by Maureen Ogle
[>] Consider the breakfast cereal: For the cereal examples, see E.H.S. Bailey, “When Does a Food Become a Luxury?” Popular Science 77 (December 1910): 592.
[>] “It is not so much”: “Breakfast Foods,” The Independent 61 (December 27, 1906): 1577, 1578.
[>] “herald[ed] the collapse”: “Explosion of a Fundamental Fallacy in Diet,” Current Literature 43 (September 1907): 327–28.
[>] “proteid (meat) poisoning”: Stoddard Goodhue, “Adding Years to Your Life,” Cosmopolitan 55 (September 1913): 434, 438.
[>] “gout, rheumatism”: Mary Davies Swartz, “How Much Meat?” Good Housekeeping 50, no. 1 (January 1910): 108.
[>] “not essential”: C. F. Langworthy, “Cheese and Other Substitutes for Meat in the Diet,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture 1910, 359, 369. Langworthy’s report appeared as part of the USDA’s annual Yearbook, a volume watched closely by home economists, nutritionists, and teachers, who carried its messages into classrooms around the country.
[>] “We have a great surplus”: Herbert Hoover, “Food and the War,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture, United States Food Administration Women’s Committee, Council of National Defense, The Day’s Food in War and Peace (United States Food Administration, [1918]), 11. The document was intended for use as a “textbook” that the government issued in hopes of teaching Americans how to restrict their diets without losing flavor or nutritive value.
[>] “incontrovertible evidence”: Quoted in Michael Ackerman, “Interpreting the Newer Knowledge of Nutrition: Science, Interests, and Values in the Making of Dietary Advice in the United States, 1915–1965” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 2005), 59–60.
[>] “Feed your body vitamines”: W. A. Freehoff, “Feed Your Body Vitamines,” Illustrated World 31 (June 1919): 499.
[>] “carefully balanced”: Ellwood Hendrick, “Vitamines: New Light on the Mysteries of Nutrition,” Harper’s Magazine 142 (March 1921): 495.
[>] “unsuited”: Quoted in “Advocate’s Fight for Frankfurter Progressing,” Butchers’ Advocate and Market Journal 82, no. 10 (December 15, 1926): 9.
[>] “This is an open attack”: “New York School Board Attacks Frankfurters,” Butchers’ Advocate and Market Journal 82, no. 9 (December 8, 1926): 11.
[>] “puts us back ten years”: Quoted in “Advocate’s Fight for Frankfurter Progressing,” 9.
[>] “wholesome, appetizing”: B. F. McCarthy, “Frankfurters as Wholesome Food,” Butchers’ Advocate and Market Journal 82, no. 16 (January 26, 1927): 9.
[>] “shabby mane and beard”: “How ‘Meat for Health Week’ Was Put Over,” National Provisioner 69, no. 2 (July 14, 1923): 23.
[>] “the nation’s best brains”: “Experiment Station to Aid in Research Work on Meat,” Meat and Live Stock Digest 5, no. 9 (April 1925): 2.
4. Factories, Farmers, and Chickens
[>] “shot”: Quoted in “An Interview with Jesse Jewell,” Broiler Industry 22, no. 3 (March 1959): 8. The only substantive account of Jewell’s early years is in Gordon Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry: A History of Its Development (Exposition Press, 1971), 86–89; but I also relied on interviews with Jewell in poultry and farming trade magazines. I pieced together early interest in broiler making in Georgia and the South from newspapers and government documents, but a dissertation that focuses on Georgia is Monica Richmond Gisifoli, “From Cotton Farmers to Poultry Growers: The Rise of Industrial Agriculture in Upcountry Georgia, 1914–1960” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2007). Another valuable source is chapter 4 of Lu Ann Jones, “Re-visioning the Countryside: Southern Women, Rural Reform, and the Farm Economy in the Twentieth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1996).
[>] “sucked the food”: Quoted in James H. Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919–1923 (University of California Press, 1957), 20.
[>] “a cheap and abundant food-supply”: W. O. Atwater, “The Food-Supply of the Future,” Century 43, no. 1 (November 1891): 111.
[>] “last great nest of chaos”: Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (Yale University Press, 2003), 28.
[>] “When a nation depends”: Ernest Hamlin Abbott, “Editorial Correspondence from Washington,” The Outlook, February 8, 1922, p. 211.
[>] “The wars of the future”: Quoted in Danbom, Resisted Revolution, 42.
[>] “industrial agriculture”: Frank App, “The Industrialization of Agriculture,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 142, no. 231 (March 1929): 232.
