Making Meat: Efficiency and Exploitation in Progressive Era Chicago

Yet these gains often came at the expense of working people, animals, and other parts of the natural world. Because industrialization posed fundamental challenges to hallowed national ideals such as democracy and equality of opportunity, it provoked deep misgivings and inspired far-reaching attempts to reconcile the travails of modern America wüh the ideologies and institutions passed down by the nation's founders. [...] the lessons presented here provide the context required for students to research independently such topics as muckraking and the impact of Sinclair's The Jungle; the union movement in packing plants; opposition by farmers, ranchers, and consumers to the so-called "beef trust"; efforts by Jane Addams and other progressives to ameliorate pollution and improve the quality of workers' living environments in Packingtown; subsequent initiatives by the federal government to regulate the meat industry: the decentralization of the meatpacking industry over the course of the twentieth century as Swift, Armour, and other companies built new facilities in smaller towns and cities of the Midwest and beyond; the emergence of fast food; and the history of campaigns advocating humane treatment for livestock.