehaha County, South Dakota. Sioux Falls: Educator Supply Co., 1949. Sorenson, Alfred. The Story of Omaha From the Pioneer Days to the Present Time. Omaha: National Printing Company, 1923. Sowell, Thomas. Ethnic America: A History. New York: Basic Books, A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1981. Speer, Bonnie Stahlman. Historic Stockyards City and Oklahoma National Stockyards: Where the Real West Still Begins. Norman, Okla.: Reliance Press, 1996. Still, Bayrd. Milwaukee: The History of a City. 1948; Reprint, Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1965. Sulgrove, B. R. History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana. Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1884. Swanson, Wayne, and George Schultz. Prime Rip. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, Inc., 1982. Swift, Louis F., with Arthur Van Vlissingen, Jr. The Yankee of the Yards. Chicago and New York: A. W. Shaw Company, 1927. Tinstman, Dale C., and Robert L. Peterson. Iowa Beef Processors, Inc.: An Entire Industry Revolutionized. New York: The Newcomen Society in North America, 1981. Troen, Selwyn K., and Glen E. Holt, eds. St. Louis. New York: New Viewpoints, 1977. Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. 1920; Reprint, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1947. ———. Rise of the New West, 1819–1829. 1906; New York: Collier Books, 1966. ———. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. 1893; Reprint, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, Inc., 1966. Vexler, Robert I., ed. Cincinnati: A Chronological and Documentary History. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1975. Wade, Louise Carroll. Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Walsh, Margaret. The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982.

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Ward, David. Cities and Immigrants. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Weld, Louis D. W. The Marketing of Farm Products. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924. Williams, Willard F., and Thomas T. Stout. Economics of the Livestock-Meat Industry. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964. Wood, Charles L. The Kansas Beef Industry. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1980. Yeager, Mary. Competition and Regulation: The Development of Oligopoly in the Meat Packing Industry. Greenwich, Conn.: Jai Press, Inc., 1981. Yost, Nellie Irene Snyder. Call of the Range: The Story of the Nebraska Stock Growers Association. Denver: Sage Books, 1966. Articles Aduddell, Robert M., and Louis P. Cain. “The Consent Decree in the Meatpacking Industry, 1920–1956.” Business History Review 55 (1981): 359–78. ———, and Louis P. Cain. “Public Policy Toward ‘The Greatest Trust in the World.’” Business History Review 55 (1981): 217–42. “Airplane View of Wichita Union Stockyards.” Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kans. “Armour Played Important Part in Packing History Here.” S. San Francisco Enterprise Journal, October 30, 1958, Golden Jubilee Edition, p. 13. Arnould, Richard J. “Changing Patterns of Concentration in American Meat Packing, 1880–1963.” Business History Review 45 (1971): 19–34. Behymer, Bruce. “Wichita Is One of Main Packing Centers of West; Army of Workers Used.” Wichita Eagle. April 25, 1937. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Bergquist, Lee. “Patch of Country Endures in City.” Milwaukee Sentinel. February 21, 1984, part 4, pp. 1–2. Bianco, Joe. (headline missing). The Oregonian. January 5, 1958. Clipping folder, “Portland Stockyards.” Multnomah County Library. Portland, Ore. “Big Packing Plant and Stockyards.” Ogden Standard. March 6, 1916, p. 1. Bill, Bob. “Important Peoria Livestock Market Traces Back to Trading Post in 1824.” The Peoria Star, October 22, 1953. Clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library, Peoria, Ill. “Builders of Stockyards.” Joplin News Herald. August 31, 1931, p. 2. Butterfield, Bruce. “Packingtown’s Great 100 Years!” The Drovers Journal 100th Anniversary Edition. December 1972, pp. 19–21. Cameron, E. J. “Ogden’s Livestock and Packing Facilities Largest In Intermountain West.” Ogden Standard-Examiner. August 31, 1930, p. 12D. “Capacity Is 9,000 Daily.” Joplin Globe. August 31, 1931. p. 1. Capie, Forrest, and Richard Perren. “The British Market For Meat, 1850–1914.” Agricultural History 54 (1980): 502–15. “Cattle from Southwest to Wichita Yards.” n.d. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stock Yards.” Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kansas. Cawley, Peter. “Fort Worth Rides Again.” Historic Preservation (1980): 10–16. “Chicago Stockyards Close.” The Cattleman 57 (December 1970): 94.

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“Commission company endures hard times.” The Sunday [San Antonio] Express-News. June 8, 1986, p. 8K. Cornett, Steve. “Union Stockyards Ending 90-Year Sales Tradition.” Wichita Eagle. August 28, 1975. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. “County Livestock Center Since Days of the Pioneers.” Lancaster Intelligencer. March 13, 1959, n.p. Clipping courtesy Library of Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. Lancaster, Penn. Cravey, Jerry E. “Jim Sartwelle Puts Houston on Map As Commercial Cow Center.” Houston Post. December 1, 1938. Clipping courtesy Texas and Local History Department, Houston Public Library. Cunningham, Bill. “Stock Yards part of family tradition.” San Antonio Express-News. January 26, 1986, pp. 1K, 7K. “Denver Stockyards Born in 1865.” Rocky Mountain News. April 19, 1959, pp. 20–21C. Dietrich, Raymond. “The Texas Cattle Feeding Industry.” Texas Business Review 43 (October 1969): 293. Divine, Gene. “Stockyards Hold Specialty Title.” Milwaukee Sentinel. February 24, 1964, no page cited. Clipping folder, “Milwaukee Stockyards.” Milwaukee Public Library. Milwaukee, Wis. Dunbar, Gary S. “Colonial Carolina Cowpens.” Agricultural History 35 (1961): 125–30. Effron, Seth. “Once Wichita’s Mainstay, Stockyards to Shut Down.” Wichita Eagle. June 20, 1980. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kans. ———. “R.I.P.” Wichita Beacon. August 3, 1980. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kans. “Facilities for 21,000 Cattle, 15,000 Hogs, 5,000 Sheep are Offered in Area of 100 Acres.” Wichita Eagle. July 25, 1943. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kans. Fitzgibbon, Joe. “Cost hinders effort to save stockyard.” The Oregonian. September 9, 1998, p. D2. Floyd, James. “The Nation’s red meat capital St. Louis National Stockyards is booming since beef cattle operations have been snowballing in Missouri’s Ozark counties.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat. July 1, 1972. Clipping courtesy St. Louis National Stockyards. Fohn, Joe. “An Industry Under Attack.” San Antonio Express-News. February 18, 1990, pp. 1K, 5K. ———. “100th Anniversary San Antonio Union Stock Yards Still the Center of Agribusiness in South Texas. “ San Antonio Express-News. May 21, 1989, pp. 1K, 8K. ———. “Video auctions growing.” San Antonio Express-News. May 21, 1989, pp. 1K, 9K. The Fort Worth Democrat. July 22, 1876. Fox, Bert. “Once-Thriving Stockyard Stands Deserted.” Ogden Standard-Examiner. July 15, 1974, p. 11A. Frantz, B. J. Andrew. “History of Cattle and Stock Yards in Lancaster County Prior to 1800.” Papers Read Before the Lancaster County Historical Society Friday, March 7, 1924. Lancaster, Pa.: Lancaster County Historical Society, 1924, pp. 41–46.

