Items Tagged With History

World's Columbian Exposition: Chicago, United States, 1893

Thoughts from Ulla:

The Midwest is possibly the most fertile place on earth. Glacial deposits blessed the Midwest and particularly Iowa with prodigious amounts of highly productive top soil. Our ascendancy to becoming THE world power can be traced to the productive agricultural might of the Midwest, and the freedom it gave us to industrialize and no other town has been impacted more by the riches of our agricultural bounty than Chicago. Chicago was the center for commodity trading and the financial center of the Midwest where cattle and hogs were brought and fattened and slaughtered in an unprecedented factory-like manner. The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards processed more meat then any other place in the world from the Civil War until the 1920s reaching its peak in 1924. Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” chronicled the slaughterhouses to the horror of a newly industrialized America, in many ways Michael Pollen’s the Omnivores Dilemma has done the same for this generation; bringing the horrors of our modern day feedlots to the homes of suburban America. Our beef production is now controlled by four large packers who exercise control over the whole process of bringing beef to our plate, this was true back in our gilded age and policy makers where able to wrestle control back to help protect workers and customers. Sinclair’s book changed America he intended to shed light on industrial labor and working conditions, but food safety became a national obsession. Sinclair talked of workers falling into rendering tanks and being ground into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard". Americans where aghast, coupled with the high death rate of slaughterhouse workers and the exploitation of children and women and the fact that foreign sales of American meat fell by one-half impelled governmental action. Does this sound familiar? Koreans refusing our beef, immigrant children being used in meat packing plants and Americans becoming obese on unhealthy fat? This is true today and I think we have a unique opportunity to take the power back from the consolidation that has happened, we did it back then, why not now?


Notes from Franny on the Union Stockyards:

The Union Yards were established in a purchase of 320 acres of swamp land in 1864 by 9 railroad companies that saw a great opportunity in a consolidated railway shipping center taking the bounty of the west to the east. Originally, live cattle were shipped from the Stockyards east to local markets and local slaughterhouses where cattle production was waning. Pigs, on the other hand, were slaughtered at the Stockyards from the beginning; their meat was shipped salted, smoked, and cured.  In the early 1880’s, the entire cattle industry changed when an engineer friend of the Swift company invented the refridgerated railway car. This was the key to creating the 1st vertically integrated business where could be bought live (on the hoof), slaughtered, and shipped to butchers in local markets. The Armour Company and the Swift Company were among the largest holders of this vertically integrated businesses centered at the Union Stockyards and their hold across the many stages of production and distribution gave birth to the still present tension between small processor and large processor, producer and packer, and nameless slaughterhouse worker and corporate giant.

People noted that the Stockyards were in the truest sense a human machine.  They employed human labor to disassemble the animal parts.  At the time, machines were not capable of dealing with such raw and non-uniform materials as animals, so humans became the working pieces of the machine, setting an example for the marvelous organization of machines to come, machines that would propel American Industry to it’s height of might.  With 2,000 workers and roughly 38,000 animals killed per day, the development of organizational efficiency was key in creating a sustained center of processing that would feed the growing and hardworking American populace. The division of labor saw it’s day in Chicago at the Stockyards at  the turn of the century, and this division of labor model has since trickled into factory systems across the world. 

Although it was called the Union Stockyards, any attempt at starting unions were oppressed by the big operators. There were two Unionizing attempts, one of which was lost in a strike.  It wasn’t until Congress passed the Wagner Act in 1935, which encouraged collective bargaining, that a union was formed by workers at the Union Stockyards.

The stockyards did, however, offer employment to millions of immigrants over the years who dreamed the American dream. Chicago was a marvel as it grew more than any other city in the World in one generation, and this, as Ulla stated earlier was given to it’s place as an agricultural trading center sitting at the crossroads of a country’s farmland and newly industrialized cities.

Cattle in Beaverhead County, Montana, 1942, photo by Lee Russell

In a land where rainfall is seasonal, great bison buffalo herds maintained the prairie grasses by eating the tips of the grasses, and pounding the seeds pack into the soil, fertilizing and keeping the cycles of growth and regrowth in a semi-arid environment.  The prairie grasses of the high plains continue into the valleys and foothills of the Rocky Mountains, before the forests begin at the higher elevations.  These great herds of buffalo formed one irreplaceable part of the North American Prairie ecosystem, which had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.  Estimated to be at a population of at least 35 million at the time horses were introduced to North America, they were reduced to as few as 500 at the turn of the 20th century. By the late 19th century, their place on the prairie had been taken up by a smaller, more docile grazing animal, the cow. They were small enough to put on trains, docile enough to be herded in large numbers by a few cowboys, and tough enough to be taken on long journeys westward with families looking to realize Manifest Destiny.   The Plains tribes lost their food source in the loss of the buffalo, and they were pushed westward, eventually onto reservations, as demand grew for homesteads and good grazing land for the cattle and cattle barons.  On the reservations, they were often given cattle for subsistence and economy, but by the early 20th century their herds were nearly diminished as more land and cows were sold for cash around the time of the First World War, when beef was in high demand for soldiers overseas. 

