Meatpacking workers carry their product to unrefrigerated and most likely rat-infested storage areas. Image is in the Public Domain.
“In the beginning, he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job that first day, but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They had worn him out, with their speedin-up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away!”Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Meatpacking business
The nightmare of the Chicago meatpacking industry was best described by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author Upton Sinclair. He only began to tell the story of the meatpacking industry’s beginnings in this nation. As the wheels of American industry began to turn, so did the meatpacking business in Chicago in 1900 – and the conditions were unsanitary, unregulated, and unsafe. Adding long hours, low wages, and child labor to the equation yields a social nightmare.
Throughout the years, the Chicago Meatpacking Industry has faced numerous challenges and controversies, shaping its legacy.
Chicago 1900
It was January 12, 1909, and the weather in Chicago was typical – cold, and the wind coming off the Chicago River was harsh. Early that morning, John Panzezyk set off from his dismal tenement home in the Stockyard district to walk the short distance to his job at a meatpacking plant. His workdays were usually 12 to 15 hours long, and this day he hoped to stay warm. He said goodbye to his wife and four small children. Sadly, it would be the last time they would see him alive. Later that day, John was killed at work when he got caught in the belt of a large meat machine.
Big Business rules
In a time when big business ruled, and workers had no rights, and certainly no extended benefits, it is likely that Mrs. Panzezyk and her children would soon become destitute, and possibly homeless. The reality of this terrible event offers a small window into the family tragedy that would have certainly followed. The story of John Panzezyk is just one example of the realities Upton Sinclair sought to convey.
Cheap labor
In Chicago in 1900, the meatpacking industry, along with other industries, began to expand. There was money to be made both at home and overseas. Making profits initially relied on two major factors: cheap labor and the absence of regulation. Fresh immigrants, many of them Polish, and an abundance of children as young as 8 made up their workforce.
The growth of the Chicago Meatpacking Industry significantly impacted the local economy and labor market.
Dangerous work
The Chicago meatpacking industry was deadly. As the scale and size of their facilities increased, so did the dangers. By the 1880s, the European meat markets closed their doors to imported American meat. America’s many stockyards were known to be filthy and a breeding ground for diseased meat. Many of the meats were rancid, rat-infested, and rife with bacteria.
Many people were unaware of the sanitary issues plaguing the Chicago Meatpacking Industry during this period.
No safety regulations
Workers had few, if any, guidelines for the quality control of their products. There were no workplace safety rules. Wearing gloves or hairnets was not considered. In addition to being handled by unclean workers in an unsanitary environment, large volumes of meat were not always refrigerated. Despite widespread use of brining or salting meat, some processed meat was not always properly preserved. The biggest concern, however, was whether or not the live cow or hog was diseased before it went to the processing plant.
Public awareness of the Chicago Meatpacking Industry’s practices eventually led to calls for reform.
Diseased meat
It is difficult to say how many Europeans, as well as Americans, became sick or died because of the diseased meat. The Europeans claimed that the meat caused pleuro-pneumonia and cholera. A combination of both pleurisy and pneumonia, the nasty respiratory infection only caused vomiting, diarrhea, sometimes bloody diarrhea, chills, sweats, and intense pain in the abdomen. The not-so-lucky ones died. And, if you had the misfortune of dining on cholera-infected meat (massive infection of the intestines), your chances of survival were slim.
Critics noted that the Chicago Meatpacking Industry lacked proper oversight and accountability.
No sanitation
Recent science would suggest that there was a lot more going on than just cholera and pneumonia. In the days before health inspections, despite regulations on the quality control of both animals and meat processing, several strains of bacteria contaminated the meat.
Bovine tuberculosis
It was usually found in raw milk but also appeared in infected animals, especially when the meat was undercooked. The impact on humans who ingested this meat was the passing of tuberculosis bacteria, a deadly lung infection. Brucellosis, anthrax, and trichinosis are just a few more likely contaminants in diseased meat. These bacteria, along with the others, caused serious illnesses and, in many cases, death.
Health concerns surrounding the Chicago Meatpacking Industry had far-reaching implications for consumers.
Meat market
Chicago meatpackers understood that to survive, they also needed to sell their products in the European market. By 1900, Chicago had become the center of American industry, and small companies began merging. By the turn of the last century, there were only five or six mammoth meatpacking companies, which controlled the majority of meatpacking in America. The problem was that they still had not penetrated the European market.
Regulations
The answer, of course, was that the industry needed regulation. The meatpackers needed to clean up their processing facilities, set standards for their workers, and enlist field inspectors to monitor the animals. It was the meatpacking industry itself that sought the government’s enactment of federal legislation and regulations governing its business.
As a result, the Chicago Meatpacking Industry became a focal point for regulatory changes.
A way of eliminating small competitors
It seems that many small meatpacking companies were undercutting the Chicago big boys, and had been for a long time. And, they felt it was time to drive them out of business. Historian John Kolko argued that the federal legislation the big meatpackers were pushing for was easily affordable to them, but it would put the small companies out of business. And that is exactly what happened. The big boys could raise prices to cover the costs of the new regulations. So, it really wasn’t about the meat packers doing the right thing to make the world and their employees safe. It was about making money.
