As a lecturer on American History I was looking for background on Upton Sinclair's the Jungle and came across this documentary, watching it in full - couldn't take my eyes off it. I watch a lot of documentaries and this has to be one of the most complete and well put together such films I have ever seen. It has given me material for many of my other lectures as well. The visuals are absolutely terrific. Congratulations to the producers and staff who put it together.
I am so glad you found it and loved it! We are all very proud of it,, and it recently won an Emmy. Hope your students find the material compelling as well.
@@danielandries6998 I lecture for the Osher Lifelong Learning Program (O.L.L.I.) which is a national program for senior learners. My branch is based out of Eckerd College, a Liberal Arts Institution in St. Petersburg, FL. I also lecture independently to a cadre of organizations. You can check out a RUclips video "Meet the Instructor - Rick Kistner" for more details if you'd like.
My Grandfather ,and my father had a business in the Chicago Stockyards Bornholdt ,and sons. When the stockyards closed. My father went to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. My grandfather retired. I went to work with him many times.
My grandfather retired from the packing plant after 40 years. He worked his way through from killing to cutting. The thing that was the hardest part was working on the line that his older brother was killed on by falling into the lye pit. I’m sure it was one of the hardest things to deal with but he had to be able to put his feelings aside and keep the line going. It was a tough life in a different way than people understand. The men and women who were born in this country before the world wars and the Great Depression were forged into the strongest of Americans.
Unpopular Opinion: Using every bit of the animals we harvest is the responsible thing to do. Hot dogs and chicken nuggets are an innovative way to feed people using what would otherwise go to waste.
That's not an unpopular opinion at all. The issue with the Chicago meat plants is that they were using vile stuff that would be laying on the dirty and bloody floors and they would flush it to a new level below to be processed as something else, and than do that again a make it pickled products.
@@whatabouttheearth Yes, but people are grossed out by "pink slime" even if it isn't contaminated. Snobs like Jamie Oliver point to it as decadence instead of being ethical and responsible like it really is. I think a lot of people see it as greed on the part of food producers to make food out of organs and beaks and whatever else.
@@MakerInMotion I'm a Libertarian Socialist from the Ozarks, I can give a shit less what some bourgeoisie chef guy thinks 😂. Of course it is the right and moral thing to do to try to use ALL of an animal or plant, it means you would (hypothetically) not take as much life. Those animals and plants died so that we may live, it's only just that we attempt to use all of it. But this isn't even addressing the millions of tons of waste that capitalist enterprises throw out instead of giving it to those who feed the poor. I've been homeless and dumpstered dumpsters that had chemicals sprayed all over the food just so the homeless can't eat it, and that not even as bad as the mass waste they do.
@@whatabouttheearthdamn dude. I’m so sorry. Here we are allegedly “the richest country on the planet.” But we can’t feed the poor (typically kiddos and old people) place a safe roof over everyone’s head or have any kind of jobs which give hope to the hopeless. We are capable of so much more than this. Take care, my friend
I am 65 years old and, remember growing up as a little kid near the stock yards of Chicago near their demise. To this very day, I will never forget that smell.
Three generations of my father's family worked at Armor and Company in Chicago at the same time. Father, son, grandson. My grandpa (3rd gen) would not allow a hot dog in the house. "If you saw how they were made..." he would say.
Ha haah!! A guy in my trade school class worked at a Burns meat plant up here in Canada. We got talking about hot dogs and he described the process. I said "so you don't eat hot dogs then?" He replies "Are you kidding, I love them! They give us three packs a week for free." Takes all kinds, I guess.
Everyone needs to help remove restrictions of the EPA. THEN look into the personal bank accounts of inspectors, there extended family's too. With audit powers. Which all leads right back to causing prices to raise on the mystery meat. Please !! Like do as your conscience is telling you to. GET BACK IN THE LINES OF ZOMBIES & FOLLOW LIKE USUAL . " RIGHT NOW " 😂
As a kid I remember riding the elevated trains which ran fairly close to the stockyards. I quickly learned it was best to try to hold your breath for as long as possible while the train passed through the area.
@@WAL_DC-6B No not that one, although I don't know exactly what line it was. I was a kid in the '60s, usually escorted around by my mom, so didn't pay much attention to the train line names.
We have a waste treatment plant in my area and right now with the heat, it is a whole new level of awful 😞 I imagine what you smelled was somewhat similar. 😣
ABSOLUTELY I remember passing thru there I was a kid then ,but it was very bad . It's sad but this is still going on somewhere. I stopped eating steak ,pork and winging myself off chickens. Nowadays it's not real meat it's ALL LAB EXPIREMENTAL .
Teacher's in the south side of chicago please show this documentary to your students I grew up in the stock yard neighborhoods nd most of our parents worked the packing plants it would had made a difference to me as a child if I would had known its history.
@@mullman I’m an involuntary vegetarian or damn close to it. I live remotely and everything comes in by truck on essentially two lane roads. I can not afford meat anymore. With gas prices in the $5-6 range, it has become a budget buster. Produce is a bit cheaper but how I would love to eat a decent steak just once more before my imminent death.