In the 1860’s, there were some cattle herded through the forests of the lower rocky mountains in Nevada and Utah, but the big rush to raise cattle in the rocky mountains was brought by the gold, silver, and copper ore strikes in Montana, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.   A booming town needed a ready supply of food.  Cattle were herded from California, Oregon, and Texas to populate some of the first herds, and provide food for the hungry miners and the eventual settlements that grew up to support them.  Before the railroad lines were laid in the 1880’s, few foods could be imported.  The growing season was short, and so cattle provided an ample supply of food in these areas, turning the prairie grasses into meat.    If you go to Southwest Montana, this pattern of industry settlement is quite evident.  Original mining towns such as Butte, Virginia City, and Bannack are surrounded by some of the oldest in ranches in the state, including the ranch that is now the La Cense Ranch, and the historic Grant-Kohrs Ranch near Deer Lodge.  

European Aristocracy would arrive by train in scenic cattle towns like Sheridan Wyoming, and establish large cattle holdings.  The dichotomy of big cattle baron and small family rancher was present from the beginning.  Towns like Sheridan, Dillon, and others held train depots for the shipping of cattle to Chicago.  These towns grew up around the cowboy economy.  Stop in any western town and you’ll find a “Stockman’s” bar. 

The larger herds of cattle brought up from Texas to Montana and Wyoming were decimated in the harsh winter of 1886-87, ending the great free-roaming era.  The land had already been overgrazed, and if the cattle didn’t freeze to death, they starved to death.  Scarce grazing land following this catastrophe fueled a desire among cattlemen to actually own and fence good grazing lands, and to encourage management and distribution of grazing lands on federal land.  This amounted to the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which established grazing districts, fees, and limited the number of cattle that could graze within a district.

Much of the land in the West remained the property of the Federal Government.  Writers such as John Muir set the stage for the conservation movement, making public opinion of the destiny of these pubic lands.  Muir’s arguments for preservation of the forests in the west led to the creation of 15 forest preserves in 1897, and the eventual creation of the Forest Service.  The BLM, the other public land management agency, was established in 1954, serving to oversee grazing fees and lands management that were not considered National Forest domain.  Stockgrowers associations were formed in each state and they grew over the years into an influential alliance of cattleman who helped to manage grazing districts and lobby for stockgrowers rights. 

The history of the Southeast and cattle ranching is complex.  It is marked by a varied landscape, from the piney woods of the Deep South to the sandy soils of South Florida, to the lush woods and mountains of Appalachian Country.  Early cattle trade and production were marked by Spanish and French influence, as well as English influence via Barbados, Jamaica, and northern colonies.

 Open range cattle ranching was prevalent in the South up until the Reconstruction period when plantation owners and other planters pushed for Stock Laws requiring livestock owners to fence in their animals.  The Stock Laws stirred up ferverent controversy, as Stock Laws posed a great threat to the meager livelihood of poor people who owned subsistence cattle but no land.  As cotton production increased as a means of recuperating losses brought on by the war, cotton fields replaced more open rangeland. 

South Carolina was host to a booming cattle industry in the colonial era.  The “Cowpen”, which developed in South Carolina in the colonial period, was the first form of fencing cattle in America, “cowpen” being the original word for the American “ranch”.  The cowpen became a place for branding and milking. South Carolinians also developed a woodland cattle herding system and drove cattle trough the pine belt of the south, where their influence reached as far as east Texas.