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Freiberg, Karen. “Union Stock Yard Just a Hog’s Heaven.” Wichita Eagle. August 27, 1978. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. “Garbage firm buys stockyards site.” The Oregonian. February 3, 1989, p. 5E. “Good Selling Service Here.” Joplin News Herald. August 31, 1931, p. 1. Gragg, Randy. “Law allows stockyards landmark to slip away.” The Sunday Oregonian. November 23, 1997, pp. 1F, 3F. ———. “What can hold up a building? Bucks.” The Sunday Oregonian. June 14, 1998, p. F4. “Great Market for Livestock.” 1929 Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Heaton, Bob. “Mule Barn is Victim of Progress.” Wichita Beacon. December 28, 1978. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Heffernan, Lillian E. “Good times at the yards.” Milwaukee Journal. April 26, 1985, pp. 1, 3. Herr, Fred R. “Herr’s Island.” The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 53 ( July 1970): 211–26. “Highways Good To Stockyards.” Joplin Globe. August 31, 1931, p. 1. Hinman, Ralph, Jr. “Stockyards Functions As Hotel: Room, Meals, Even Manicure.” Wichita Beacon. October 18, 1959. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. “History of Indianapolis Stockyards Since Mid-1860s.” Osgood Journal. November 29, 1977. “Hogs are Auctioned by Phone Hookup.” Milwaukee Journal. May 26, 1965. Clipping folder, “Milwaukee Stockyards.” Milwaukee Public Library. Milwaukee, Wis. Holland, Gina,“Supreme Court Justices hear beef ad suit.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. December 9, 2004, pp 1C, 8C Howard, Clare. “Peoria Stock Yards granted reprieve.” Peoria Journal Star. July 21, 1989. Clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library. Peoria, Ill. Hudson, Repps. “Stockyards Survivors Look to the Future.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. December 31, 1997, no page available. “Interstate Producers reduces stockyards role.” Peoria Journal Star. August 17, 1988. Clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library. Peoria, Ill. Jackson, Charles. “City stockyards were famous.” The Cincinnati-Enquirer. December 20, 1988, n.p. Clipping folder, “Meat Packing Industry.” Collections and Research Library, Cincinnati Museum. Cincinnati, Ohio. Jennings, Warren. “Old Firm (1894) Used Mod Methods.” The San Antonio Light. March 18, 1973, p. 6F. Jeter, John “Taking stock of family ties former duchess bullish on career.” San Antonio Express-News. February 3, 1985, p. 1G. “John Morrell & Co.” The Sioux Falls Journal 52 (March 8, 1924): 41. Joplin Globe. August 28, 1931. No headline. Clipping courtesy Joplin Public Library, Joplin, Mo. “Joplin Stock Yards—no. 14 of a series.” Single sheet from The Livestock Marketeer, p. 4. n.d.

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“Kansas City stockyards close down.” Des Moines Sunday Register. September 29, 1991, p. 2J. Kauffman, Linda. “It Was Not By Chance.” La Peninsula Journal of the San Mateo County Historical Association 16 (May 1977): 2–6. Kennedy, Bud. “Oklahoma City puts out its own cattle call.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. August 23, 2001, p. 1B. Klein, Jerry. “Meet the Folks At Livestock Hotel.” n.d. Clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library. Peoria, Ill. ———. “Peoria’s $80 Million Business Run Like A Waterfront Hotel.” Peoria Journal Star. November 1, 1959, p. 1B. Lambert, Mark. “Peoria stockyards adapts to changes.” Peoria Journal Star. September 8, 1987. Clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library. Peoria, Ill. “Lancaster’s First Public Stock Yard Opened in 1868.” Lancaster Intelligencer. June 1954. n.p. Clipping courtesy Library of Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. Lancaster, Penn. Lesser, William H. “Market Functions and the Plight of the Northeast Livestock Auction Industry.” Northeastern Agricultural Economic Journal 8 (October 1979): 221–29. “Licenses Required for Stockyards and Livestock Dealers.” Fort Worth Daily Live Stock Reporter. June 24, 1918, p. 1. Linford, Lloyd J. “100 Years on the Farm: A Pioneer Way of Life Goes Modern.” The Drovers Journal 100th Anniversary Edition, December 1972, pp. 10–12. “Livestock.” Photo Section Ogden Standard-Examiner. April 5, 1966, p. 7. “The Live Stock Exchange.” The Texas Stock Journal. April 28, 1903, p. 1. “Local History Items.” Minnesota History 19 (1938): 121. Lownsdale, John M. “Union Stock Yards Survey 25 Years of Operation.” The Oregonian. February 1, 1935, p. 19. Mackie, Dave. “Dick Thompson Heads Stockyards Operations.” Wichita Eagle. January 11, 1972. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Macy, Robert. “KC’s stockyards reduced to a shell.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. September 26, 1981, pp. 29A, 33A. McNeal, Chris. “Today—in Peoria County.” North Peoria Observer. ca. 1980s. Clipping courtesy Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library. Peoria, Ill. Miniclier, Kit. “Changing faces: Demise of stockyards reflects new cattle operations in West.” Denver Post. January 7, 1985, p. 4A. Mires, Susan. “Meatpacking Cattle industry brought jobs to South Side residents.” St. Joseph News-Press. September 26, 1999, n.p. Mothershead, Harmon. “The Stockyards, a Hotel for Stock or a Holding Company?” Nebraska History 64 (winter 1983): 512–20. “Mule Market At Stockyards.” Joplin News Herald. August 31, 1931, p. 1. “National Stockyards Co.” St. Louis Commerce (April 1973): 28. “National Stock Yards Location Ideal For Trade.” St. Louis Star-Times. June 6, 1934, p. 14. “New Look at the Stockyards.” Wichita Eagle cutline under photo January 11, 1978. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans.

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“New Methods That Have Done Away With the Bull Punch and Other Instruments of Torture—Future of Cattle Shipping in the West.” The Colorado Graphic. October 30, 1886, p. 5. Typed reproduction obtained from Colorado Historical Society. “New Portland Stockyards.” The Fort Worth Daily Live Stock Reporter. September 10, 1909, p. 1. “News and Comment.” Minnesota History 26 (1945): 182. Nicholas, Jonathan. “Portland: Wild West or Mild West? You Make the Call.” The Oregonian. October 24, 1997, p. 1E. Nixon, Jay. “World’s Largest Market—how it got that way, how it serves today.” Western Livestock Journal 46 (August 1968): 24–27. “Old Building Gives up Box of Souvenirs.” 1940. Unidentified clipping courtesy Siouxland Heritage Museums. Sioux Falls, S.Dak. “The Oldest Stockyards.” The Fort Worth Daily Live Stock Reporter. January 19, 1911, p. 1. “Omaha’s once-great stockyards opened up a nation,” The Holland Sentinel. March 14, 1999, from Internet Celebrate 2000. http://www.brainerddispatches.com.hisomaha. “112-year-old stockyards in San Antonio to close.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. March 22, 2001, p. 2B. Orear, Leslie F. “The Chicago Stock Yards on the Eve of the CIO.” (1936) from Internet. Illinois Labor History Society/ Stockyards. http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/stkyards.html Osman, Loren H. “Milwaukee Stockyards, Facing Key Decision, Looks to a New Era.” Milwaukee Journal. April 24, 1979, pp. 8, 11. “An Outside View.” The Texas Stockman Journal. May 2, 1906, p. 4. “The Packing House.” 1890. Unidentified clipping courtesy Siouxland Heritage Museums. Sioux Falls, S.Dak. “Patterson To Manage Yards.” Joplin News Herald. August 31, 1931, p. 1. Pickett, Connie. “D. C. Smith President Union Stock Yards Company.” Wichita Beacon. December 30, 1979. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. “Populations of United States Colonies and States, 1650–1990.” Atlas of American History. Skokie, Ill.: Rand McNally, 1993. Prescott, Russell T. “Language of the Livestock Mart.” American Speech 10 (December 1935): 269–72. “President Eaton Is Back From Chicago.” December 7, 1907. Unidentified newspaper clipping in Sioux City Stock Yards Company files. Ranck, Michelle. “Before the Internet, There Was the Stockyard.” Lancaster Farming. January 20, 2001, pp. 1, 36, 37. ———. “Railroads, Wartime, And Long-Term Careers At The Stockyards.” Lancaster Farming. January 27, 2001, pp. 22–24. ———. “Still Selling At The Stockyards.” Lancaster Farming. February 10, 2001, p. 36A. Rashad, Eugene. “Group will discuss fate of stockyards.” The Oregonian. June 8, 1995, p. 7F. ———. “Kenton taking stock.” The Oregonian. June 8, 1995, pp. 1F, 7F. ———. “Landmarks panel OKs demolition of Portland Stockyards.” The Oregonian. September 12, 1995, p. 2B.