In Cincinnati which was referred to as porkopolis at one time there were huge stockyards in the millcreek valley. There were also meatpacking plants. I actually applied at Khan's meats but an exam said I already had carpal tunnel which I hadn't known. I stayed in the stockyards hotel as a kid it was built around the turn of the century and had a large public (mens) restroom with dozens of wooden shower stalls which were odd to me. Upstream was Procter and Gamble which began making ivory soap from animal fat. It was very similar to union stockyards. And yes, you could definitely smell it. 😆
Grew up about 2 blocks east and 5 blocks South of the main Entrance to The Stockyards. When the wind was from the West,you got the fragrant aroma of the 'Yards. I lived there from 1956 (birth) till 1970 when we moved South and West to the West Lawn neighborhood.
My grandparents came from Lithuania and worked in the stockyards starting in the early 1920’s. She worked in the sausage stuffing room. My step grandfather worked the killing floors and all the way to his deathbed never ate meat again.
I worked as a young child in a slaughterhouse in Ireland for a short time, and never ate beef again after I hit 14 years old, and realized what that process was all about. I swept the blood and cleared the entrails and heads from the floor. It all got dumped in a pond
I have hauled off and on since 1978 out of the packing houses . The 80s saw IBP have starting wages at one plant in 1981 at $13.00 per hour . Drop to $5.00 per hour at new plant in 1989.The retention of workers for any length of time became a thing of the past for the packing houses with business practices of past year returning.
Yes. I read "The Jungle," at The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, while studying "Sanitation in Food Processing." I often referred to it during the training sessions that I gave the employees on cGMPs at the various plants, where I was Quality Assurance Manager. I worked with a large manufacturer of Chocolate candy, a bookstore who had a cafe where readers could buy wrap or panini sandwiches and a pizza manufacturing plant that made pizzas for a large national food conglomerate and a grocery store chain.
@@-oiiio-3993 I read that book written by Upton Sinclair. It is an exposé about the unsanitary, unsafe conditions in the slaughter houses and meat packing industry.
My great grandfather came from Ireland & worked in the stockyards. He was killed while eating his lunch by a rickeshing bullet from men shooting targets. This was in 1886.
My grandfather was the first american born to Irish immigrants in Chicago. He also worked the stockyards. He was an unhappy person, mostly depressed. His children were born in the 1940s and grandma was stay at home for all those kids. He worked long hrs in those conditions. Not a great story.
I am 65 in 2023 and my grandparents came from the "Back Of The Yards neighborhood later moving further west to the suburbs.". Now my nephew lives there in a modern apartment, and I remember the smell well.
@@libbyhicks7549 actually it was Organized Labor that lifted ours and many families from grinding poverty and drudgery of the time. Firemen of Local #2 now probably average around $150k yearly for 84 working days and much improved conditions.
@@danichicago9140 Most female dominated service jobs are still fighting for $15 hr. Fireman (like police) is a male dominated occupation with lots of power and control attached to it, Those jobs have been paying very well for a very long time. Industrial Line workers (which the stockyard is an example of) are still fighting for minimum wage and that's even better than the conditions of line workers for US corporations in other countries who make more towards $5 a day. No, I don't tnink the union has quite saved the labor class yet.
Upton Sinclair was the author of a book titled The Jungle. The book was an exposé on the deplorable conditions of the meat packing industry. Which even includes the unsafe, unsanitary conditions in the slaughter and packing houses.
@@kurtdorr8080 what % of US and WORLD population are familiar w The Jungle? (can even read? sarc) done a poll? survey? statistically prob the inverse of the # of this doc viewers. just sayin'. or: maybe 5X the above # viewers - are geriatric and don't surf the web and thus haven't seen this doc - but being geriatric, they likely READ this book in their American Classics studies. Is this book part of educational curriculum in the last 3 decades?
My great grandfather worked there, coming from Mississippi. I wish I would’ve got more of his stories before he past, but this documentary was good too!
I grew up near the Union Stock Yards back in the 40’s and 50’s. Many of the schools had field days to tour the yards. My grandparents worked there, my grandmother in the sausage stuffing room. I would hear neighbors talk about their work even on the killing floor. I don’t eat meat except hamburgers or pork because of this and I knew many people who worked there who never ate meat. It wasn’t that they slaughtered the animals it was the cruel cruel way it was done.
My father told me his elementary school class was taken there for a field trip and he could never forget the sounds of the hogs squealing as they were butchered.
Reading it currently. I’m 70 pages in on the part where the Lithuanian neighbor is describing how the houses are sold and the generations of races that occupied them before Jurgis and his family “bought” theirs.
I actually talked to a guy who lived there during those years. He was in his nineties, he confirmed pretty much everything in this video, mainly about the smell.
I have NO doubt, it stinks enough around farms here where they pack in maybe 30 or 50 cows on a small fenced lot waiting to be transported out, the ground is always dark brown mud, only, its not MUD- it's years worth of piss liquified shit and the cows are walloing in it, even with the windows in the car closed the stench gets in just driving past, and the farmer has his house right there! Can only imagine what the stench was with those tens of thousands of cows, pigs, sheep coralled in those pens in Chicago, with decades of piss and shit ground up into a mud that in summer dried up and was carried as dust everywhere. Then the blood, waste etc that wound up discharged into the stream to fester and rot, attract flies by the millions! the flies must have been horrendous! The 375-acre site had 2300 separate livestock pens, to hold 75,000 hogs, 21,000 cattle and 22,000 sheep at any one time
In 84 I moved to Chicago, and while riding my Motorcycle with my friend , I said to him hey how come I can smell cow shit? He said because that's the remnants of the stick yards
If you have ever been near a slaughterhouse or a rendering plant then you, too, can confirm this. It is one of the most repulsive, disgusting scents you will ever smell. Utterly horrid.
