Welcome to Packingtown Fraudulent, nauseating, greedy, mortifying - these are all words to describe the Chicago meat packing industry. A coalition of wicked, lying companies made up a large sum of Chicago’s economy in the 19th to 20th century. The Chicago meatpacking industry was a corrupt, vulgar group of corporations that incited fraudulent monopolization, disgusting work conditions, unfit meat products, low wages that trapped immigrants in poverty, and was the reason for founding the Food and Drug Administration.
In the beginning of Union Stockyards, the area in which the packers kept their livestock, there were four major companies, Armour, Swift, Morris, and Hammond. Armour & Co. first came to the stockyards in 1863, founded by