Chicago was a better market for pickled pork and corned beef than Milwaukee, as more boats fitted out there, and more emigrants were landing on their way to take up government land.
One of Mr. Armour's brothers, Joe, was a packer in Chicago. Another brother, H. O., was in the commission business there. Joe's health, it seems, was pretty bad, so in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, Philip Armour came to Chicago, and shortly the house of Armour and Company came into being—H. O. Armour going to New York to look after Eastern trade and financing. In those days branch houses were unknown and packing-house products were handled by jobbers.
The Father of the Packing-House Industry was Philip Danforth Armour. The business of the Packing-House Industry is to gather up the food-products of America and distribute them to the world.
Let the fact here be stated that the world is better fed today than it ever has been since Herodotus sharpened his faber and began writing history, four hundred fifty years before Christ. In this matter of food, the danger lies in overeating and not in lack of provender.
The business of Armour and Company is to buy from the producer and distribute to the consumer. So Armour and Company have to satisfy two parties—the producer and the consumer. Both being fairly treated have a perfect right to grumble.
The buyer of things which Nature forces the man to buy, is usually a complainer, and he complains of the seller because he is near, just as a man kicks the cat and takes it out on his wife, or the mother scolds the children.
To the farmers, Armour used to say with stunning truth, "You get more for your produce today than you got before I showed up on the scene; and you get your money on the minute, without haggle or question. I furnish you an instantaneous market."
To the consumer he said: "I supply you with regularity and I give you quality at a price more advantageous to you than your local butcher can command. My profit lies in that which has always been thrown away. As for sanitation, go visit your village slaughter-house and then come and see the way I do it!"
Upton Sinclair scored two big points on Packingtown and its Boss Ogre. They were these: First, the Ogre hired men and paid them to kill animals. Second, these dead animals were distributed by the Ogre and his minions and the corpses eaten by men, women and children. It was a revolting revelation. It even shook the nerves of a President, one of the killingest men in the world, who, not finding enough things to kill in America, went to Africa to kill things.