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Gustavus Franklin Swift

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Engineers and inventors

     Gustavus Franklin Swift
   Born June 24, 1839
        Sagamore, Massachusetts
   Died March 29, 1903
        Lake Forest, Illinois

   Gustavus Franklin Swift ( June 24, 1839 – March 29, 1903) founded a
   meat-packing empire in the Midwest during the late 19th century, over
   which he presided until his death. He is credited with the development
   of the first practical ice-cooled railroad car which allowed his
   company to ship dressed meats to all parts of the country and even
   abroad, which ushered in the "era of cheap beef." Swift pioneered the
   use of animal by-products for the manufacture of soap, glue,
   fertilizer, various types of sundries, even medical products.

   Swift generously donated large sums of money to such institutions as
   the University of Chicago, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the
   Young Men's Christian Association ( YMCA). He established Northwestern
   University's "School of Oratory" in memory of his daughter, Annie May
   Swift, who died while attending the school. When he died in 1903, his
   company was valued at between $25 million and $35 million, and had a
   workforce that was more than 21,000 strong. "The House of Swift"
   slaughtered as many as two million cattle, four million hogs, and two
   million sheep a year. Three years after his death, the value of the
   company's capital stock topped $50 million.

Early life

   Swift was the second of three boys born to William Swift and Sally
   Crowell, descendants of British settlers who went to New England in the
   17th century. The family (which included Gustavus’ brothers Noble and
   Edwin) lived and worked on a farm in the Cape Cod town of West
   Sandwich, Massachusetts (present-day Sagamore), where they raised and
   slaughtered cattle, sheep, and hogs.
   A map of Barnstable County, Massachusetts dated 1890.
   Enlarge
   A map of Barnstable County, Massachusetts dated 1890.

   As a boy, Swift took little interest in his studies and consequently
   left the nearby country school after only eight years. During that
   period he was employed in a number of odd jobs, finally finding
   full-time work in his elder brother Noble's butcher shop at the age of
   fourteen. Two years later, in 1855, he opened his own cattle and pork
   butchering business with the help of small loans from his family. Swift
   purchased livestock at the market in Brighton and drove them to
   Eastham, a ten-day journey. A shrewd businessman, he purportedly
   followed the somewhat common practice of denying his herds water during
   the last miles of the trip so that they would drink large quantities of
   liquid once they reached their final destination, effectively boosting
   their weights. Swift married Annie Maria Higgins of North Eastham in
   1861. Over the years Annie gave birth to a total of eleven children,
   nine of whom reached adulthood. In 1862, Swift and his new bride opened
   a small butcher shop and slaughterhouse. Seven years later Gustavus and
   Annie moved the family to Brighton (near Boston), where in 1872 Swift
   became partner in a new venture, Hathaway and Swift. Swift and partner
   James A. Hathaway (a renowned Boston meat dealer) initially relocated
   the company to Albany, then almost immediately thereafter to Buffalo.

   An astute cattle-buyer, Swift followed the market steadily westward. On
   his recommendation, Hathaway and Swift moved once more in 1875, this
   time to join the influx of meat packers setting up shop in Chicago's
   sprawling Union Stock Yards. Swift established himself as one of the
   dominant figures of "The Yards", and his distinctive delivery wagons
   became familiar fixtures on Chicago's streets. In 1878 his partnership
   with Hathaway dissolved and Swift Bros and Company was formed in
   partnership with younger brother Edwin. The company became a driving
   force in the Chicago meat packing industry, and was incorporated in
   1885 as Swift & Co. with $300,000 in capital stock and Gustavus Swift
   as president. It is from this position that Swift led the way in
   revolutionizing how meat was processed, delivered, and sold.

Chicago and the birth of the meat-packing industry

   Men in suits and overcoats inspect Hereford yearlings.
   Enlarge
   Men in suits and overcoats inspect Hereford yearlings.

   Following the end of the American Civil War, Chicago emerged as a major
   railway centre, making it an ideal point for the distribution of
   livestock raised on the Great Plains to Eastern markets. Getting the
   animals to market required herds to be driven distances of up to twelve
   hundred miles to railheads in Kansas City, whereupon they were loaded
   into specialized stock cars and transported live (on the hoof) to
   regional processing centers. Driving cattle across the plains also led
   to tremendous weight loss, and a number of animals were typically lost
   along the way. Upon arrival at the local processing facility, livestock
   were either slaughtered by wholesalers and delivered fresh to nearby
   butcher shops for retail sale, smoked, or packed for shipment in
   barrels of salt.

   Certain costly inefficiencies were inherent in the process of
   transporting live animals by rail, particularly due to the fact that
   some sixty percent of the animal's mass is composed of inedible matter.
   Many animals weakened by the long drive died in transit, further
   increasing the per-unit shipping cost. Swift's ultimate solution to
   these problems was to devise a method to ship dressed meats from his
   packing plant in Chicago to the East.

