Stockyards

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STOCKYARDS

STOCKYARDS. Travelers along the Cumberland Road and other highways leading into the American West of the 1820s and 1830s were accustomed to the familiar sight of droves of cattle fattened on the frontier farms of the Midwest on their way to the markets of eastern seaboard cities. The extension of the railroads into the West in the two succeeding decades changed this, so that by the outbreak of the Civil War, livestock had become one of the chief freight items of the western roads. This change in the marketing of livestock resulted in new business methods. At the various western termini, accommodations for holding livestock, commission firms to handle consignments for the shipper, and packing plants to process a portion of the shipments appeared as component parts of a great business community.

The early stockyards in these terminal cities were either private yards or yards owned and operated by the railroads. As the traffic increased, need for a consolidated yard became clear to all. On 25 December 1865, the Union Stock Yards, founded by John B. Sherman, opened in Chicago. Under a charter granted by the Illinois legislature, a company known as the Union Stockyard and Transit Company was formed with a capital of $1million. The railroads running into Chicago took most of the stock, and officials of most of the railroads served on the board of directors. As the trade in western cattle grew, yards were opened in other cities. Kansas City opened in 1871, St. Louis in 1872, Cincinnati in 1874, Omaha in 1884, and St. Paul and Denver in 1886.

The rise of Chicago to a position of supremacy was due to its favorable location—nine important railroad lines converged there—and to the advantage given it by the concentration of supplies for the Union armies during the Civil War. Equally important was the enterprise of its citizens in furnishing factors indispensable for the efficient marketing of livestock, including commission houses, stockyards, and packing plants. With cattle pouring in from the western ranges, the large packing companies, including Nelson Morris in 1859, Armour in 1867, and Swift in 1875, began concentrating in Chicago, making it the greatest livestock center in the world. By the early 1970s, Omaha, Nebraska, had become the largest livestock market in the world, and Chicago's Union Stock Yards were closed in 1971.

Distinctive communities grew up in and around the yards in the various cities. The great packing companies built their plants nearby, and around them sprawled the "packing towns" made famous in Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, The Jungle, about exploitation of immigrant workers. Commission men, cattle and horse buyers, railroad men, reporters of stock news, cattlemen and their cowboys from the western ranges, and stock detectives representing western livestock associations could all be found in the yards. They formed a vigorous, distinctive, and colorful group in the business community of the West.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton, 1991.

Jablonsky, Thomas J. Pride in the Jungle: Community and Everyday Life in Back of the Yards Chicago. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Wade, Louise Carroll. Chicago's Pride: The Stockyards, Packing-town, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Ernest S.Osgood/h. s.