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“The Red Steer Restaurant.” The Oregonian. Portland Neighbor Section. January 18, 1996, p. 6. Renner, G. K. “The Kansas City Meat Packing Industry Before 1900.” Missouri Historical Review 55 (October 1960): 18–29. Retson, G. C. “Livestock Auction Markets in the Maritime Provinces.” Canadian Farm Economics 11(August 1976): 1–7. Rollins, Michael. “N. Portland trash transfer station eyed.” The Oregonian. January 14, 1988, pp. 1C, 4C. Rosenberg, David H. “Vertical Integration in the Cattle Feeding Industry and the Packers and Stockyards Administration.” University of Toledo Law Review 7 (1976): 935–60. Sankey, Bruce. “Sierra Control of Stock Yards Brings Pledge.” Wichita Eagle-Beacon. November 28, 1970. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Sauder, Rick. “Lancaster Stockyards Become Prime Target For Development.” Lancaster Intelligencer Journal. November 28, 1986, pp. 1, 7. Savage, Harry. “Terminal Has Brought City from ‘Cow Town’ To 14th Biggest Mart.” Wichita Eagle. October 14, 1962. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. “Scenes At New Stockyards Yesterday, The First Day Opened for Business.” Joplin Globe. September 1, 1931. Clipping courtesy Joplin Public Library, Joplin, Mo. Shiner, Ernest. “Pace Setting Terminal Markets Have Competition for Volume.” The Farmer Stockman, Vol. 72. February 1959: 17, 38. Clipping folder, “W. L. Pier Correspondence.” Fort Worth Stock Yards Company Collection, University of North Texas Archives. Denton. Shlachter, Barry. “Beef. It’s what the “check off ” beef is about, as U.S. producers are torn over the program’s results.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. February 3, 2001, pp. 1A, 17A. ———. “Tyson puts division headquarters here.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. November 1, 2002. pp. 1C, 10C. Sinclair, F. H. “Down the Trail With a Range Rider.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 16 (summer 1966): 57–64. “The Sioux Falls Stockyards.” The Sioux Falls Journal 52 (March 8, 1924): 52–53. “Siouxland’s Finest ‘The Story of the Sioux City Stock Yards and Meat Packing Industry.’” The Wahkaw 3 (winter 1983): 1–18. Skaggs, Jimmy M. “Wichita, Kansas: Economic Origins of Metropolitan Development, 1870–1960.” In Metropolitan Wichita: Past, Present, and Future. Ed. by Glen W. Miller and Jimmy M. Skaggs. Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1978. Smith, Helena Huntington. “The Rise and Fall of Alec Swan.” The American West 4 (August 1967): 21–24, 66–68. Stanger, Frank M. “The Beginnings of South San Francisco.” La Peninsula Journal of San Mateo County Historical Association 16 (May 1971): 7–15. Stanush, Michele. “Stockyard clings to tradition.” The Sunday Express-News. February 19, 1984, p. 1N. Steimel, Dirck. “Auction Ring Silenced At Wichita Stockyards.” Wichita Eagle. August 1, 1980. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans.

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Stilwell, Hart. “Texas Trails: Cattlemen Cling to the Past.” San Antonio Light. April 1, 1967. Clipping courtesy San Antonio Library, San Antonio, Tex. “Stock Yard Co. Is Stocker and Feeder Capital of East.” Lancaster Intelligencer. June 1954. n.p. Clipping courtesy Library of Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. Lancaster, Penn. “Stock Yards Becomes $126,000,000 Business.” The Indianapolis Star. December 31, 1947. Clipping courtesy Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis. “Stockyard Receipts Go Up in 1965.” Milwaukee Sentinel. January 11, 1966. Clipping folder, “Milwaukee Stockyards.” Milwaukee Public Library. Milwaukee, Wis. “Stockyards Park.” Joplin News Herald. August 31, 1931. p. 2. “Texas Feedlot Directory, 1969.” The Cattleman 56 (November 1969): 107–14. “Thru the Years.” Wichita Eagle. March 30, 1939. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. “Today in Wichita History.” n.d. n.p. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kansas. Tomek, William G. “Price Behavior on a Declining Terminal Market.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 62 (1980): 434–44. Towne, Oliver. “Column.” St. Paul Dispatch. January 19, 1955. Clipping file. St. Paul Public Library. St. Paul, Minn. “Trust Suit is Settled.” Southwestern Farmer and Breeder. October 11, 1907, p. 4. “Twenty Years Ago Today Stock Yards Began Business.” October 31, 1907. Unidentified newspaper clipping from Sioux City Stock Yards files. “2 Smiths Resign Top Stockyards Co-Posts.” Wichita Eagle. December 16, 1971. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. “The Union Stockyards, December 25, 1965.” Chicago History 7 (winter 1965–66): 289–96. “Union Stock Yards San Antonio.” The Businesses That Built San Antonio. 1985. Clipping courtesy San Antonio Stock Yards. Untitled article. Wichita Eagle. September 25, 1921. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stock Yards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Untitled, undated article. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stock Yards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Untitled article. South San Francisco Enterprise Journal. October 30, 1958, Golden Jubilee Edition, p. 5. Also another untitled article, p. 24. Clippings folder, “Stockyards.” San Francisco Public Library. San Francisco, Calif. Uvacek, Ed, Jr. “Big Changes in Livestock Feeding, Marketing.” The Drovers Journal 100th Anniversary Edition, Vol.100. December 1972, pp. 15–16. ———. “The Dynamically Changing Industry.” The Cattleman 51 (August 1964): 41. Virtue, G. O. “The Meat Packing Investigation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 34 (August 1920): 626, 648. Wade, Louise Carroll. “Burnham and Root’s Stockyards Connection.” Chicago History 4 (1975): 139–47. ———. “Something More Than Packers.” Chicago History 2 (1973): 224–31. Welsh, Carol Holderby. “Cattle Market for the World The Oklahoma National Stockyards.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 60 (1982): 42–55. Also in booklet form available from Oklahoma City Stockyards, 15 pages.