[>] “green-strucks”: U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Marketing Poultry,” Farmers’ Bulletin, no. 1377 (1924), p. 24. There are no substantive histories of the chicken as part of the American diet, or of the early efforts to raise chickens for meat. My account is based on extensive reading in poultry trade journals.
[>] “Under the machine system”: Franklin Morton, “Feeding Poultry by Machinery,” Technical World 7, no. 6 (February 1907): 643. This magazine was published by the Armour Institute of Technology, founded by the Armour family. Philip Armour had a long history of encouraging education in general and technical education in particular. A short but useful summary of other meatpackers’ failed forays into poultry is “Chicken Meat in the Diet,” National Provisioner 30, no. 26 (June 25, 1904): 22.
[>] “it remain[ed] with others”: “Kosher Killing Poultry,” New York Produce and American Creamery 62, no. 25 (October 20, 1926): 1024.
[>] “Of all the toothsome”: The Philly quotes are from [M. K. Boyer], “‘Philadelphia’ Poultry,” New York Poultry Review and American Creamery 18 (February 19, 1913): 796; and P. T. Woods, “Producing High Quality Chicken Meat,” Reliable Poultry Journal 7, no. 10 (December 1910): 1046.
[>] “swell spreads”: John H. Robinson, Broilers and Roasters: The Specialties of the Market Poultrymen (Farm-Poultry Publishing Co., 1905), 6. Robinson was a knowledgeable observer of and prolific writer about the early-twentieth-century commercial poultry in- dustry.
[>] “Hotel men and restaurant keepers”: “New York’s Poultry Needs,” New York Produce Review and American Creamery 69, no. 9 (January 1, 1930): 430.
[>] But size mattered, too: This observation is based on comments in John H. Robinson, “Laying the Foundations of a Great Broiler Industry,” Reliable Poultry Journal 34, no. 9 (November 1927): 534.
[>] “juicy, milk-fed”: M. E. Pennington, “The Handling of Dressed Poultry a Thousand Miles from the Market,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture 1912, 286.
[>] “A Chicken in Every Pot”: Advertisement, “A Chicken in Every Pot,” New York Times, October 30, 1928, p. 23.
[>] Bankers encouraged these projects: There is a great deal of information about the gravy trains in regional newspapers, but also see pp. 134–35 of Jones, “Re-visioning the Countryside.”
[>] “scrubs”: "Poultry Raising Rapidly Growing,” Augusta (GA) Chronicle, March 6, 1924, p. A7.
[>] Other subsidized research: For the role of chickens in research, I am indebted to William Boyd, “Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production,” Technology and Culture 42, no. 4 (October 2001): 631–64. Also see, for example, F. B. Hutt, “Research with a Hen,” Science n.s. 78, no. 2029 (November 17, 1933): 449–52.
[>] “phenomenal”: D. C. Kennard, “The Trend Toward Confinement in Poultry Management,” Poultry Science 8 (October–November 1928): 23.
[>] “commercialized production”: [Oscar B. Hornbeck], “Poultry Standardization,” New York Produce Review and American Creamery 62, no. 24 (October 13, 1926): 962.
[>] “and have a few dollars left”: M. M. Daugherty, “Short History of the Broiler Industry,” in Agricultural Extension Service Pamphlet, no. 15 (University of Delaware, 1944), unpaginated.
[>] When Jewell signed contracts: For the wartime stipulations, see Gisifoli, “From Cotton Farmers to Poultry Growers,�
� 112–14.
[>] “arranged to help”: Quoted in ibid., 114.
[>] “serious bottleneck”: From the unpaginated foreword to H. H. Mitchell, “Is Animal Protein an Essential Constituent of Swine and Poultry Rations?” Ninth Report of the Committee on Animal Nutrition of the NRC, May 1943 (National Research Council, 1943). Also published as NRC’s Circular 117.
[>] “to repeat feeding trials”: Noble Clark, “The Responsibility of Research Workers in Livestock Production in the War Program,” Journal of Animal Science 2 (1943): 85.
[>] “The ultimate objective”: Quoted in Nicolas Rasmussen, “Plant Hormones in War and Peace: Science, Industry, and Government in the Development of Herbicides in 1940s America,” Isis 92, no. 2 (June 2001): 295.
[>] “evolutionary changes”: “Some Results of Colchicine Injections,” Science 92 (July 26, 1940): 80. Also see William L. Laurence, “Finds Twin Stars Change in Circling,” New York Times, December 31, 1940, p. 17; and “Drug Speeds Chicken’s Growth,” Science Digest 12, no. 1 (July 1942): 72.