Advent of the refrigerator car

   A number of attempts were made during the mid- 1800s to ship
   agricultural products via rail car. As early as 1842 the Western
   Railroad of Massachusetts was reported in the June 15 edition of the
   Boston Traveler to be experimenting with innovative freight car designs
   capable of carrying all types of perishable goods without spoilage. The
   first known refrigerated boxcar or "reefer" entered service on the
   Northern Railroad of New York (or NRNY, which became part of the
   Rutland Railroad) in June 1851. This "icebox on wheels" was a limited
   success in that it was only able to function in cold weather. That same
   year, the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad (O&LC) began shipping
   butter to Boston in purpose-built freight cars, utilizing ice to cool
   the contents.
   An early refrigerator car design, circa 1870. Hatches in the roof
   provided access to the ice tanks at each end of the car.
   Enlarge
   An early refrigerator car design, circa 1870. Hatches in the roof
   provided access to the ice tanks at each end of the car.

   The first consignment of dressed beef to ever leave the Chicago
   stockyards did so in 1857, and was carried in ordinary boxcars
   retrofitted with bins filled with ice. Placing the meat directly
   against ice resulted in discoloration and affected the taste, however,
   and therefore proved to be impractical. During the same period Swift
   experimented by moving cut meat using a string of ten boxcars which ran
   with their doors removed, and made a few test shipments to New York
   during the winter months over the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). The method
   proved too limited to be practical. Detroit's William Davis patented a
   refrigerator car that employed metal racks to suspend the carcasses
   above a frozen mixture of ice and salt. He sold the design in 1868 to
   George H. Hammond, a Detroit meat-packer, who built a set of cars to
   transport his products to Boston using ice from the Great Lakes for
   cooling. The loads had the unfortunate tendency of swinging to one side
   when the car entered a curve at high speed, and the use of the units
   was discontinued after several derailments. Finally, in 1878, Swift
   hired engineer Andrew Chase to design a ventilated car that was
   well-insulated, and positioned the ice in a compartment at the top of
   the car, allowing the chilled air to flow naturally downward.

   The meat was packed tightly at the bottom of the car to keep the centre
   of gravity low and to prevent the cargo from shifting. Chase's design
   proved to be a practical solution to providing temperature-controlled
   carriage of dressed meats, and allowed Swift & Company to ship their
   products all over the United States, and even internationally, and in
   doing so radically altered the meat business. Swift's attempts to sell
   this design to the major railroads were unanimously rebuffed as the
   companies feared that they would jeopardize their considerable
   investments in stock cars and animal pens if refrigerated meat
   transport gained wide acceptance. In response, Swift financed the
   initial production run on his own, then — when the American roads
   refused his business — he contracted with the GTR (a railroad that
   derived little income from transporting live cattle) to haul them into
   Michigan and then eastward through Canada. In 1880, the Peninsular Car
   Company (subsequently purchased by ACF) delivered to Swift the first of
   these units, and the Swift Refrigerator Line (SRL) was created. Within
   a year the Line’s roster had risen to nearly 200 units, and Swift was
   transporting an average of 3,000 carcasses a week to Boston. Competing
   firms such as Armour and Company quickly followed suit. By 1920 the SRL
   owned and operated 7,000 of the ice-cooled rail cars. The General
   American Transportation Corporation would assume ownership of the line
   in 1930.

   A builder's photo of one of the first refrigerator cars to come out of
   the Detroit plant of the American Car and Foundry Company (ACF), built
   in 1899 for the Swift Refrigerator Line.
   Enlarge
   A builder's photo of one of the first refrigerator cars to come out of
   the Detroit plant of the American Car and Foundry Company (ACF), built
   in 1899 for the Swift Refrigerator Line.

   Live cattle and dressed beef deliveries to New York ( tons):
            (Stock Cars)  (Refrigerator Cars)
     Year   Live Cattle      Dressed Beef
     1882      366,487           2,633
     1883      392,095          16,365
     1884      328,220          34,956
     1885      337,820          53,344
     1886      280,184          69,769

   The subject cars travelled on the Erie, Lackawanna, New York Central,
   and Pennsylvania railroads.

   Source: Railway Review, January 29, 1887, p. 62.

Expansion of an empire

   Swift’s initial efforts to ship dressed beef from Chicago to the East
   Coast met with resistance from local meat retailers, who questioned the
   safety of meat that had been slaughtered and dressed weeks earlier, and
   then transported hundreds of miles. In 1886, the "National Butchers'
   Protective Association" was formed for the purpose of organizing
   boycotts against Swift's products. A massive advertising campaign
   helped to overcome the skepticism of a public who soon came to prefer
   the low-cost, high-quality Swift meats, a trend that almost certainly
   forced some butcher's shops out of business. To achieve market
   penetration, Swift established "peddler car routes" to convey dressed
   meat in smaller amounts to out-of-the-way towns and villages.
   A Swift refrigerated boxcar sits idle at East Orange, New Jersey. The
   car has been repainted to remove the original "billboard" advertising
   after such displays on freight cars were banned by the ICC in 1937.
   Enlarge
   A Swift refrigerated boxcar sits idle at East Orange, New Jersey. The
   car has been repainted to remove the original "billboard" advertising
   after such displays on freight cars were banned by the ICC in 1937.

