Following the Civil War, Union economic dominance encouraged rapid industrialization.
“A new corporate world emerged out of the battle between the North and the South. The Union Stock Yard implied concentration and the efficacy of a modern marketplace; it promised large scale efficiency and Chicago's domination of the nation's livestock trade.”[Dominic A. Pacyga. Slaughterhouse.] |
In the late nineteenth century, laissez-faire economic policy drove the era known as the Gilded Age, when rapid industrial expansion occurred with little oversight regarding labor safety and product quality.
Broadening rail connections supported western industrial expansion and encouraged widespread distribution of goods, making Chicago a trade epicenter.
Chicago’s stockyards and railroad connectivity, bolstered by the invention of the refrigerated railroad car, created an interstate market for Chicago’s meat—a burgeoning new industry stemming from Union demand for canned meat during the war itself.
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Meatpacking companies Swift, Armour, and others thus formed the beef trust, exploiting free-market policies for profit.