The strategy of eliminating small competitors was prevalent in the Chicago Meatpacking Industry’s history.
Children workers
By rough estimates, thousands of children worked in the Chicago meatpacking industry at the turn of the century. Because of the low wages, immigrant families, like many other families, were forced to live on a family wage. Sometimes, children worked as long as their parents, usually 10 to 15 hours a day. Their living accommodations were essentially an extension of the hell that they endured during the day. It was also an extension of the control the meat packers had over their workers.
The exploitation of child labor in the Chicago Meatpacking Industry raised significant ethical concerns.
Housing workers at the stockyards
The Stockyard community was the residential area next to the stockyards and the many meatpacking plants in Chicago. It was close to the Chicago River and only minutes from work. It was convenient, and the great majority of the workers lived in this dismal, loud, and overcrowded area. Most importantly, the rent was affordable.
Living conditions near the Chicago Meatpacking Industry were often deplorable for workers and their families.
Families
Sometimes, as many as seven families used one outdoor bathroom. Depending on the time of year, the streets were full of mud and excrement from overflowing cesspools. To add to the misery, the Stockyards were surrounded by the city’s dumps. The garbage stench and the smell from the vile waste of the meatpacking plants that floated down the Chicago River had to be overbearing.
Accidents
Workplace accidents, like John Panzezyk’s, were all too common. Additionally, several nightmare diseases were associated with working in the plants. Before the age of throwaway gloves and protective clothing, skin infections were a constant concern.
Workplace safety in the Chicago Meatpacking Industry was a growing concern among labor advocates.
Pickled hands
Workers who were unfortunate enough to be assigned to the pickle rooms (pickling meats and sausages was fashionable before freezers became widespread) often developed a very nasty infection from constantly handling cold meat with their hands. The medical term was called dermatoconiosis; the workers, however, gave the infection a more appropriate term — pickled hands.
The toll on workers in the Chicago Meatpacking Industry was often underestimated by the public.
The idea of a person’s hands actually becoming “pickled” is beyond understanding. After the skin turned red, it then hardened and cracked. The skin would split and open, sometimes all the way to the bone. Horrible sores would then develop on the workers’ palms and the back of their hands. It would take at least two months to heal, assuming they were allowed to work in another department so the infection could heal. Some infected workers just continued handling and contaminating the meat — despite their hands essentially being “pickled”, and, as long as they could stand it.
Warts
Health risks from skin infections were common among workers in the Chicago Meatpacking Industry.
Another common skin infection was the tubular wart, but the yard workers called it a cut worm. Cut worm came from handling hog intestines. Large warts grew rapidly on the workers’ hands, split open, and developed into ulcers. Workers did not use gloves until after WWI.
Lung infections
Despite the dangers, many chose to work in the Chicago Meatpacking Industry for the wages it offered.
Although most of the infections described were ghastly, they rarely led to death. Workers, however, working in the wool, hair, or bone grinding department, stood a good chance of contracting a serious lung infection, which many times developed into chronic coughs, then pneumonia, and ultimately death.
Arguably, the job with the highest risk of death belonged to the men working in the massive carcass coolers. Imagine working 10 to 15 hours a day, dragging animal carcasses in and out of warm air into refrigerated cooler units, and doing this for days or weeks. years, and even decades. It doesn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to realize that these workers would suffer, and did, at a much higher rate of cardiovascular, respiratory, and many other illnesses.
The legacy of the Chicago Meatpacking Industry continues to influence labor practices today.
Premature Deaths of Workers
Sadly, there are numerous accounts of the premature deaths of the workers. Upton Sinclair spoke to that in his novel The Jungle :
“And as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,—sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard!”
Working in meatpacking houses was dangerous due to accidents and the risk of worker illness. At the turn of the last century, the bosses of the meatpacking industry viewed workers as totally replaceable, expendable, and with only limited value to them.
Historical accounts of the Chicago Meatpacking Industry reveal systemic issues that persisted over decades.
A century, and more, has passed since these dark days of the meatpacking industry. The dark days, however, did not end. In a 1999 Bureau of Labor Statistics report, meatpacking was determined to be the most dangerous occupation in America. It also determined that at least one quarter of meatpackers suffered serious injury or illness in their careers. Injuries in the meatpacking business were five times the national average. According to historian Eric Schlosser, the meatpacking industry has a well-documented history of discouraging injury reporting, falsifying injury data, and quickly returning injured workers to the job to minimize lost workdays.
Today, the lessons learned from the Chicago Meatpacking Industry shape modern food safety regulations.
About the Author
good novel great 10/10
One of the most influential books Zi remember reading was the book of Upton Sinclair, The Jungle. He died on November 25th 1968, st age 90.
What an American hero.
Thank you for posting this article. It has given me some much needed insight into a character I am writing.
I agree with Karuna Saraswati in her comments on Upton Sinclair and his book The Jungle. I’m going to read it in full…very important book to understand American history and the struggle of workers and immigrant to assimilate.
good stuff allen
Mr. meat ain’t gonna be happy when he sees this
Proud of you Allen! Great work! Very informative!