[>] In the late 1940s: For the anemia research, see Edward L. Rickes et al., “Crystalline Vitamin B12,” Science 107 (April 16, 1948): 396; and “New Vitamin from Liver,” Science News Letter 53, no. 17 (April 24, 1948): 259.
[>] “the lid clear off”: “They’ve Doubled Gains with New Drugs,” Successful Farming 48, no. 6 (June 1950): 45.
[>] “[n]ever again”: “Antibiotics Now Proved in Hog and Poultry Ratios, They’re the Biggest Feeding News in 40 Years!” Successful Farming 49, no. 3 (March 1951): 33. Other useful accounts are in “Drug Promotes Growth,” Science News Letter 57 (April 22, 1950): 243; and “New Vitamin from Liver.” The B12 news overshadowed another announcement made almost simultaneously. A scientist working at a corporate laboratory in Indiana had isolated what he believed to be APF. The man’s employer manufactured animal feed that contained soybean plants and dried brewery wastes. When hens ate the stuff, they laid healthier eggs, and their chicks flourished and “grew rapidly.” The scientist speculated that the brewery waste contained a microorganism that facilitated growth. See the reports in William L. Laurence, “New Vitamin Aids Battle on Anemia,” New York Times, August 26, 1948, p. 23; William L. Laurence, “Discoveries Concerning Vitamin B-12 Open New Fields in the Science of Nutrition,” New York Times, December 5, 1948, p. E9; and Waldemar Kaempffert, “Clinical Advances That Aid Medicine Are Brought to Light by the Chemists,” New York Times, September 25, 1949, p. E9.
[>] “pave the way”: Quoted in Nick Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,” American Historical Review 112, no. 2 (April 2007): 363. For a superb assessment of the long march toward food-based diplomacy, see chapters 1 and 2 of Cullather’s The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Harvard University Press, 2010).
[>] “moving forward”: Lauren Soth, “America’s No. 1 Farm Problem,” Successful Farming 49, no. 3 (March 1951): 47, 63.
[>] One USDA analyst: See “Beef Production in U.S. Undergoes Marked Changes,” Meat and Live Stock Digest 3, no. 5 (December 1922): 4. Also see the analysis in W. C. Davis, “Methods and Practices of Retailing Meat,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department Bulletin, no. 1441, 1926.
[>] “[t]ime-saving, convenience”: U.S. House of Representatives, Joint Commission of Agricultural Inquiry, The Agricultural Crisis and Its Causes, H. Rep. 408, 67th Cong., part IV, pp. 3, 4.
[>] “one head or 1/7,680 of a car”: “Distribution of Perishable Commodities in the Chicago Metropolitan Area,” University Journal of Business 4, no. 2 (April 1926): 163. For the study of and typical comments about inexperienced grocers, see A. H. Fenske, “‘Too Many Retailers,’” National Provisioner 69, no. 18 (November 2, 1923): 52; also see Day Monroe and Lenore Monroe Stratton, Food Buying and Our Markets (1925; reprint, M. Barrows & Company, 1929).
[>] These inefficiencies: On the history of the chain stores, see especially Tracey Deutsch, Building a Housewife’s Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2010); and Richard S. Tedlow, New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (Basic Books, 1990). But also see Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (Pantheon Books, 1989); and Gene Arlin German, “The Dynamics of Food Retailing, 1900–1975” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1978). For A&P in particular, see Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America (Hill and Wang, 2011); and William I. Walsh, The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (Lyle Stuart, 1986).
[>] “[c]hain store merchandising”: “Merchandizing [sic] Packaged Meats Without Freezing,” National Provisioner 82, no. 16 (April 19, 1930): 21.
[>] “It is now possible”: Howard C. Pierce, “Looking Forward in Marketing Poultry and Eggs,” United States Egg and Poultry Magazine 37, no. 3 (March 1931): 67. Pierce made his remarks to a gathering of poultry producers, but his point applied to the chain’s policy for all meats.
[>] “The packaging of coffee”: Gove Hambidge, “Meats in Packages,” Ladies’ Home Journal 46 (December 1929): 89.
[>] “should be of no significance”: Quoted in [John H. Cover], Consumer Attitude Toward Packaging of Meats (National Provisioner, 1930), 43.
[>] “we’ve got to sell”: Claude W. Gifford, “Are ‘Chains’ Dictating Your Prices?” Farm Journal 83 (June 1959): 33.
[>] “This starts the price-cutting”: Quoted in Howard H. Fogel, “What Retailers Say About Broilers,” Broiler Industry 27, no. 1 (January 1964): 19, 20.
