Gustavus Swift and the Refrigerator Car That Put Dressed Beef on Every Table

Who was Gustavus Franklin Swift?

Gustavus Franklin Swift was a Massachusetts butcher who became one of the great Chicago meatpackers. Born June 24, 1839, in Sagamore, he was the ninth of twelve children of William Swift and Sally Crowell. He died on March 29, 1903, at his home on Ellis Avenue in Chicago at age 63. The Wikipedia biography gives the details used here, and the same article on Swift's career covers his later giving.

From Cape Cod butcher to Chicago

The family farmed in West Sandwich on Cape Cod and raised and slaughtered cattle, sheep and hogs. At fourteen Swift worked full time in his brother Noble's butcher shop, and in 1855, with $400 from an uncle, he started his own cattle and pork business. He bought livestock at the Brighton market and drove it to Eastham, a ten-day trip.

He moved to Boston in 1869 and became partner in Hathaway and Swift in 1872. On his recommendation the partners moved to Chicago's Union Stock Yards in 1875. In 1878 he formed Swift Bros and Company with his brother Edwin, and in 1885 it was incorporated as Swift & Co. with $300,000 in capital stock.

How did Swift's refrigerator cars work?

After the Civil War Chicago was a major railway hub, but cattle driven or shipped live lost weight and sometimes died in transit. About 60 percent of an animal's mass is inedible, so shipping live animals was wasteful. Earlier refrigerated cars had flaws: direct contact with ice discolored meat, and one 1868 design swung on curves and caused derailments.

In 1878 Swift hired engineer Andrew Chase to design a ventilated, insulated car with ice in an overhead compartment, so chilled air flowed down over meat packed low in the car. The first unit arrived in 1880 and the Swift Refrigerator Line followed. Within a year it had nearly 200 cars and was moving about 3,000 carcasses a week to Boston.

By-products, scale and the industry's problems

Responding to complaints about plant pollution, Swift sold what had been waste. He reportedly boasted that his plants used everything but the squeal. The packing industry as a whole had no federal inspection, and Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle exposed the conditions, which the page credits with leading to the Federal Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

By 1920 the refrigerator line ran 7,000 cars, and General American Transportation acquired it in 1930. New York deliveries show the shift: dressed beef rose from 2,633 tons in 1882 to 69,769 tons in 1886, while live cattle fell from 366,487 to 280,184 tons.

Legacy and giving

At his death Swift & Company was valued at $125 million to $135 million and employed more than 21,000 people. It slaughtered as many as two million cattle, four million hogs and two million sheep a year. Swift gave to the University of Chicago, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the YMCA, and founded Northwestern's School of Oratory in memory of his daughter Annie May Swift.

For the cattle side of the chain, see the agribusiness coverage on farm.FM and a farm.FM story about beef processing. For a contrasting attempt to ship chilled beef from the range, read the North Dakota history page on the Marquis de Mores, who tried the same idea in the Badlands.