Slaughterhouse Chicago Union Stockyard and the World It Made by Dominic a Pacyga Review
Book Club Mon Nov thirty 2015
Dominic A. Pacyga Talks About Abattoir: Chicago's Union Stock Yard and the World It Made
According to Frank Sinatra, "Chicago is the Marriage Stock Yards" (see "My Kind of Boondocks", the hitting vocal from 1964's criminally underappreciated Robin and the seven Hoods). Chicago's been known for a lot of things: the Great Fire, the Earth'due south Fairs and Al Capone, for example, but for more than a century most Americans knew Chicago as "Pig Butcher for the World."
Despite reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in high school or college, most Chicagoans don't realize the Matrimony Stock Yard was 1 of the biggest tourist attractions in the nation, nor that it was nigh a self-sustaining city unto itself, full of hotels, taverns, and 40,000 people.
I never realized the Marriage Stock Yard was such a huge tourist allure in its heyday. What do you think drew then many people to visit dorsum so?
At the turn of the century it is estimated that some 500,000 people visited the Union Stock Yard and Packingtown annually. Today information technology is difficult to understand why this became such a great tourist allure, but in the years later on the Civil State of war the meat industry provided innovation, but besides a chiliad spectacle to a quickly changing earth being transformed past industry. The very notion that here was the "modern" in all of its strangely perverse celebrity became an attraction to the crowds that made their style to see the Brave New World in the stockyards.
One of your central claims in Slaughter-house is that the Matrimony Stock G "ushered in the modernistic industrial historic period." What do you mean by that?
The Chicago Union Stock 1000 and the packinghouses that presently settled side by side to it changed the age-quondam relationship between livestock and mankind. The "modern" presented itself on the kill floors of Chicago. What took a skilled beefiness butcher and his assistant more than eight hours to do occurred in roughly 37 minutes in Chicago. The disassembly line in the packinghouses gave nascence to the assembly line at Ford Motor Co. These large firms also tried and perfected a national marketing organisation, established huge efficient factories, and incredibly well organized full general offices that employed thousands of white-collar workers across the "Square Mile." In addition, new means of advertizement and marketing were as well pioneered in the commune. Even the idea of regime regulation of industry emerged in the stockyards as the federal government attempted to prevent monopoly and to ensure salubrious meat for the nation and the globe.
What's the nigh interesting thing most people don't know about the Union Stock Yard?
Many people remember they know a lot about the yards, but in reality much of what they know is myth or a issue of reading Sinclair's The Jungle, an of import muckraking novel. I think that most people do not understand the pregnant role that the industry in full general and that "Square Mile" in detail played in the transformation of the United states of america from a basically agricultural country to an industrial behemoth. The stockyards were more than the scent, they were central to the innovation of industry and business organisation in full general. Furthermore, they provided a spectacle that few who witnessed it ever forgot. As I tell my students, Chicago was the Cupertino (the centre of Silicon Valley today) of the flow from the Civil State of war until later on the Korean Disharmonize. People and ideas gathered here to seek their fortunes. The Union Stock Chiliad and Packingtown were prime examples of that process. The International Livestock Exposition's motto "Success Comes To Those Who Hustle Wisely" should exist emblazoned on the urban center's crest.
How was writing this book different from writing Chicago: A Biography?
Chicago: A Biography was the effect of 30 years of teaching the city'south history in the classroom. I hoped to lay out a reasonable text for students and the general public alike who wanted to know well-nigh Chicago's by. Slaughter-house was besides the issue of more than twoscore years of fascination with the stockyards. Those who know my biography might remember this a more personal book, only in reality just like my before work, Slaughter-house is the effect of years of enquiry and writing. Certainly the telescopic of the two books are very different, merely I hope that both tell the story of one of America's most important urban places.
Could the downfall and closing of the yards been prevented, or was it inevitable thanks to technological progress?
Given the changes in transportation technology and the development of direct ownership methods by the packers information technology is hard to see how the stockyards could have survived. The Union Stock Grand was born of the railroads. The motor truck and the interstate highway arrangement, forth with improved ways of communication basically meant it would become into pass up. There was also a swell bargain of force per unit area from the urban center regarding pollution and other nuisances, which fabricated it more and more difficult for both the meatpackers and the stockyard company to stay in the city. As well the center of livestock production was continually moving west. Just given all that, it would have been possible (and I debate still is) for a smaller livestock market to operate in Chicago and continue the city's tradition equally a major nutrient producer. The major problem was that the belongings was getting to be too valuable to be left equally a livestock marketplace. With the continued reject of livestock receipts at Chicago, the ownership decided to turn the land over to what they felt was a more profitable use.
Where are the best places to run across the legacy of the yards today?
The Rock Gate still stands at Commutation Avenue and Peoria Street in the Stockyard Industrial Park. Various meat packers nonetheless operate in the area including 2 slaughterhouses. In many ways The Plant, a nutrient business incubator at 1400 W. 46th St., and Testa Produce at 46th and Racine Avenue both maintain the tradition of innovation and spectacle that I write about in the book. A walk around the 4 neighborhoods that surround the Union Stock Grand and Packingtown: Bridgeport, Canaryville, Back of the Yards, and McKinley Park would tell volumes about the immigrant history of Chicago.
Source: http://gapersblock.com/bookclub/2015/11/30/dominic_a_pacyga_talks_about_slaughterhouse_chicagos_union_stock_yard_and_the_world_it_made/
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