Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1903-05-11
REFRIGERATOR CARS MADE :.
:. THE BEEF TRUST POSSIBLE
DEVELOPMENT of the Chicago Stock Yards
==More Than a Billion Pounds of Dressed
Meat Leave the Windy City Annually.
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for thirty-seven years. In those years
the $400,O00,000 of stock that has been
marketed there has aggregated the
stupendous sum of more than $6,0OO,-
100000, and that is merely the raw ma
terial that has come there to be manu-
factured into meat. The value Of the
manufactured product is incalculable.
The stock yard company's original
stock of $1,000,000 was quickly SUBJ
scribed. The yards, as opened in De-
cember 1865, occupied 300 acres of
marsh land on Halstead street.-The
present site. At first the cattle came
in rude cars, clawling over rough
rails from the West, to be unloaded,
fed, watered, rested and sold at the
yards. thence to be dispatched East or
slaughtered for local consumption.
The value of the cattle handled in Y
creased in eight years from $4O,OOO,OOo |
to three times that sum. Last year
100000 animals, with value or
$2S3, 100000, were handled in the
yards.
To-day the cattle, sheep and hogs
travel Chicagoward at express sched-
tiSS, Ill Ddldte olpth ttis, oi'u ~ ~
no remarkable achievement for man
to land a herd of 1000 animals in the
yards in 4 single day, so that they
may be disposed of at once at 1.-The top
of the market" The old way of send
ing in cattle and taking the best price
obtanable has passed. To-day the
farmer watches the price of beef and
when it goes up rushes his cattle at
limited train speed to the yards and
sells out before the drop comes.
For the handling of these cattle the
original 800 acres has increased to 500.
$50 acres Of which is paved, most 0f<
it with brick. In these clean, brick y
paved pens (Which number 10000
there are twenty-five miles of water
trough. There are $50 miles of rail-
road track in the yards, four miles of
unloading platform with chutes, twen-
tyfve miles of street, ninety miles of
water and fifty Of sewer pipe, 10000
hydrants and water works having
six artesan wells running down $3.50
feet into the earth and supplying
100000 gallons Of water a day.
IoOh hlhLE) EN Eh1
The day has gone when the leading
packers are willing to give out figures
which will show the extent of the enor.
nous business which they are carrying
on. The statistics which follow, how
ever, are from a recent authority, and
represent the second largest of the
establishments making up the so-called
..Ri,r Siv Tho h,rilJinnc Nv
the firm and which are in the heart OF
"Packingtown," cover siXty-fve acres
of ground. They range from one-story
sheds to eight-story smokehouses and
warehouses, and aggregate $50 acres
Of floor space. This company employs
1S,433 men, to whom is paid weekly
wage of more than $200,000.
In one year this firm handled in Chi
cago 1,437, ,S44 cattle, 2,65S,951 sheep
and 3,92S,659 hogs. Much of the prod
uct of these was consumed in Chicago,
being carried out from Packingtown
in the endless string of wagons which
run from the warehouse to the city
by day and night. One hundred and
seventy thousand six hundred and
eighty-four carloads Of dressed beef
and other meat products We're shipped
from the city, much of it for Eastern
consumption and export. Nearly 300
carloads day were shipped by this
one firm of the Chicago packing houses,j
The largest single days killing by tN&
firm was 80, 40 animals-10,973 cathel,
1G,911 sheep and 27,256 hogs. In the
enormous cold storage house which ad-
joins the abattoirs is room for the car.
tasses Of 1916 cattle, 1S,600 sheep
and 47,460 hogs. p6J4-
The complete slaughter and dressing
of steer in this house-from the
time it is knocked in the head in the
pen till it has been beheaded, hung up
by the heels, skinned, gutted, split,
washed and passed on to the cooler
takes thirty-nine minutes. Cattle are
slaughtered in the ordinary course of
business at the rate Of 240 an hour, or
four every minute. Hogs are killed
and dressed more quickly than CATTLE
From the time that the porker is
shackled by the hind legs and hoisted
on to the trolley till he has run by the
sticker been cleaned, dipped in scald-
ing water split and trimmed till he is
in temperature of thirty-eight dex
grees and slowly hardening is only h
thirty-two and a half minutes. irony
600 to 700 hogs are slaughtered every
hour at Swift's. Sheep take two min
utes longer than hogs for killing and
dressing, and GO are handled every
sixty minutes.
AS the business of pork and beef
packing has increased the tendency
has been to narrow the work of each
man down to some single act. Time
was when the butcher stuck the knife
IN the pigs threat, hung him up, gutted
him, and by deft strokes of many kinds
reduced him to marketable shape. To-
day ever hog passes $50 men, each of
whom has one thing to do in the pro-
cess of dressing. One cuts away the
hAN Oh, l.