@@BeranM Actually I have,theres a place like that in Aurora, Illinois. It's a hog rendering plant, and it's awful. 9ur guys were complaining that they need a break, and send someone else over there to work.
It would not say enlightening as much as it was extremely biased. It ascribes the very worst of motives to people. There were never people who were "native" to America. Everyone traveled to the continent via ship or land bridge. When two civilizations compete for the same resource, the more technologically advanced typically wins the argument. This has remained true around the globe throughout recorded history. This is no more cruel than Mother Nature herself. Humanity has been at odds with nature since building the first campfire. Reshaping the natural world is how humanity survived without benefit of fur or fang or claw.
@@valkyriesardo278 This is a huge pile of bullshit. There were zero reasons for European settlers to eradicate the indigenous people of North America. The United States engaged in a program of wilful eradication, sterilization, and eugenics targeting Indigenous tribes. It's not about competing for resources. At the time there was plenty to go around. It was all about white people thinking they were superior both due to religious reasons and faulty science. It's not about humans being at odds with nature or any of that bullshit.
Lived there from 1974, to 1987... I love the childrens' ghost stories of the era. Aka Time Kin, 42nd & Emerald... Great documentary here thanks. Great book, and still have it. Good day.
When we immigrated to Omaha NE lots of Mexican people started taking over the stockyards . I lived in a neighborhood where my neighbors were Lithuanian and their stories wer amazing . I go today and it's completely being taken over by Hispanics. Same story different generations .
I agree with you. We moved from Southern California to a meat packing town in Iowa in 1994. I was in middle school and remember seeing a sea of mainly Mexican immigrant employees come and go from that plant during shift changes. Today almost 3 decades later it’s mainly Asian immigrants that work there. The Hispanics remain in the town but found better jobs in other factories or in construction. It’s all generational, place in time.
Each successive wave of immigrants provide cheap labor and that isn’t going away anytime soon particularly now that we have no unions and little to no oversight. This country is becoming more urban and darker skinned. In the future we’ll all be bilingual out of necessity. Corporations are well aware of this: P&G and many other large corporations have had bilingual instructions on their products and have now for at least a decade plus. We all do what is in our best economic interests. Immigrants are doing the same as you are: Trying to provide an income for themselves and their families. I wish them well.
You can still get cheap labor from White Europe. Not allowing immigration from Europe is why America is being turned brown on purpose. Browns and blacks are so much easier to control. Robotics will end the need for even them. @@tundrawomansays5067
Fascinating story. I love learning about our history, Imagine having to work in those conditions nowadays? I never take for granted what I have and never complain anymore!
Early free enterprise was rough compared to standards it grew as it did. It was all it could afford in the early days. But still, you mention Imagine, "HAVING to work in those conditions". They did not have to work by physical force like slavery. The had the opportunity to work, and get themselves out of poverty, and even gain opportunity. It was a start and offered a better living then they had before employment, so they gladly choose it. I have been through a of of employers in non-union manufacturing, and even gained a couple engineering degrees while working full time, (that did not pay off for employment). I have found new jobs for more money, got laid off because of relocation of the manufacturing, and got fired enough be be fun hobby, still all just above poverty,----before I started my own business. I may not have liked all my employers and I am sure the feeling is mutual to some extent, but they all turned out to be an education I actually got paid for, to help me start my business, and I thank them all for hiring me. Now I realize that about 80% of the 20 places I worked were all owned by guys who worked for somebody else before they started their own business. Notice how you never learn about such opportunity in an economics class. They always talk about "the worker", (like communism does), and never about the opportunity we get from our employers. When I first started my business, I had a partner and it was his idea to go to this meeting, ran by mostly retired businessmen, to give advise to new business ventures, (S.C.O.R.E). I will never forget some of their advise. "If you want to compete in an industry,---work for them first." Heck---"complaining" is what motivated me to move on. :) I am glad I never worked for a Union now, because I discovered freedom when my business took off.
@@EarthSurferUSA I didn't mean to say they were reduced to slavery, I meant that they had to work to make ends meet and this was the only job for them. They were all taken Advantage of by the owners. Of course the owners were tight with there wallets and only paid what they had to also. Barely a living wage. Never has a worker created any wealth for himself working for others, it's only when he starts his own business can any of us really succeed. That is unless your highly educated or work for the government like a damn Pelosi.
@@roofermarc1 I was going to endorse your comment until I got to the part about Nancy Pelosi. It's interesting you didn't mention someone like Chuck Grassley who has been a governmental legislator since 1959.
I am 63 and milked cows for 42 years, and I understand and agree with just about everything you have said. I farm in Ontario,Canada and the very same thing is happening here, dairy farms are disappearing fast. We had 105 tie stalls. And I loved dairy farming and all of the changing production methods we have seen. From small square bales to large round bales, made wet and wrapped in plastic. My big horse for years was my 966 IH. Great listening to all these memories, much the same life we had. And I too, would do all again !
About the same story here in northeast Texas my friend. I grew up milking cows. In its heyday there were 800 dairies in our county. No more. I doubt there is still 100. I can't say the same for loving it, though it was a good way of life. Everyone now has gone to beef cattle. A lot more to my liking. Take care my northern neighbor. 😁
Drove through Chicago in 1967 and I'll never forget the stench that overcame us as we passed those yards. I guess by then things were winding down. I can't imagine what it smelled like at the height of Armour's and Swift's time. Brutal! Just brutal!