   So sharply did Swift cut costs, and so vastly did he increase
   production, that his firm was able to market meat not only throughout
   the U.S., but also in Honolulu, Tokyo, Osaka, Manila, Singapore,
   Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Great Britain. Over the next few years, Swift
   concentrated his efforts on creating a nationwide distribution and
   marketing organization. Expanding production facilities and the
   increasing availability of refrigerated rail service necessitated the
   construction of cold storage warehouses, both at the slaughterhouses
   and at the end-of-line distribution points. Ice blocks, most of them
   cut from the surface of the Great Lakes, kept the meat lockers cool
   during the summer months. Between 1888 and 1892 Swift & Co. constructed
   packing plants in the following cities:
     * Sioux City, Iowa
     * Kansas City, Missouri
     * Saint Joseph, Missouri
     * St. Louis, Missouri
     * South Saint Paul, Minnesota
     * South Omaha, Nebraska
     * Fort Worth, Texas
     * South San Francisco, California (which Swift helped found, and
       name).

   In order to protect his supply lines, Swift organized the stockyards to
   facilitate the purchase of large numbers of animals on a regular and
   orderly basis. In 1902, Swift joined with fellow meat packers J. Ogden
   Armour and Edward Morris, along with the investment banking firm of
   Kuhn, Loeb, and Company, to create the National Packing Company for the
   purpose of fixing prices, dividing up markets, and suppressing union
   efforts to organize industry workers. The group became known as the
   "Meat Trust" and the "Big Four" of the meat packing industry, and
   developed such a monopoly that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the
   venture to disband in 1905.

"Everything but the squeal"

   This interior view of a slaughterhouse shows men working with pork
   carcasses and viscera sometime between 1910 and 1930.
   Enlarge
   This interior view of a slaughterhouse shows men working with pork
   carcasses and viscera sometime between 1910 and 1930.

   In response to public outcries to reduce the amount of pollutants
   generated by his packing plants, Swift sought innovative ways to use
   previously discarded portions of the animals his company butchered.
   This practice led to the wide scale commercial production of such
   diverse products as oleomargarine, soap, glue, fertilizer, hairbrushes,
   buttons, knife handles, and pharmaceutical preparations such as pepsin
   and insulin. Low-grade meats were canned in products like pork and
   beans.

   The absence of federal inspection led to abuses. Sausages might
   incorporate rat droppings, dead rodents, or sawdust, and meat that had
   spoiled or meat mixed with waste materials was sometimes packed and
   sold (Swift once bragged that his slaughterhouses had become so
   sophisticated that they used "everything but the squeal").
   Transgressions such as these were first documented in Upton Sinclair's
   novel The Jungle, the publication of which shocked the nation and led
   to the passing of the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906.

Vertical integration

   The meat packing plants of Chicago were among the first to utilize
   assembly-line (or in this case, disassembly-line) production
   techniques. Henry Ford states in his autobiography My Life and Work
   that it was a visit to a Chicago slaughterhouse which opened his eyes
   to the virtues of employing a moving conveyor system and fixed work
   stations in industrial applications. These practices symbolize the
   concept of "rationalized organization of work" to this day.
   A view of the Swift Brands Sioux City, Iowa meat packing plant, circa
   1917. All but one of the refrigerator cars in the photo bear the
   markings of the Swift Refrigerator Line.
   Enlarge
   A view of the Swift Brands Sioux City, Iowa meat packing plant, circa
   1917. All but one of the refrigerator cars in the photo bear the
   markings of the Swift Refrigerator Line.

   Swift adapted the methods of the industrial revolution to meat packing
   operations, which resulted in huge efficiencies by allowing his plants
   to produce at a massive scale. The work was divided into a myriad of
   specific sub-tasks, which were carried out under the direction of
   supervisory personnel. Swift & Co. was broken down organizationally
   into various divisions, each one responsible for conducting a different
   aspect of the business of "bringing meat from the ranch to the
   consumer". By developing a vertically integrated company, Swift was
   able to control the sale of his meats from the slaughterhouse to the
   local butcher shop.

   Swift devoted a great deal of time to indoctrinating employees and
   teaching them the company’s methods and policies. He also motivated his
   employees to focus on the company's profit goals by adhering to a
   strict policy of promotion from within. The innovations that Swift
   championed not only revolutionized the meat packing industry, but also
   played a vital role in establishing the modern American business
   system, with an emphasis on mass production, functional specialization,
   managerial expertise, national distribution networks, and adaptation to
   technological innovation.
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