V18439--Great Union Stock Yards, Largest Live Stock Market on Earth, Chicago, Ill.

• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Great Union Stock Yards; Chicago (Ill.); North Pole; Slaughter
• Online Access: https://digital.library.illinois.edu/items/b19b8fd0-0d92-0135-23f6-0050569601ca-7

Black and white stereograph slide showing cattle pens at the Stock Yards. Text on the back of the slide reads: GREAT UNION STOCK YARDS CHICAGO, ILL. Chicago ranks as the second largest city in the United States and as fourth in the world; but it holds the first place in the manufacturing of machinery, handling of grain, and slaughter- ing and packing of meat. Here we have a picture of the Union Stock Yards, which occupy about five hundred acres in the heart of the city, in what is know as the Packingtown district. These stock yards have a capacity of 75,000 cattle, 300,000 hogs and 125,000 sheep. In a single year this market has handled over two million cattle, eight million hogs, and three million sheep. In other words, one-fourth of all the meat animals from the farms and ranches of the United States are sent to Chicago to be butchered. Imagine these animals passing in single file before you. The cattle line would extend from Chicago through the North Pole to the coast of Russia; the procession of hogs would Lat. 42 N.; Long. 87 with reach from Chicago via Panama to the Amazon River, and the sheep from Lake Michigan to the Panama Canal. In this picture we see a few of the thousands of pens to which the animals are taken from the railroad cars, and kept until they are purchased by the meat packing companies. These companies send American grown meat to France, Belgium, Sweden, Spain and Greece. They owe their beginning to the invention of the refrigerator car, in 1868. Before this, the animals had to be killed near the place where they wer to be used, or the meat was salted. The animals are now driven into the killing pens, where there is machinery for doing much of the work of laughtering. They are dressed, and passed on to the refrig- erator cars, and the meat is always on ice until it reaches the consumer. How We Learn About Communities 18 Social Systems 15 Economics 13 Science, Technology and Society 16 History