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“Wichita Remains Mule Capital of Entire Country.” Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library, Wichita, Kans. “Wichita Stockyards Completely ‘Remodeled’ in Five-Year Project.” Wichita Morning Eagle. August 15, 1954. Clipping folder, “Wichita Meat Industry and Trade Stockyards.” Wichita Public Library. Wichita, Kans. Wilson, James A. “Cattlemen, Packers, and Government: Retreating Individualism on the Texas Range.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 74 (April 1971): 531. Wood, Charles L. “Cattlemen, Railroads, and the Origin of the Kansas Livestock Association—the 1890s.” The Kansas Historical Quarterly 43 (summer 1977): 121–39. “Work on New Stockyards Is To Commence at Once; Awaiting Plans For Plant From Chicago Architect.” Ogden Examiner. July 30, 1916, p. 18. Wozniak, Maurice D. “‘Voice of the Stockyards’ Will Sell Instead of Tell.” Milwaukee Journal. April 2, 1971. Clipping folder, “Milwaukee Stockyards.” Milwaukee Public Library. Milwaukee, Wis. Wright, Sara. “During our 70 years, we’ve ensured fair trade practices in ‘the industry.’” USDA News 50 (October 1991): 7. Zochert, Donald. “Heinrich Schliernann’s Chicago Journal.” Chicago History 2 (1973): 173–81. Theses and Dissertations Abbott, Carl John. “The Divergent Development of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago and Galena, 1840–1860: Economic Thought and Economic Growth.” Ph.D. dissertation. University of Chicago, 1971. Aduddell, Robert M. “The Meat Packing Industry and the Consent Decree 1920–1956.” Ph.D. dissertation. Northwestern University, 1971. Atkinson, Eva L. “Kansas City’s Livestock Trade and Packing Industry, 1870–1914: A Study in Regional Growth.” Ph.D. dissertation. University of Kansas, 1971. Hewes, Bernard A. “The Rise of the Pork Industry in Indiana.” Master’s thesis. Indiana University, 1939. Homenuck, Henry Peter Michael. “Historical Geography of the Cincinnati Pork Industry: 1810–1883.” Master’s thesis. University of Cincinnati, 1965. Miles, James C. “Fort Worth and World War I.” Master’s thesis. Southern Methodist University, 1946. Pate, J’Nell L. “Livestock Legacy: A History of The Fort Worth Stockyards Company, 1893–1982.” Ph.D. dissertation. University of North Texas, 1982. Popplewell, Frank S. “St. Joseph, Missouri As a Center of the Cattle Trade.” Master’s thesis. University of Missouri, 1937. Smith, Houston Edward. “Operational Analysis of the Port City Stockyards.” Master’s thesis. Texas A&M University, 1957. Unfer, Louis. “Swift and Company: The Development of the Packing Industry.” Ph.D. dissertation. University of Illinois, Urbana, 1951.

Index Abilene, Kansas, 13, 119 Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 88-89 Adams, John Quincy, 96 Addams, Jane, 26 African Americans, 78-79 Allerton House Hotel, 72 Allerton, Isaac, 72 Allerton, Samuel W. Jr., 71-72, 76-77; photo of, 72 Amalgamated Meat Cutters, 8 American Brahman Breeders Association, 148 American Farm Bureau Federation, 32-33 American Federation of Labor, 26 American National Livestock Association, 31, 114 American Revolution, 15, 17 American Stock Yards Association, 37-38 American Stockyards Association (spelling change), 43, 165 Amish farmers, 62 Andalusian cattle, 21 Anderson, A. D., “Andy,” 48, 110 Armour, 23, 118; and Consent Decree, 46; as large packer, 4; at Fort Worth, 122; at St. Louis, 73; bought Morris packing, 36; came to Omaha, 104; Chicago plant, 80; closed Fort Worth plant, 124; closed St. Joseph, 94; closed plant in Omaha, 106; created General Stockyards, 35; FTC report, 27; in footnote, 170; in Fort Worth, 118, 121, 123; in Louisville, 69; in Omaha, 105; in South St. Paul, 117; invitation to Omaha, 103; Kansas City made concessions to, 89; located at Omaha, 102; major packer buyer at South St. Paul, 118; Morris sold to, 143; owned General Stockyards, 46; received bonuses, 23; see Table II, 161; vertical integration of, 25

Armour and Company, as one of Big Four, 24; at Sioux City, 109-10; expanded in Chicago, 81; Omaha stockyards, 104; in Denver, 113; Morris brothers sold to, 142; St. Joseph, 93; in Kansas City, 87; Armour, J. Ogden, 121, photo of, 122 Armour, Philip Danforth, 81, 84-85, 87, 122 Asia, 49 Atlanta, 48, 155 auctions, added by 1960s, 14; Fort Worth began, 124; in colonial America, 17; in twenty-first century, 53; last one at Lancaster, 63; most market activity at, 124; Oklahoma began, 143; P&SA regulated, 99; San Antonio introduced, 129; South St. Paul began, 117; Wichita converted to, 127 auction barns, 41 auction market, 35 Avenue House, 66 Ayers, Larry, 55 Bailey, Joseph L., 11 Baltimore yards, 155; Allerton invested in, 72; colonial market, 16-17; during Civil War, 19; Lancaster sold to, 61; surpassed by Cincinnati, 65 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 157 Barrett, John Garnett, 69 Bay State Cattle Company, 103 Belt Railroad and Stock Yards Company, 97-98, photo of, 97 Bennett, Joel, 118 Big Five, 24-25; by 1970s, 46; challenged P & S Act, 34; in FTC report, 27-28; raised wages, 7; resistance to collective bargaining, 27; see Table II, 161; selling stockyards, 25; Wilson became, 141 Big Four, 24-25; in Chicago, 80; in Denver, 113; in 1920s, 1930s, 36; in

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1970s, 46; Omaha persuaded to come, 102; operated in Omaha, 105; Swift one of, 49; two largest of, 118 Big Three, 49, 52 Billings, Montana, 133, 155, 162 Billings Union Stock Yards, 37, 155-56 Black, A. L., 42 blacks (see African Americans), 8, 80 Blackstone, Timothy B., 76 Blair, Cowgill C., 151 Board of Trade, 77, 100 Boettcher, Charles, 113 Bohemian immigrants, 6, 78 Booge, James, 107-08 Boston, colonial market, 17; during Civil War, 19; earliest market town, 15; Lancaster sold animals to, 61; men from invested in Fort Worth, 121 Bourbon County, 68 Bourbon House, 68 Bourbon House Inn (in caption), 69 Bourbon Stockyards, 59, 67-70 Bourbon Stock Yard Company, photo of administration building, 69 “boxed beef,” 48-49 Branch, Paul, 54 Brahman bulls, 149 Bridge yards, 100 Brighton, Massachusetts, 15, 28 “Broadway Shambles,” 16 Brock, Sidney, 141 Bromley, John, 42 Buchanan, James, 61 Buchanan, L. P., 151 Buckingham, Everett, 105 Buffalo, New York, 22, 155 Bulgarians, 6 Bull’s Head Corral, 111 “Bulls Head Market,” 75 Bull’s Head Yards, 111 Bureau of Markets, 28 Burke, Louis, 134

Burlington, Iowa, 155 Burlington Railroad, 112 Butcher Workers of North America, 8 “Butchertown,” 68 California, 23, 135 California stockyards, 156 Canada, 54, 155 Canal Capital, 47, 94, 111, 132, 137 Canton, South Dakota, 108 Cargill Corporation, 49 Carolinas, 16 Carthage, Missouri, 153 Cassidy, W. L., 73 Catholic-Mediterranean backgrounds, 6 cattle auction, 153 cattle futures, 53-54 Cattlemen’s Beef Board, 55 Caves, Mayor John, 97 Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 155 Central Livestock, 118, 155 Certified Livestock Markets Association, 43 Central Pacific Railroad, 146 Central Stock Yard (Louisville), 69 Central Stock Yards (Sioux City), 109 Chambers, David L., 99 Chandler, Alfred D., Jr., 23-24 Charleston, South Carolina, 16-17 Chester, Pennsylvania, 16 Cheyenne, Wyoming, 100 Chicago, 21, 65-66, 101, 104-106, 119121; a “union” stockyards, 22; cattle from St. Paul, 115; center of large railroad network, 59; during Civil War, 19; Fort Worth rivalry, 119, 121; Hull House in, 26; Indianapolis southeast of, 96; J. Ogden Armour there, 122; livestock trains from, 157; Morrell moved from, 155; Omaha 425 miles west of, 100; Omaha on way to, 101-102; Omaha rivalry, 104-06; Cincinnati rivalry, 65-66; Texas cattle, 21, 120; Swift, 138-39; United Stockyards in, 99