My mother took her Sunday school class to the stockyards once for a tour (how religious?). One boy told her afterwards: "I'll never eat meat again" and became a lifelong vegetarian.
My great grandfather worked on the stockyards when he moved our family up to Chicago from Mississippi during the Great Migration. He was eventually able to buy a three flat home on 16th & Kedzie right as the Jewish population was moving out. This was an incredibly enlightening documentary.
Heard about the stockyards in American Experience's episode "The Poison Squad" It got me thinking about Portland, Oregon's version of them. Swift operated one on the north end of town and we also had our own Bubbly Creek: the Columbia Slough.
A very well made documentary. I never knew the history in depth as this video has presented. My mother grew up in Chicago, and did tell me stories about the slaughter houses, but this really brought it to light. Thanks!
If you liked this documentary, you should read 'The Jungle - Upton Sinclair'. A very good book about the stockyards, specifically about the ones in Chicago.
Used to live bout 1 mile from the stockyard, in. Greeley Colorado while attending the University of Northern Colorado. Although the stockyard was east of the campus . . . when we the wimd blew west, seemed the yard was RIGHT NEXT DOOR. SMELL . . . was unimaginable ! 💀
When I was a boy in the sixties, my dad used to fish in the cedar river next to Rath packing plant in Waterloo Iowa and there was a huge pipe where the animal guts and blood used to dump into the river!
@@email4664 well I am 47 years old and only 2 years removed from suffering 2 simultaneous ruptured brain aneurysms. glad you can feel high and mighty in a comment section on you tube..
wow, did you sit next to me when it dawned on me that this was basically a documentary of "The Jungle." you are fvcking phenomenal along with your creative handle of E mail. where did you come up with such a catchy hancle? were you working hand in hand with Al Gore when HE invented the internet?
I really loved this documentary. I still love reading The Jungle every few years. My grampa was a big wig in the Chicago PD and we often times went to the back of the yards when I was a young boy. It's truly an amazing piece of history and the people that worked there and lived in the area gave Chicago a lot of character and strength. When i was a young kid, Chicago was a great city. I lived on the west side and we had huge diversity in our neighborhood. We all took pride in it and it was ours. Sadly, Chicago has turned into a dangerous place these days. I worked in the loop my entire career and routinely went out to luch and dinner very often in Chicago. These days, I won't even go into the city limits. It makes me very sad to think that it has bexome so out of control. It's still a gorgeous city and i credit Richie Daley for making it one of the most beautiful big city's in the world. Thanks for the great vid WTTW....love your channel
Chicago is statistically still much safer now than it was in the 70's, 80's and 90's. There is a very sad spike in crime that peaked in 2021 but things are slowly getting better. It is perfectly safe to go out to lunch and dinner in the loop.
Some parts of Chicago are dangerous. Others are not. Crime has boldly come to "the Magnificent Mile" and people do on occasion get robbed in broad daylight. Chicago has neglected some parts of the city for decades. A lack of full service grocery stores, vacant lots and houses, underfunded schools, inadequate public transportation, and little to no support for small businesses has created an "Other Chicago". What is happening is to be expected.
@@BenjaminCommet the reputation that Chicago has been given is not accurate. Chicago is not even in the top ten of most dangerous cities. The powers that be in Chicago had better start building up some of its long neglected neighborhoods.
Excellent still-motion photography job. Enabling viewer's to better understand what the orator was describing. Special thanks to the special guest speakers. Sharing personal information pertaining to the meat processing industries. Many a WW-2 soldier enjoyed eating a can of Spam from his ration kit. While out on duty away from the front. I probably would have muscled the meat warehouse establishments to purchase my products. Or my competitor would have. As time passes for the workers. Plant conditions & pay scales improved. Smithfield Virginia ham & sausage plant. I remember that stench whenever I drove by there.
Despite the high rent, rising food prices, violence and poverty, I've been a Chicagoan for 41yrs, having visited places such as Mississippi, Wisconsin, Philadelphia, and Louisiana, I always come back home to Illinois and I love My city, I really do 🫡🫡🫡❤ the food, architecture, monuments, history, landscapes, sports teams, music, AND people, there's no place like SWEET HOME CHICAGO !
Interesting documentary. I was born in the early 1970s, my family living in Ida B Wells housing on 37th & King Dr. What's really crazy is, if we traveled south using the Dan Ryan, getting on at 39th & Wentworth, you could smell what was left of the Stockyards. I recall it like yesterday, the scent was hella strong! You'd really smell it this time of year, especially when it was warm out
"We're at the beginning of things. Not the ending." We all need to be aware of not just the food we eat. Rather the industrial processes because it is definitely a part of our lives and the world.
I've been reminded of a movie about meat industry I believe Kansas City A Gene Hackman movie called "Prime Cut" I saw it in the mid 60's as near as I can remember I certainly would like to see it again.
The Killing Floor is a 1984 film by Bill Duke on workers fighting to build an interracial labor union in the meatpacking industry in Chicago. In July 2021, the film was shown in the Cannes Classics section at the Film Festival.
I was a child when we moved from the back of yards, never forget the neighborhood getting over ran by rats when the stockyards shut down, we lived on 47th and Loomis so a block from there. I do have some good memories of the area.