The cowpens disrupted the American Indian tribes in the region, who found the cattle were eating forage of their deer and infringing on their lands.  They were unaccustomed to a culture where animals were kept as livestock.  Spanish and French Missionaries introduced cattle raising to tribes, and later Thomas Jefferson encouraged tribes to increase their livestock numbers, believing it encouraged assimilation.  By the early 1800’s the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks, and Seminoles had all taken to raising cattle as means of trade.  By 1810, the Cherokees owned 19,500 cattle, 19,600 hogs, and 6,100 horses that they grazed on their former hunting grounds.  Jealousy of the tribes’ economy rose and although Jefferson claimed to have purchased Louisiana Territory land for Americana Indians who refused assimilation, Jackson systematically forced all of the Five Civilized Tribes to Okalahoma Indian Territory.  Although they attempted to bring their herds with them, only a fraction of the herds actually made it through the arduous journey.  Cattle eventually aided the tribes in coming to terms with the Oklahoma plains; they established a trading economy with forts, government agencies, and Texas cattlemen.   As the herds grew, the land they worked became famous for its good grazing qualities.  Texas cattlemen sometimes intermarried into the Choctaw families as a means to acquiring rights to their strong ranches and land.   Their success in raising cattle and growing herds on the plains demonstrated the agricultural potential of the plains as profitable grazing land.  Their plains ranching methods developed before the Civil War marked a precursor to the expansion of the cattle industry on the Western plains in the following decades.

 The Civil War was a period of decimation for cattle herds of the Southeast.  After the War, however, positive changes were made to improve agriculture and livestock raising methods.  These changes were brought on by the Morill Act of 1862, which created Land Grant Universities, aimed at improving agricultural education and research.  New research and education institutes in Alabama included the Tuskegee Institute (1881); the Canebrake Experiment Station; and the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station (1883).  The land grant colleges initiated Cooperative Extension services and introduced new grasses to improve grazing, including the tall fescue, hybrid Bermuda grass, white clover, bahiagrass, lespedeza, and red clover.

The 20^th century marked period of modernization for the cattle industry in the South, with fenced grazing land, purebred cattle, artificial pastures and industrialized slaughterhouses.  There are some good grass-fed farming operations in the Southeast, which are aided by the long grass-growing season.

Orchestra at square dance in McIntosh County, Oklahoma   photo by Russell Lee

The original “Texas System” of cattle ranching, which was characterized by allowing cattle to range year-round unattended by people, was developed in South Eastern Texas in the 1800’s when the Carolinian influenced Louisiana French moved into the Texas Gulf coast area and adopted the Mexican Tejano traditions necessary for adaptation to the open grasslands.

Mexican Influence

Terms:  lariat, corral, remuda, tank

Sombrero, horned saddle and stirrups

Equestrian skills and roping

Carolinian Influence

Terms: doggie, cow hunt, pen, and cowboy

Use of whips

Involvement of wealthy outside entrepreneurs

Disregard for sheep raising

Driving cattle on extensive routes to market

Use of cattle for beef

Letting the cattle range without attention to their conditions

The Texas ranching system truly began in about 1838 when cowboys began going out from the gulf coast region and rounding up wild cattle from the first herds brought over by the Spanish Missionaries in the 1690’s.  By 1838, the wild cattle from these herds numbered in the millions.  The Texas Longhorns were rounded up once in the fall and once in the spring on “cattle hunts”.  They were branded and put in cattle pens, to be driven up to markets in New Orleans on established coastal trails.  By the 1850’s they began driving cattle to markets in Illinois and Missouri.  

 During the Civil War many of these cowboys left Texas to take up their part in the fighting.  The cattle industry there also stagnated, as the Union army put strong restrictions on the cattle trade with the North, and cattlemen turned to other industries such as cotton for survival.  Over that four-year period, the abandoned cattle multiplied and war veterans returned to a Texas teeming with unbranded, ownerless cattle.

The famous open range cattle drives pushed these wild Texas cattle north on trails with now legendary names, such as the Shawnee, Chisholm, Western, and Goodnight-Loving, to newly laid railroad track ready to ship them to hungry Northerners, whose herds had been depleted feeding soldiers in the war.  Texas cattle also found new homes in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico where beef was needed to feed the great influx of miners. Between 1866 and 1884 it is estimated that five million cows were driven north from Texas.  

By the 1880’s, Texas grasslands became overstocked and overgrazed.  Thousands of cattle died from the marginal grazing conditions, quickly depleting the great cattle frontier of Texas.

 Modern day western grass-fed ranching has its roots the Texas system.  Cows were fattened well on grass as long as the ranges were managed properly and overstocking could be avoided.   To run a successful grass-fed operation, rotational grazing and adequate livestock management are key.  Grass-fed practices also put an emphasis on human treatment of animals, which was absent in the use of whips, cattle wrestling, free grazing, and uncontrolled herd expansion, and an lack of tradition for shelter and summer/winter pastures.  These modern methods developed in the West as it became clear that in order for the cattle business to survive, more adequate attention to the cattle was required.  Now, industrialized CAFO’s have taken this care to the other extreme, controlling the cattle beyond what is instinctually natural.  Good Grass-fed practices, as they are still developing are the middle of these two extremes, and serves to keep the old cowboy culture alive, while making the business sustainable for the land and the animals.