I N DEX

Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad, 76 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, 87 Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and Northwestern Yards, 75 Chicago & Great Western Railroad, 115 Chicago-Joliet Livestock Marketing Center, 81 Chicago Junction Railways and Union Stock Yards Company, 79 Chicago Federation of Labor, 7 Chicago Live Stock Exchange, 79, 81 Chicago market, annual wages at, 7; faced competition, 83; first western market, 88; immigrants at, 6; see Appendix I, 160; see Appendix II, 162 Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 54 Chicago Pork Packers Association, 76 Chicago stockyards, 75-82; Allerton led effort to build, 72; closed in 1971, 156; Indianapolis gate similar to, 97; see Table II, 161; Swift and Company first plant, 89; tour of facilities, 96 Chicago Union Stock Yards, 77-79; Allerton led movement for, 72; closed July 17, 1971, 81; opened, xi; photo of entrance gate, 79; some business moved to Peoria from, 95 Chisholm Trail, 83, 119, 124 Cincinnati, 63-67; artist’s drawing of, 64; competed with Louisville, 68; during Civil War, 19; hogs arrived on flatboats, 95; profited from flatboats, 59; see Appendix 2; sent cargo to Louisville, 67 Cincinnati, Ohio, 18 Cincinnati Union Stockyards, 66 City of Portland Landmarks Commission, 137 Civil War, 19, 21-22, 68, 71, 76, 84, 92 Clampit, A. B., 130 Clay, Henry, 96 Cleveland, 28, 155 Clough, John A., 112 Clybourn, Archibald, 75 Colorado, 44, 83

215

Colorado Packing and Provision Company, 113 Columbia, 60 Commission agents, 10, 13-14; accepted consignments, xiv, 4-5; at Lancaster market, 61; at stockyards, xi; ceased operations in Ogden, 147; characterized sales, 9; collected fees, 12; Denver ruling concerning, 114; first modern one, Louisville, 68; in Kansas City, 88; in 1934, 36; in Oklahoma City, 143; in Portland, 134; must have federal license, 28; needed for terminal market, 129; offices for, 89; P&SA regulated, 99; yardmen of, 11 company unions, 8 computer marketing, 54 computer sales, 53 computer systems, 70 Con-Agra, Inc., 49 Congress, 32-33, 36, 45, 47 Consent Decree (see Packers’ Consent Decree), 46 Cooper, J. A., 112 cooperative commission companies, 36 Coronado, Francisco, 21 Cottage Grove yards, 75 Council Bluffs, Iowa, 100-02 country auctions, 37, 55, 123; after World War II, 41; during World War II, 38; near Cincinnati, 67; terminal markets competition, 109; Wichita challenged, 127. “cow pens,” ix, 16 Craigin & Company, 76 Creighton, John A., 101, 103 Creighton University, 101 Croatian immigrants, 78 Cronon, William, 51-52 Cross, Milburn, 3 Cudahy, and Consent Decree, 46; arrived in Kansas City, 89; chose Sioux City, 109; FTC report, 27; given stock in Wichita, 125; in Denver, 113; in Omaha, 102, 104-05; major packer buyer, 118; opened plant in Los Angeles, 156; see Table II, 161

216

A M E RICA’ S

H I STORIC


Cudahy, Edward, photo of, 85 Cudahy, Michael, 85, 102-03, photo of, 103 Cudahy Packing Company, 103, 147 Cudahy, Wisconsin, 85 “Dairy Beef Capital,” 84 Dakotas, 22, 63, 83 Davis, Samuel, Jr., 65 Denison, Iowa, 48, 110 Denver Chamber of Commerce, 112 Denver, 21; businessmen from, 131; construction engineer of, 131; Golden Ox Restaurant, 91; in FTC report, 28; Ogden competition, 147; P&S field office at, 48 Denver stockyards, 111-15; photo of 113; see Appendix 2, 162; see Tables I, II, 160-61 Denver Livestock Exchange, 115 Denver Livestock Market, Inc., 44 Denver Union Corporation, 147 Denver Union Stockyard Company, 11213; photo of, 1920s, 114 Depression (see Great Depression), 74 Des Moines, 48 Detroit, 155 direct buying, 34-35, 55, 67 direct sales, 91 Dodge, Colonel D. C., 113 Dold, Jacob, 89, 125 Dollars and Sense in Livestock Marketing, 38 Donovan, John, 92-93 dressed-beef industry, 24 “drove stands,” 18 Drovers Journal, The, 56 Druett, Ed, 148 E. Rouch and Sons, 98 East, 156 Eaton, F. L. 109 Eighth Circuit Court, 55 Eli Lilly and Company, 99

Embry, H. F., 95 Embry, Talton, 95 England, 86 England, G. W., 131 English trading practices, 15, 17 Equrrola, Jess, 44 Erie Canal, 17 Ernest, F. P., 112 Excel Corporation, 49 Europe, 49, 96 Evans and Swift, 65 Evans, Eulass and Pierce, 65 Evans, Jason, 64 Evansville, 155 Farmers’ Union, 25-26 Farmland National, 49 fat stock show, 88 federal legislation, 91, 94, 142 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 2728, 31-32, 35, 45, 160 feedlots, 42, 55; after World War II, 74; Big Three owned, 49-50; by 1950s, 41; cause of stockyards closings, 81; direct sales from, ix, 14; in 1970s, 46; in Oklahoma, 144; in West Texas, 124; modern plants near, 45; multiplied, 39; new feeding standard, 126; South St. Paul market for, 117; swept plains by 1960s, 43 Fenley, Oscar, 69 Finke, J. C., 151 Finland, 86 First Monday court-trade day, 67 First National Bank of Omaha, 103 Fisher, Rob, 144 Fitzpatrick, John, 7 Floyd Valley Packing Company, 110 Flanagan, Sue, 1 Follette, Robert M., 27 Ford, Henry, 8 Fort Dearborn, 75 Fort Worth, 48, 148

I N DEX

Fort Worth Packing Company, 120 Fort Worth yards, 21, 118-24, enterprising Hispanic at, 9; Houston got market news from, 149; in FTC report, 28; located to north, xiii; Oklahoma farmers shipped to, 141; opened 1880s, 83; scales, 11; P & S action against, 47; photos of, 120, 123; see Appendix 2, 162; see Tables I, II, 160-61; tactics used, 23 Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District, 124, 168 Fort Worth Union Stock Yards, 120-21 Foster, William Z., 7-8 4-H, 38, 135, 153 Fowler Brothers, 116 France, 86 Frisco Railroad, 153 Frontier, 51 Future Farmers of America, 38, 135, 153 Garcia, Joe T., in footnote, 168 Garden City, Kansas, 91 General Stockyards, 35, 46, Georgetown, Missouri, 93 German, Ernest Louis, 70 German immigrants, 6, 59, 67, 78 Gilpin, William, 134 Gimmel, W. C., 108 Golden Ox Restaurant, 91-92 Golden Spike Coliseum, 147 Golden Spike National Livestock Show, 147 Goodyear, Miles, 145 Gould, Jay, 71, 100 government regulation (see federal legislation), 31, 35, 37, 45 Grangers, 26 Granite City, 6 Graves, Dr. Amos, 128 Great Depression, 9, 36, 152. Great Northern Railway, 115 Great Plains, 53, 83 “Great Trail,” 119