Back in 1899, my great-great-grandmother Carrie Martin and her husband Thomas moved into a house on Halsted between 43rd and Root Street that was across from the entrance to the Stockyards. For the next ten years, she had a barbershop on that block. I have her business card from that first address, and it has her address, photo, “Lady Barber,” and her additional offerings of “First-class laundry” and “Fine cigars and tobaccos.” I like to imagine a stockyard worker coming from his third-floor walkup in the morning, stopping by her house for a trim and shave and to drop off his dirty clothes, then after work, picks up his clean shirts and gets a few cigars for the evening, maybe before stopping at the Cahill & Brothers bar at Halsted and Root.
Being a farmer who processes our our own meat it amazes me that people are so oblivious to the fact of how their big macs are made and that animal shit actually stinks. WTF?????
I know right, most Americans are so oblivious to the actual process of eating food, have no idea how hard it is just to grow a garden, butcher a hog, deer, or cow. the amount of effort it takes to proces and save even small game. If they survive the coming changes they'll soon figure it out.
It is hilarious the reactions of people that know we Butcher and eat our animals. And not from the store. But yet they don't feel sorry for their cheeseburger when they eat it , or the meat they buy at the store. I told a lady the other day the eggs are chicken embryos. I don't think she'll ever eat another egg again. Just oblivious and blissfully ignorant. My friend's daughter told a school mate that they butchered their cow. The kid was so upset she had to go home for the day. I can't imagine the snowflake parents behind that
I worked for Hudson Foods with Turkey meat 1996-1999 and I can tell you personally "Swift" is the best company with the highest standards for their meat.
I really enjoyed this well done documentary. I lived about 8 miles northwest of the stockyards and you could smell them when the wind was coming from that direction. You also had the odors from the tanneries like Gutmens and other animal parts processing companies around chicago that were part of that industry. Back then Chicago was an industrial giant with a distinct culture of it's own and a bar on every corner where parents would take their children after church on Sunday where they could have a soda and some pretzels or chips while their parents socialized. Almost all of those corner bars served lunch for all the many factory workers throughout the city. That all died when Daley jr. became mayor and killed businesses with his taxes on them. Everyday you would see semi trucks full of cattle or hogs going down Elston Avenue on their way to the stockyards. I really miss those days.
Sounds like Olde Philadelphia, particularly the Infamous Kensington Neigjborhood. Not too many people are aware that all the streets head downstream to Kensington ave where they could easily hose all the sewage down to the main street where the storefronts were, easily washing the day away with the last door shut for the day. Bars on every corner, six churches in my neighborhood for each nationality. The Polish, the Irish, the German, the Lithuanian, the Italian, and the Baptist. Every kid went to school at the church their family went to service at on Sundays. And the Gangs that worked the alleys and the docks, scimming taxes, running the daily numbers, protection rackets, burglary, theft, liquor, the after hours social clubs. Each 2 square mile area was like its own small town. The good old days, days we likely will never see again in our once great nation.
@@stephenbishop355 We will see them again. This is a human problem, ie a political problem. I think it has grown in the recent past. No easy solutions. Exploitation is still a huge thing.
@@glenn6583 There is a solution. Not sure how hard it would be to perform, but the solution is pretty much the same solution we came up with when we formed the USA; Living under the philosophies of individual liberty protected by law and all people (all free), to participate in free enterprise, (I just defined human morality). But this time, it is the founding of the USA that will be the New World Order. Not communism. Politics,--is the application of philosophy, and the philosophies being imposed on us through Politics is collectivism/communism. There is a reason why your philosophy course in college was a mixed bag of garbage, by mostly insane people who probably would have been institutionalized with that talk after the age of reason, with you still getting a good grade having no idea why, and just glad it was over, never to be thought of again. It is time we brought philosophy, (how man should live), back into the political argument, (or for the first time if it never was), and drag the commies into the light. Yea! :)
Did you get to meet Bruzzy Thompson...he was a man from the community known as Canaryville and was always in and around Morris Mens Western Wear. Also, he too was dressed like a Cowboy.
Please read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair to learn more in depth about Chicago, the Stockyards, the meat packing plants and the immigrants who worked in them.
@@paulrodgers5559 it is a human struggle to survive economically due in no small part to the so called “Reagan Revolution.” Thank St. Ronnie for destroying unions and living wages, outsourcing by *supporting corporations to go offshore to make their products tax free.* (Yeah, very low to no taxes on goods produced overseas.) There are many factors that have led to economic decline in the US but in my lifetime boom and bust cycles are back again. We learned nothing from the Crash as the safeguards that were put in place to ensure no more Great Depressions occurred were systematically dismantled. And here we are: A gig economy and minimum wage part time jobs.
They were still in operation in 1968 . I was at the '68 Chicago Auto Show across the parking lot from the slaughterhouse at the amphitheater . Remember those great Maxwell Street Polish sausages ? On Maxwell Street in the yellow building ? Great times they were .
Hell…I was born in 1955 and remember the smell on the West side of Manhattan in the early 1960s when there were still slaughterhouses in and around the meat packing district. BYW…William Cronin’s book “Natures Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” is a great history of Chicago’s key role as a exchange hub for a whole array of commodities including meat, lumber, shoes, wheat to name a few.