[>] “See that batch”: Quoted in Frederick G. Brownell, “Super Cows and Chickens,” American Magazine 141 (June 1946): 110. For the USDA calculation, see “Improvement in Meat Chicken Astonishes Even the Experts,” American Egg and Poultry Review 12 (April 1951): 36.
[>] “Integration has made chicken”: Quoted in Grant Cannon, “Vertical Integration,” Farm Quarterly 12, no. 4 (Winter 1958): 90.
[>] “cost-conscious”: Quoted in Bernard F. Tobin and Henry B. Arthur, Dynamics of Adjustment in the Broiler Industry (Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1964), 77.
[>] “As a whole”: Quoted in “Contract Farming: Brings Higher Income, Lower Prices,” Time, February 3, 1958; accessed online.
[>] “revolutionize the production”: Quoted in Cannon, “Vertical Integration,” 96.
[>] “agriculture as an industry”: All quotes are from John H. Davis and Ray A. Goldberg, A Concept of Agribusiness (Harvard University, 1957), 1, 22. Davis and Goldberg spread the blame for this shortsightedness, but they were particularly critical of organizations like the American Farm Bureau, whose leaders, the two argued, insisted on treating agriculture as an independent economic sector rather than as part of a larger whole.
5. “How Can We Go Wrong?”
[>] “touch of the Old West”: William M. Blair, “Broad Changes Sweep the Cattle Industry,” New York Times, April 30, 1966, p. 12. For a detailed description of the feedlot operation, see “Feeding Cattle on a Grand Scale,” National Provisioner 154, no. 8 (February 18, 1966): 20–21.
[>] They also noted: For the experiment station research, see, for example, H. B. Osland, E. J. Maynard, and George E. Morton, Colorado Fattening Rations for Cattle, Bulletin 422, Colorado Experiment Station, Colorado State College, February 1936.
[>] “During the 20s”: Quoted in Walt Barnhart, Kenny’s Shoes: A Walk Through the Storied Life of the Remarkable Kenneth W. Monfort (Infinity Publishing, 2008), 18. Barnhart relied in part on information from an unpublished 1971 document written by William Hartman. I was not able to obtain a copy of it.
[>] “aggressive”: Quoted in Bruce Wilkinson, “Warren and Ken Monfort Commercial Feeders of the Year,” Feedlot Management 16, no. 2 (February 1974): 16.
[>] By the end: For useful information about the early years of the feedlot, see Lynn Heinze, “Monfort Sees Cattle as World Food Buffer—Although Less Beef
Consumption Likely, Cattle Have Future,” Greeley Tribune, March 9, 1976, p. B-23.
[>] “a slightly lower grade”: Quoted in ibid. For meat consumption from the fifties on, I used figures from Susan B. Carter, ed., Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, millennial ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Table A212, pp. 160–61; the data is calculated in terms of retail weight.
[>] “Our products are like cake mixes”: Quoted in John A. McWethy, “Canned Meat: Steak, Pigs’ Feet and Corned Beef Hash Rush in Tins to the Table,” Wall Street Journal, April 13, 1953, p. 8.
[>] “meat, vegetables and gravy”: Ibid.
[>] But in postwar America: Statistics are from “The Franchise Restaurant Boom . . . Big New Market for Beef,” Farm Journal 93 (October 1969): B10–B11, B13. For McDonald’s, see J. Anthony Lukas, “As American as a McDonald’s Hamburger on the Fourth of July,” New York Times Magazine, July 4, 1971, p. 22. The Mr. Steak example is from “Franchise Restaurant Boom.”
[>] But consider these numbers: For the fed-beef statistics, see Table 43, p. 88, in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Cattle Feeding in the United States, by Ronald A. Gustafson and Roy N. Van Arsdall, Economic Report no. 186, October 1970; and Table 1, p. 2, including the note for that table, in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Cattle Feeding, 1962–89, by Kenneth R. Krause, Agricultural Economic Report no. 642, April 1991. Many sources document the transformation from range to feedlot, but the most useful summaries are in the two reports mentioned as well as U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economics and Statistics Service, Structural Change in Agriculture: The Experience for Broilers, Fed Cattle, and Processing Vegetables, by Donn A. Reimund, J. Rod Martin, and Charles V. Moore, Technical Bulletin no. 1648, April 1981, pp. 15–29; and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service, J. Rod Martin, “Beef,” in Another Revolution in U.S. Farming? by Lyle P. Schertz et al., Agricultural Economic Report no. 441, December 1979, pp. 85–118.