Dection of the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, Illinois
Here you have an excellent view of the thousands of cattle as they appear in the pens of the Union Stock Yards in Chicago. The cattle here shown are from the Kansas plains and have recently been unloaded from freight cars. All hours of the day trains take their load of living freight into the yards and unload their cattle, hogs, and sheep, into the acres and acres of pens in the southern part of the city. The great industry of meat packing has come about largely because of the invention of the refrigerator (r-frj´ r-t´ r) cars and the refrigerator boats. Before it was learned how to ship fresh meats long distances, live stock had to be carried to the edge of the city where the meat was to be sold. In the case of the eastern cities this meant that the cattle of the plains had to be taken all the way across the Allegheny Mountains. Now this is changed. Meat-packing plants have sprung up in cities that are in the center of the stock-raising areas. Meats are packed in refrigerator cars and are readily shipped any distance. The meat of far-away New Zealand and Australia is kept fresh all the way to Liverpool and London by means of refrigerator ships. The meat-packing center of the world is about the Union Stock Yards here seen. This plant was begun in 1856. It now covers 500 acres of ground and has several thousand stock pens. The yards are able to house at one time 75,000 cattle, 50,000 sheep, and 3,000 hogs. Cattle are taken from the yards and are marched single file into the slaughtering gangways. The various processes of bleeding, skinning, and dressing take place in rapid order. Every process is inspected by Federal Meat Inspectors so that the meat is clean and fresh. Keystone ID: 20250 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.