@@jasonallen3678 Was always pretty expensive. Stink? Yes… but believe me, it WAS far worse when the city actually had a functioning “industrial” waterfront…which included slaughterhouses. The Hackensack Meadows in New Jersey had feed lots and I believe slaughterhouses. The whole region had awful water and air pollution that many have lost sight of today. A population born after the mid-1970s can’t appreciate just how much better things are today environment-wise. Yes…”bridges and roads” are looking more beat up and in need of repair/renewal/repainting…but the air and water IT most definitely better. BTW…in the 1910s my great grandfather loved hunting in the Hackensack Meadows.
@@josephhuether1184 In the 50s one of my uncles worked in a slaughterhouse up in New Jersey. A cow got loose from a stall that hadn't been closed right, ran him over, and kicked him in the head. He was unconscious for three days. After that, his family said he was never quite right. I remember him coming over to visit one Christmas and he had this huge dent in his forehead still where it had caved in his skull. He didn't talk much and the eye under where he'd been kicked was always looking off in the same direction. He had to be hand-fed and sometimes he'd start shouting unintelligibly. My aunt said the company never acknowledged he'd been hurt and when he wasn't able to work they fired him.
yes! Back Of The Yards my neighbor... not long ago, you still smell wired smell. in 70's we would sit by the sidewalk on 47th Bishop street and we would see the trailers passed by with pigs. Yes, they would make lost of noise. We would feel bad... the rats us the problem... peace
My great-grandmother worked at an Armour packing house here in S Georgia. The packing house sits unused, next to a removed rail spur, at the end of Armour Road. Armour Rd. has always been a low-income area.
I lived at 63rd and Central and during WWII I remember the smell every summer evening as you tried to sleep and the stench was terrible. We were miles and miles away and it was terrible.
You can work “hard” or you can work “smart” I don’t feel bad for low earners who think they are doing something by working” hard”. I worked hard milking cows and that will never make you rich. Why? Because most people with hands and half a brain can milk a cow and this is why working hard doesn’t guarantee high pay and high quality of life.
@@tonyrizzo615 if unions are so grate then why force them on those that don't want them? I always laugh when those who claim to be conservative and still are pro union when your extortion I mean dues go to protect lazy worthless workers, the union bosses and democrats
We lived in a village of Shannon south of Chicago my father was a butcher he owned a meat locker the local farmer brought their cows and hogs in to be cut up and wrapped up and frozen
I’m not that old (68) but I can definitely remember as a kid the foul stockyard and feed lot odors from the west side of Manhattan and some areas of the Hackensack meadows on New Jersey. Of course today, meat packing takes place in relatively remote rural areas in the south and western plains states.
This is very interesting. What a great channel I have found. Thank you. I'm going to watch several others. Always been intrigued by Chicago. I would like to visit one day. I live in Niagara Falls, Canada, or not too far away.
What a fantastic show I'm 61 years old and I can't even imagine what it was like to make $0.14 an hour to support a family and what they lived through. what a great documentary would a great show thank you.
Why do people like you never consider cost of living was remarkably lower and people back then knew how to cook, can, bake etc? Applying standards and inflation of today to then is so mindless.
@@Pandaluver67899 well because thus is the greatest country on the planet..not a perfect country but out of the entire world Americans have more freedom an opportunity than any other place...we lead the world in innovation..because we have a free market..there's lots of corruption but there's corruption everywhere ppl are..it's a human condition..an Jobs today ain't that bad ppl who don't make enough can get government assistance..
I was the "stunner" not long after i left high school in 1996; our hammers had a crimped .22 rimfire bullet that we loaded into the "hammer" (was similar to a 14lb hammer cut in half, with a spring & firing pin between the 2 halves, kinda). Cattle would come up the race (or backwards if Halal), locked in the box and a swift knock on the head firing rhe crimped .22
My Grandfather was one of the last butchers of the era. By the 1960s I believe he had to close his local business. He did work at the local Red Owl I believe in the meat department until he retired later.
As a lecturer on American History I was looking for background on Upton Sinclair's the Jungle and came across this documentary, watching it in full - couldn't take my eyes off it. I watch a lot of documentaries and this has to be one of the most complete and well put together such films I have ever seen. It has given me material for many of my other lectures as well. The visuals are absolutely terrific. Congratulations to the producers and staff who put it together.
I am so glad you found it and loved it! We are all very proud of it,, and it recently won an Emmy. Hope your students find the material compelling as well.
Your Emmy was richly deserved. Your efforts could serve as an exemplar of how historical documentaries should be produced. Thanks again.
@@rickkistner1218 Just out of curiosity, where do you lecture? Or at least, what part of the country.
@@danielandries6998 I lecture for the Osher Lifelong Learning Program (O.L.L.I.) which is a national program for senior learners. My branch is based out of Eckerd College, a Liberal Arts Institution in St. Petersburg, FL. I also lecture independently to a cadre of organizations. You can check out a RUclips video "Meet the Instructor - Rick Kistner" for more details if you'd like.
@@rickkistner1218 Excellent! I shall check it out.
My Grandfather ,and my father had a business in the Chicago Stockyards Bornholdt ,and sons. When the stockyards closed. My father went to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. My grandfather retired. I went to work with him many times.
My grandfather retired from the packing plant after 40 years. He worked his way through from killing to cutting. The thing that was the hardest part was working on the line that his older brother was killed on by falling into the lye pit. I’m sure it was one of the hardest things to deal with but he had to be able to put his feelings aside and keep the line going. It was a tough life in a different way than people understand. The men and women who were born in this country before the world wars and the Great Depression were forged into the strongest of Americans.
