Meat Done the Swift's Way

After a few years, Swift had build a giant industry in the meat packing business.  From buying the meat to the process of shipping it cross-country, to delivering fresh to the butcher, required a lot of practice and a lot of organization.

Before the meat was actually ready to load onto the refrigerated rail cars, Swift's knowledge of the feed business and his skill as a cattle appraiser brought only the choicest meat to the slaughterhouses.  To get the meat of an animal on to the rail car required a new type of invention, one that would lead to Henry Ford's way of assembling automobiles three decades later.  The "disassembly line" allowed Swift meat packing centers to be built on the idea of simplicity...working on one part of the animal as it moved along.  Once the operation reached the end of the line, all parts of the animal not used for eating had been removed.    Swift's eye for detail provided discarded parts to be used to make brushes, oleo, glue, pharmaceuticals, and fertilizer.  Nothing was wasted. 

The meat had to be delivered to the refrigerator cars quickly so Swift designed a hook that traveled seamlessly from the slaughterhouse to the rail car to the cold storage destination.  The dressed meat never left the original hook and the doors of the rail car lined up perfectly with the doors at the slaughterhouse where the assembly line of hooks were loaded on the refrigerated cars.  Once the rail cars reached their destination, the process was repeated so the temperature of the meat never varied and it provided safe and protected meat to the butchers.

Swift expanded his meat packing centers to Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas.  When his  meat packing production exceeded the United States market demand, Swift began selling to France and England, then expanding centers in Southeast Asia, Japan and Hawaii.  By 1912 Swift and Company employed more than 30,000 people in more than 400 cities on 4 continents! 

Next time...The Other Guy
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On October 10, 1845, the US Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Maryland with 50 midshipmen and seven professors.  It was known as the Naval School until 1850 and the curriculum included math, navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French.  It wasn't until 1850 that the requirement to train two years aboard ships in the summer was included along with four year studies.