217

Greece, 86 Gregory, B. E., 95 Greenback Party, 26 Gronna, Asle, 31 Guatemala City, 149 Gulf Coast, 148 Gulf Coast Packing Company, 148 Hagelstein, Carleton, Jr., 128 Hagelstein, G. Carlton, 128 Hagelstein, Janie, 129 Hamilton, Alexander, 17 Hammond, George H., 24, 93, 104, 161 Hampshire County, Massachusetts, 15 Handcock, John L., 76 Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, 87 Hansen, Lars, 146 Harris, Everett B., 54 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 60 Harsh, James E., 151 Hartshorn and Childs, 65 Hathaway, J. A., 138 Haugen, Gilbert, 31 Haymarket Square, 85 Hedges, Daniel T., 108 Herr’s Island, 157 Hill, James J., 115 Hoffer Brothers, 113 Hoffman, Judge Julius, 46 “Hog Butcher for the World,” 75 Hogopolis, 63 Holland, 86 Holman, C. J., 110 Holman, Currier, 48 Hoof and Horn Restaurant, 93 Hoover, President Herbert, 37 Home of the Innocents, 70 Homestead Act, 83 House of Representatives, 28 Houston Belt and Terminal Railroad, 148 Houston Fat Stock Show, 151

218

A M E RICA’ S

H I STORIC


Houston ship channel, 149 Houston stockyards, 133,148-51; photo, 150 Hull House, 26 IBP (See Iowa Beef Processors), 49 IBP/Foodbrands, 49 ice packing, 96 Idaho, 130, 146 Iler, Peter E., 138 Illinois, 44, 65 Illinois and Michigan canal, 94 Illinois Central and Michigan Central Railroad, 75 Illinois State Board of Agriculture, 79 Immigrants, after 1890, 22; as strike breakers, 8; earnings of, 6; established farms, 83; exploitation of, 7; in Chicago, 78; in South Omaha, 104; from Eastern Europe, 93; from Middle Eastern culture, 62; in South St. Paul, 117; sought stockyards jobs, 6; Fort Worth, 9; unskilled workers, 5 Indian Territory, 133 Indiana Livestock Exchange, 55, footnote 173 Indianapolis Belt Railway Company, 97 Indianapolis, 21, 48, 50, 96 Indianapolis stockyards, 95-99; photo of, 98; see Appendix 2, 162 Indianapolis Stockyards Company, Inc., 99 Indianapolis Union Railway Company, 97 Intermountain West, 148 Interstate Commerce Act, 24, 35, 112 Iowa, 31, 44, 100, 130 Iowa City, Iowa, 91 Iowa Beef Packers (See Iowa Beef Processors), 48, 110 Iowa Beef Processors, (IBP), 48-49, 110 Irish immigrants, 78-80 Jackson, Mississippi, 126 Japan, 86 Japanese Americans, 135

Jenkins, Ronald, 95 Jensen, S. S., 146 Jersey City, 72, 162 Jersey City Stock Yards Company, 156 Jewish immigrants, 6, 62 John Clay and Company, 120 John Morrell and Company, 131-32, 155 Johnstone, John, 7 Joliet, Illinois, 156 Joplin, 4, 50, 133 Joplin Regional Stockyards, 153 Joplin stockyards, 37, 151-53 Judson, Mark, 129 Judson, Mary, 129 Jungle, The, 7, 26, 122, footnote, 167 Justice Department, 113 Kansas, 21, 44, 83 Kansas City, 21-22, competed with Louisville, 68; cooperative commission companies at, 36; 1870 activities, 13; in FTC report, 28; Philip Armour’s brother at, 87; P & S field office at, 48; St. Louis challenged, 74; Texas producers shipped to, 120, 148; Kansas City Connecting Railroad Company, 90 Kansas City stockyards, 86-92, photos of, 88, 90, see Appendix 2, 162; see Tables I, II, 160-61 Kansas City Stock Yards Company, 88, 112 Kansas cowtowns, xi Kansas legislature, 124 Kansas-Pacific Railroad, 87 Kaposia, (early Minnesota) 115 Kay Corporation, 107 KC Strips, 91 Kendrick, John B., 31 Kenton, Oregon, 136 Kenton Action Plan, 137 Kentucky, 17-18, 67 Kentucky State Fair, 70

I N DEX

Kenyon, William S., 31 King Ranch, 32 Kingan Brothers Packing, 96 Kleberg, Robert J., 32 Klesel, Fred J., 146 Lafayette, Indiana, 96 Lake, Illinois, 6, 78 Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, 78 Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 16, 50, 59 Lancaster stockyards, 60-63; photo of, 62; see Appendix 2, 162 Landreth, W. H., 151 Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 96 Lee, R. W., 65 Libby, McNeill and Libby, 119 Lipton, Sir Thomas, 102 Lithuanian immigrants, 6, 78 Lively, D. O., 135 livestock auctions, 42-43 livestock exchange, xiv, 89 “livestock hotels,” x, 3, 18, 29, 39, 49, 52, 84 livestock industry, 27, 51 Livestock Market Institute, 109 Livestock Market News Service, 36, 149 livestock marketing, as oligopolistic, 25; eastern capital in, 23; in mid-nineteenth century, 18; revolutionized, 53; large stockyards, ix; network, xiv; problems in mid-1950s, 42; strategies, xi Livestock marketing associations, 36 Livestock National Bank, 109 livestock show, 78 London, England 15, 102 Los Angeles, 156 Los Angeles stockyards, 156 Lot Pugh and Company, 65 Louisville, 18-19, 28, 50, 59 Louisville, Cincinnati and Lexington, 68 Louisville Fat Cattle Show, 69 Louisville and Nashville Railroad, 68

219

Louisville stockyards, 67-70; see Appendix 2, 162 Lovejoy, Asa L., 133 Lux, Charles, 137-38 Macedonian immigrants, 6 Madison, Indiana, 96 Madison Railroad, 96 “Magic City,” 103 “managerial capitalism,” 24 “managerial cooperativism,” 37 Manhattan Island, 16 Marcy, Jay, 36 Marshall, Missouri, 91 Maysville, Ohio, 18 MBPXL Corporation (See Excel Corporation), 49 McCarty, Nicholas, 96 McCord, James, 92 McCoy, Bill, 50, 61 McCoy, Joseph G., 13-14, 57 McCoy, Patrick, 62 McGhee, Allan, 56 McReynolds, Allan, 152 McReynolds, Allan, Jr., 153 McShane, John A., 103-04 Meat Inspection Act, 26 Mellon Bank, 54 Mennonite farmers, 62 Memphis, Tennessee, 126, 155 Merchant, Warren, 134 Mexican workforce, 6, 78 Mexicans, 54 Michaelis, H. R. “Herb,” 127 Michigan Livestock Exchange, in footnote, 173 Michigan Southern Yards, 75 Middle colonies, 16 Middle West, 51, 96 Midwest, 19, 24, 43, 51-52, 59, 81, 83, 109, 153 Midwestern farm bloc, 32, 34

220

A M E RICA’ S

H I STORIC


Midwestern farmers, 64 Military Plaza, 127 Miller and Johnson, 65 Miller, Henry, 137-38 Mills, Elisha, 63 Mills, William B., 112 Milwaukee, 21, 50, 122; in FTC report, 28; Plankinton and Armour there, 102 Milwaukee stockyards, 84-86, photo of 84; see Appendix 2, 162 Minnesota, 83, 130 Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad, 116 Minnesota Club, 115 Minnesota Packing and Provision Company, 116 Mission San Antonio de Valero, 127 Missouri, 34, 44, 83 Missouri Kansas & Texas Railroad (Katy), 126 Missouri Pacific Railroad, 152 Mistletoe Yards, 91 Montana, 22, 63, 83, 130, 146 Montana cattlemen, 115 Montana court decision, 55 Montana Livestock Company, 115 Montgomery, Alabama, 126 Moore Packing Company, 98 Morgan, W.H.H., 134 Morgan’s Landing, 134 Morrell, Chester, 34 Morrell and Company, 89 Morris and Company, 27, 73, 89, 141, 143; see Table II, 161 Morris and Sons, 24 Morris, Edward, 90; photo of, 142 Morris, Nelson, 22, 35, 73, 90, 93, 14142; photo of, 22 Morse, C. F., 112 Myrick Stockyards, 22 Nashville, 91, 155 National Beef Packing, 49