Unpopular Opinion: Using every bit of the animals we harvest is the responsible thing to do. Hot dogs and chicken nuggets are an innovative way to feed people using what would otherwise go to waste.
That's not an unpopular opinion at all.
The issue with the Chicago meat plants is that they were using vile stuff that would be laying on the dirty and bloody floors and they would flush it to a new level below to be processed as something else, and than do that again a make it pickled products.
@@whatabouttheearth Yes, but people are grossed out by "pink slime" even if it isn't contaminated. Snobs like Jamie Oliver point to it as decadence instead of being ethical and responsible like it really is. I think a lot of people see it as greed on the part of food producers to make food out of organs and beaks and whatever else.
@@MakerInMotion
I'm a Libertarian Socialist from the Ozarks, I can give a shit less what some bourgeoisie chef guy thinks 😂.
Of course it is the right and moral thing to do to try to use ALL of an animal or plant, it means you would (hypothetically) not take as much life.
Those animals and plants died so that we may live, it's only just that we attempt to use all of it.
But this isn't even addressing the millions of tons of waste that capitalist enterprises throw out instead of giving it to those who feed the poor. I've been homeless and dumpstered dumpsters that had chemicals sprayed all over the food just so the homeless can't eat it, and that not even as bad as the mass waste they do.
@@whatabouttheearthdamn dude. I’m so sorry. Here we are allegedly “the richest country on the planet.” But we can’t feed the poor (typically kiddos and old people) place a safe roof over everyone’s head or have any kind of jobs which give hope to the hopeless. We are capable of so much more than this. Take care, my friend
How bout just don’t eat crap? For centuries people survived without over processed non nutritious food.
I am 65 years old and, remember growing up as a little kid near the stock yards of Chicago near their demise. To this very day, I will never forget that smell.
It is a shocking history.
Chicago style hit dogs. Gotta be chicago style. No catsup.
NO KATSUP EVER ON CHITOWN DOG .
Hope this stays on youtube
Three generations of my father's family worked at Armor and Company in Chicago at the same time. Father, son, grandson. My grandpa (3rd gen) would not allow a hot dog in the house. "If you saw how they were made..." he would say.
Ha haah!! A guy in my trade school class worked at a Burns meat plant up here in Canada. We got talking about hot dogs and he described the process. I said "so you don't eat hot dogs then?"
He replies "Are you kidding, I love them! They give us three packs a week for free."
Takes all kinds, I guess.
Nasty shit
@@tpxchallenger Lol
We had a pickle plant I'm our town. Everyone said "don't eat the relish".
Everyone needs to help remove restrictions of the EPA. THEN look into the personal bank accounts of inspectors, there extended family's too. With audit powers. Which all leads right back to causing prices to raise on the mystery meat. Please !! Like do as your conscience is telling you to. GET BACK IN THE LINES OF ZOMBIES & FOLLOW LIKE USUAL . " RIGHT NOW " 😂
As a kid I remember riding the elevated trains which ran fairly close to the stockyards. I quickly learned it was best to try to hold your breath for as long as possible while the train passed through the area.
Was that the rapid transit line that went around the circumference of the stock yards? If so, it was removed in 1957.
@@WAL_DC-6B No not that one, although I don't know exactly what line it was. I was a kid in the '60s, usually escorted around by my mom, so didn't pay much attention to the train line names.
And that smell was still around well into the 80s when I was a kid ..
We have a waste treatment plant in my area and right now with the heat, it is a whole new level of awful 😞
I imagine what you smelled was somewhat similar. 😣
ABSOLUTELY I remember passing thru there I was a kid then ,but it was very bad .
It's sad but this is still going on somewhere.
I stopped eating steak ,pork and winging myself off chickens.
Nowadays it's not real meat it's
ALL LAB EXPIREMENTAL .
Teacher's in the south side of chicago please show this documentary to your students I grew up in the stock yard neighborhoods nd most of our parents worked the packing plants it would had made a difference to me as a child if I would had known its history.
Agree
Do you eat meat?
@@mullman I’m an involuntary vegetarian or damn close to it. I live remotely and everything comes in by truck on essentially two lane roads. I can not afford meat anymore. With gas prices in the $5-6 range, it has become a budget buster. Produce is a bit cheaper but how I would love to eat a decent steak just once more before my imminent death.
@@tundrawomansays5067 look into veganism as the dairy and egg industry is cruel and funds the meat industry
If you force children to watch this please take out the killing floor. There is such a thing as humane slaughter and I live now where it’s done.
After Graduation. I worked for a small packing plant. Flat out hard work . Do not miss that job in the least. Bravo to all who work in these places .
In Cincinnati which was referred to as porkopolis at one time there were huge stockyards in the millcreek valley. There were also meatpacking plants. I actually applied at Khan's meats but an exam said I already had carpal tunnel which I hadn't known. I stayed in the stockyards hotel as a kid it was built around the turn of the century and had a large public (mens) restroom with dozens of wooden shower stalls which were odd to me. Upstream was Procter and Gamble which began making ivory soap from animal fat. It was very similar to union stockyards. And yes, you could definitely smell it. 😆
Grew up about 2 blocks east and 5 blocks South of the main Entrance to The Stockyards. When the wind was from the West,you got the fragrant aroma of the 'Yards. I lived there from 1956 (birth) till 1970 when we moved South and West to the West Lawn neighborhood.
