Welcome to ‘The Jungle’: From Stockyard to Beef in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago

One of my favorite moments in television is "Meat and You: Partners in Freedom," the Simpsons' pitch-perfect parody of meat propaganda videos (I grew up a little late for the golden age of inside-industry educational films, but I've watched enough MST3K to compensate). Well before that, at the dawn of the age of film, all we had to tell the children about industry was panoramic photos, like the spectacular ones of Geo. Lawrence and Co. of South Indiana Street in Chicago. They took panoramic photographs all over America, but in 1907, the year after Upton Sinclair shocked the country with his expose of the local meat industry, they went inside Armour & Co. to show how meat gets from the stockyards to your stomach.

Of course, you couldn't have beef without an army of white-collar workers, too; here are the offices of Armour:

Other posts in The 312

Why Is So Much of Chicago a Commercial Desert?

Photos: Chicago’s Black Belt During the Great Migration

Here’s One Parent’s Story About the Closing of Her Neighborhood CPS School

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