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, 55 National Hotel, 72 National Live Stock Exchange, 73 National Packing Company, 113 National Stock Yards, 72-73 National Stockyards, Illinois, 70-74 National Traders’ Exchange, 89 Nebraska, 44, 63, 83, 112, 134 Nebraska cowtowns, xi Neill, Thomas, 94 Nelson Morris Company, 23, 78 Nevada, 146 New Amsterdam, 16 New Castle, Pennsylvania, 16 New England, 15 New Mexico, 35, 44 New Orleans, 63, 71, 95 New York, 17, 19, 24, 61 New York Central System, 78 New York City, 16, 96, 107, 156 New York market, p. 160 Newark, 28 Niles, Louville, V., 120-21 North Fort Worth, 121 North American International Livestock Exposition, 70 North Atlantic states, 51 North Carolina, 16 North Dakota, 31, 115, 130, 132 Occidental Petroleum, 49 Ogallala Aquifer, 53 Ogden, 23, 133 Ogden Livestock Show, 147 Ogden Packing and Provision Company, 146-47 Ogden stockyards, 145-48; see Appendix 2, 162 Ogden Union Stockyards Company, 146 Ogden, Utah, 102 Ohio, 18

I N DEX

Ohio-Mississippi network, 17 Oklahoma, 44, 63 Oklahoma City, 23, 50, Oklahoma City stockyards, 53, 75, 133, 140-45; photo of, 145; see Appendix 1, 160-61; see Appendix 2, 162 Oklahoma National Stock Yards Company, 143 Omaha, 21, 24, 28, 47-48, 50, 72, 130, 147 Omaha, city of, 106 Omaha Livestock Exchange, 102 Omaha Livestock Market, Inc., 107 Omaha meat packers, 106 Omaha stockyards, xiii, 36, 78, 85, 10007, 138, photos of 105-06; see Appendix 1, 160-61; see Appendix 2, 162 Omaha Union Stockyards, 105 Omaha Union Stock Yard Company, 102 Oregon, 130 Oregon Waste Systems, Inc., 136 Ottumwa, Iowa, 155 Overton, William, 133 P&S (See Packers and Stockyards Administration) Pacific Northwest, 136 Packers and Stockyards Act, 33, 45, 123 Packers and Stockyards Administration, 46, 47, 50, 114-15, 166, defines terminal market, 127, 129; federal appointees to, 35; field offices, 5; first head of, 34; in 1991, 99; latter twentieth century, 45; number of offices, 48; officials at stockyards, xii; Oklahoma yards, 144; refereed after 1921, 4 Packers’ Consent Decree, 32, 45 “Packingtown,” 78, 142 Packers, the Private Car Lines and the People, The, 122 Palmer, Attorney General A. Mitchell, 32 Panama Pacific International Exposition, 135 Panic of 1873, 97, 124

221

Panic of 1893, 116, 121, 139 Patterson, Hal R., 153 Patterson, Harve R., 151 Paxton, William A., 101 Pennsylvania, 100 Pennsylvania Railroad, 61, 78, 157 Peoria market, 21, 42, 50, 94-95; photo of, 95; see Appendix 2, 162 Peoria Packing Company, 94 Peoria Union Stock Yards, 94 Peoria Union Stock Yards Company, 3-4 Pettigrew, R. F., 130 Pettingill, A. J., 130 Pettygrove, Francis W., 133 Philadelphia, 16-17, 19, 28, 62 Pingree, James, 146 Pittsburgh, 67, 157 Pittsburgh and Fort Wayne Yards, 75 Pittsburgh market, 72; see Appendix 2, 162 Pittsburgh Provision Company and Joint Stockyards, 157 Plankinton and Armour, 84-85, 87, 102 Plankinton, John, 81, 84 Polish immigrants, 6, 78 Populists, 26 Porkopolis, 63, 65 Port City Packing Company, 149 Port City Stockyards, 37, 54, 148-49; photo of, 150 Portland, 23, 28, 42, 47-48, 133-137, 156; photo of, 136; see Appendix 2, 162 Portland International Livestock Exhibition Center, 135 Portland Livestock Exchange, 134 Portland Union Stock Yards Company, 134 Pratt, Homer, 127 Progressive Era, 26 Promontory Point, Utah Territory, xi Pure Food and Drug Administration, 26 “Queen City,” 63, 65

222

A M E RICA’ S

H I STORIC


race problems, 8, 80 Rancho Buri Buri, 137 Rauh, Charles, 99 Rauh family, 98 Rauh, Samuel E., 98-99 Red Oak, Iowa, 107 Red Steer Café, 135, 137 Richardson, E. E., 112 Roosevelt, President Theodore, 25, 115 Rumanians, 117 Rushville, Nebraska, 36 S.F. Properties, 137 S & S Company (see Schwarzchild and Sulzberger), 143 San Antonio, 21, 50, 83, see Appendix 2, 162 San Antonio stockyards, 127-130, photo of, 128 San Antonio Stock Yards Company, 128 Sanchez, Jose Antonio, 137 Santa Fe Railroad, 124 Sartwelle, J. D., 54, 150 Sartwelle, J. D., Jr., 151 Sartwelle, J.W., 148, 150 Scherrer, Jacob, 112 Schwarzchild and Sulzberger, 24, 27, 89, 141 Scottish-Irish immigrants, 16, 78 Sealy, Texas, 151 Seattle, 115 Seelback, Louis, 70 Serbian immigrants, 78 Sewell, Terry, 95 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 24 Sherman, John B., 22, 76-77; photo of, 77 Sherman Yards, 75 Sierra Petroleum Company, 126-27 Silver, Gray, 33 Simons, David, 52 Simpson, G. W., 120-21 Sims Bill, H.R. 13324, 28

Sinclair, Upton, 7-8, 26, 122, in footnote, 167 Sioux City, 21, closed, 94; in FTC report, 28; owned by United Stockyards, 47; 50 Sioux City, Iowa, 130 Sioux City stockyards, 21, 107-11; closed, 94 devastating flood at, 109; FTC report, 18; United Stockyards, 47,50; photos, 108,110; see Appendix 1, 160-61; see Appendix 2, 162 Sioux City Stock Yards Company, 10910, 132 Sioux Falls, 21, 47, 50 Sioux Falls stockyards, 130-32; photo of, 131; see Appendix 2, 162 Sioux Falls Stockyards Company, 130 Skytrain Airlines, 149 Sixty-fifth Congress, 32 Sixty-sixth Congress, 32 Skinner-Dold Packing plant, 105 Slovenian immigrants, 6, 78 Smith, Adam, 23 Smith Brothers, 112-13 Smith, Daniel C., 126 Smith, Daniel C., Jr., (Conlee), 126 Smith, Dan C., III, 126 Smith, E. G., 130 Smithfield, England, 15 Snodgrass, Stephen S., 68 South Dakota, 44, 130, 132 South Omaha, 103-04 South Omaha Land Company, 103 South Omaha Land Syndicate, 100 South San Francisco, 23, 133, 156, see Appendix 2, 162 South San Francisco, city of, 137 South San Francisco Land and Improvement Company, 138 South San Francisco stockyards, xiii, 137-40, 156, photo of, 140 South San Francisco Union Stock Yards Company, 140 South St. Joseph, 93

I N DEX

South St. Paul, 21, 48, 50, 130 South St. Paul stockyards, xiii, 115-18, photos of, 116, 118; see Appendix 2, 162 South St. Paul Union Stockyards, 11617, 155 Southern Pacific Railroad, 128, 134, 138, 146 “Spanish fever,” 124 Spain, 86 Spanish cattle trade, 137 Spiva, George N., 152 Spokane stockyards, 156 Spokane, Washington, 31 Stewart, James, 61 St. George, Missouri, 93 Stickney, A. B., 115 St. Joseph, 21, 22, 109 St. Joseph stockyards, 50, 92-94; Allerton invested in, 72; cooperative commission companies at, 36; in FTC report, 28; location, xiii; owned by United Stockyards, 47; photo of, 93; profits of, 4; see Appendix 1, 160-61; see Appendix 2, 162 St. Joseph Stock Yards Company, 92 St. Joseph Union Stock Yards, 92 St. Louis, 50, 59, 71, 109 St. Louis Live Stock Exchange, 73 St. Louis Live Stock Reporter, The, 73 St. Louis National Stockyards, 71, 73 St. Louis stockyards, 70-75; Allerton instrumental in, 72; auction building, photo of, 42; competed with Louisville, 68; during Civil War, 19; immigrants at, 6; in FTC report, 28; photo of, 74; received Texas cattle, 21; see Appendix 1, 160-61; see Appendix 2, 162; tour of facilities, 96; Texas producers shipped to, 120; wages at, 7 St. Louis Union Stockyards, 71 Stockton, California, 156 Stockton stockyards, 156 “stockyards,” broad, narrow definitions, xii; companies, 23; procedures, 3; profits, 4; sources of revenue, xiii; wages

223

and working conditions, 6-7 Stockyards Café, 152 “Stockyards City,” 145 Stockyards Labor Council, 7 Stone, George, 141 St. Paul market, 28, 62, 160-61 St. Paul Bridge and Terminal Railway Company, 117 Superior Livestock Auction, Inc., 54 Swan, Alexander H., 100-02, photo of 101 Swan Land and Cattle Company, 100-02 Swift, and Consent Decree, 46; as large packer, 4; at St. Louis, 73; came to Sioux City, 109; closed in Omaha, 106; controlled St. Louis, 73; created fringe benefits, 8; created United Stockyards, 35, 46; FTC report, 27; in footnote, 170; in Fort Worth, 118, 121-23; in Louisville, 69; in Ogden, 148; in Omaha, 102, 105; in Portland, 135; in San Francisco, 137; major packer buyer, 118; bonuses, 23; see Table II, 161; shut down Chicago plant, 80; shut down Fort Worth plant, 124; survival, 49; vertical integration of, 25 Swift, Edward F., photo of, 119 Swift and Company, established in Chicago, 138; as one of Big Four, 24; bought into St. Joseph, 93; bought Sioux Falls yards, 132; came to Omaha, 104; Gustavus F. Swift founder, 119; in Denver, 113; in Portland, 134, 136; in South St Paul, 117; moved to Kansas City, 89; 139 Swift, Gustavus F., 93, 119; photo of, 138 Swift, Gustavus Franklin, Jr., photo of, 139 Swift Independent Packing Company (SIPCO), 49 Swift interests, 84 Swift plant, 94, 110 Swift v. United States, in footnote, 170 Syrian immigrants, 78 Taft, Chief Justice William Howard, 34 telephone auction, 86

224

A M E RICA’ S

H I STORIC


“Tel-O-Market,” 86 Terre Haute, Indiana, 96 Texas, 22, 43, 63, 83, 118, 120, 123 Texas A & M University, 55 Texas cattle, 71, 89 Texas Cattle Feeders Association, 44 Texas Livestock Marketing Association, 52 Texas longhorns, ix, 21, 59, 71, 88, 148 Texas & Pacific Railroad, 119, 126 Texas Panhandle, 44, 53, 124, 130 “Texas Trail,” 119 This Little Pig Went to Market, 38 Thompson, R. B. “Dick,” 126 Tomes, George K., 70 Toronto, 155 “traders exchange,” xiv Traders Livestock Exchange, 89 Transit House Hotel, 93 triangular partnership, 158 Tulsa, 155 Turkey, 86 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 51-52 Tyson Foods, 49 Ukrainian immigrants, 78 Uncle Sam, 29, 31, 45 Union, 73 Union Meat Company, 134 Union Pacific Railroad, 42, 87, 100, 102, 112, 146 Union Railroad Stock Yard Company, 66 Union Railroad Station, 111 Union Railroad Transfer and Stock Yards Company, 97 Union Stock Yards (Chicago), 116 Union Stock Yards (San Antonio), 128-29 Union Stock Yard Company (Lancaster), 61 Union Stock Yards Company (Omaha), 100-01, 104 Union Stock Yards Company (Portland), 134

Union Stock Yards Company (Sioux City), 108-09 Union Stock Yard and Transit Company of Chicago, The, 76 United States Supreme Court, 55, 114 United States v. Swift & Co. et al, in footnote, 170 United Stockyards, 117; acquired Fort Worth’s stock, 123; acquired Omaha, 107; bought out General Stockyards, 46; leased Indianapolis Stockyards, 99; owned Milwaukee yards, 86; owned St. Joseph, 94; owned seven yards in 1990s, 47; owned Sioux City, 111; once owned West Fargo yards, 155; owned Stockton yards, 156; president of, 118; Swift and Company created, 35, 132 Upper Yards, 100 Uvacek, Ed, Jr., 55 U.S. Cattlemen’s Congress, 145 U.S. Department of Agriculture, xii U.S. Department of Agriculture Market News Service, 53 U.S. Small Business Administration, 48 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 78 Vanderbilt family, 79, 121 Vanderbilt, William H., 71, 78 Vest committee, 24 Vest, George Graham, 24 Vicksburg, Mississippi, 126 video marketing, ix, 53, 55, 70, 153 Virginia, 67 Vissman, Herman F., 68 Wade, Louise Carroll, xii, 7 Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture Henry C., 34 Walker, J. M., 87 Walters and Aicher, 113 War of 1812, 17 Washington, 135 Washington, D. C., 19, 61, 91 Washington, George, 15, 17

I N DEX

Waste Management of North America, Inc., 136 Wattis, W. H., 146 Waynesville, Ohio, 64 Weber Livestock Auction Company, 147 Welsh immigrants, 78 West Fargo, North Dakota, 37, 155 West Fargo market, 162 West Virginia, 33, 121 Western Meat Company, 138-39 Western Packing Plant, 113 Western and Southwestern Railroad, 124 Wetzel, Samuel B., 112 Western Video Market, 54 West Indies, 16 Whitlock, Lester P., 146 Wichita Live Stock Exchange, 125 Wichita stockyards, 124-27, cooperative commission companies at, 36; located to north, xiii; photos of, 10, 125; received Texas cattle, 21; see Appendix 1, 160; see Appendix 2, 162; weigh scales of, 10

225

Wichita Union Stock Yards, xiii, 124, 126 Wickert and Neill, 94 Wilder, Dale, 155-56 Wilson, J. M., 112 Wilson, Thomas E., 8, 23, 27, 89, 10506, 113, 141, 143, 161 Wilson, President Woodrow, 26-28 Winship, John, 15 Wisconsin, 83-84 Witmer, Abraham, 60 women workers, 8 Works Progress Administration, 130 World War I, 26-27, 78, 122 World War II, 38, 41, 43, 74, 94, 109, 117, 123, 135 Wyoming, 31, 83, 100, 103, 130 Yeager, Mary, 25 Yocom, Allyn, 134 Zimmerman, Curt, 118

This is the first comprehensive look at America’s stockyards between 1865 and the 1980s. It is the colorful story of an important era in American history.— DAVID DARY author of Cowboy Culture, The Buffalo Book, The Santa Fe Trail, and other titles about the Old West

An excellent account of terminal markets and the role they played in livestock marketing.— DAN VAN ACKEREN Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, Washington, D.C., retired.

ISBN 0-87565-304-9

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