My grandparents came from Lithuania and worked in the stockyards starting in the early 1920’s. She worked in the sausage stuffing room. My step grandfather worked the killing floors and all the way to his deathbed never ate meat again.
WOWW!....GOD BLESS YOUR GRANDPARENTS
Yea i get that.
I guess he had a conscience
I feel like the mob coulda fixed this
I worked as a young child in a slaughterhouse in Ireland for a short time, and never ate beef again after I hit 14 years old, and realized what that process was all about. I swept the blood and cleared the entrails and heads from the floor. It all got dumped in a pond
Grew up on 47th pl, Canaryville, still smelled the stench in the 80's when had the right wind direction.
Not at that address you weren’t avoiding anything.
I have hauled off and on since 1978 out of the packing houses . The 80s saw IBP have starting wages at one plant in 1981 at $13.00 per hour . Drop to $5.00 per hour at new plant in 1989.The retention of workers for any length of time became a thing of the past for the packing houses with business practices of past year returning.
This brings Upton Sinclair's novel to life.
The Jungle.
Yes. I read "The Jungle," at The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, while studying "Sanitation in Food Processing." I often referred to it during the training sessions that I gave the employees on cGMPs at the various plants, where I was Quality Assurance Manager. I worked with a large manufacturer of Chocolate candy, a bookstore who had a cafe where readers could buy wrap or panini sandwiches and a pizza manufacturing plant that made pizzas for a large national food conglomerate and a grocery store chain.
Training not trading!
cGMPs=current Good Manufacturing Practices
@@-oiiio-3993 I read that book written by Upton Sinclair. It is an exposé about the unsanitary, unsafe conditions in the slaughter houses and meat packing industry.
My great grandfather came from Ireland & worked in the stockyards. He was killed while eating his lunch by a rickeshing bullet from men shooting targets. This was in 1886.
It is spelled ricocheting. How ironic! One would think it would be from a stampede.
My grandfather was the first american born to Irish immigrants in Chicago. He also worked the stockyards. He was an unhappy person, mostly depressed. His children were born in the 1940s and grandma was stay at home for all those kids. He worked long hrs in those conditions. Not a great story.
@@libbyhicks7549 It IS a great story, although sad.
@libbyhicks7549 I can imagine. Horrible working conditions terrible pay long hours. 😪
@@libbyhicks7549the first one? That’s a big deal…
This is now one of my favorite documentaries! Well done !
I am 65 in 2023 and my grandparents came from the "Back Of The Yards neighborhood later moving further west to the suburbs.". Now my nephew lives there in a modern apartment, and I remember the smell well.
My great grandfather lost an ear in the stockyards fire of 1934 as a Chicago Fireman. He was already on the job for 36 years.
What a waste
Dam that's a story there
A life of shlepping for beggars pay. Horrible.
@@libbyhicks7549 actually it was Organized Labor that lifted ours and many families from grinding poverty and drudgery of the time. Firemen of Local #2 now probably average around $150k yearly for 84 working days and much improved conditions.
@@danichicago9140 Most female dominated service jobs are still fighting for $15 hr. Fireman (like police) is a male dominated occupation with lots of power and control attached to it, Those jobs have been paying very well for a very long time. Industrial Line workers (which the stockyard is an example of) are still fighting for minimum wage and that's even better than the conditions of line workers for US corporations in other countries who make more towards $5 a day. No, I don't tnink the union has quite saved the labor class yet.
Upton Sinclair was the author of a book titled The Jungle. The book was an exposé on the deplorable conditions of the meat packing industry. Which even includes the unsafe, unsanitary conditions in the slaughter and packing houses.
Thanks Captain obvious
@@kurtdorr8080 what % of US and WORLD population are familiar w The Jungle? (can even read? sarc) done a poll? survey? statistically prob the inverse of the # of this doc viewers. just sayin'. or: maybe 5X the above # viewers - are geriatric and don't surf the web and thus haven't seen this doc - but being geriatric, they likely READ this book in their American Classics studies. Is this book part of educational curriculum in the last 3 decades?
The book was a commentary on socialism. The meat packing was a side story.
@SarahSmith-vt3oc I read that book in high school. Part American history and the industrial revolution.
My great grandfather worked there, coming from Mississippi. I wish I would’ve got more of his stories before he past, but this documentary was good too!
I grew up near the Union Stock Yards back in the 40’s and 50’s. Many of the schools had field days to tour the yards. My grandparents worked there, my grandmother in the sausage stuffing room. I would hear neighbors talk about their work even on the killing floor. I don’t eat meat except hamburgers or pork because of this and I knew many people who worked there who never ate meat. It wasn’t that they slaughtered the animals it was the cruel cruel way it was done.
My father told me his elementary school class was taken there for a field trip and he could never forget the sounds of the hogs squealing as they were butchered.
😮😮😢😊😮 I finished reading, "The Jungle", and this documentary so brought the life of the book to reality. Thank you😢😮😊.
Reading it currently. I’m 70 pages in on the part where the Lithuanian neighbor is describing how the houses are sold and the generations of races that occupied them before Jurgis and his family “bought” theirs.
@inthemaking9714 every family member just gets targeted to this hellish end.
I actually talked to a guy who lived there during those years. He was in his nineties, he confirmed pretty much everything in this video, mainly about the smell.
I have NO doubt, it stinks enough around farms here where they pack in maybe 30 or 50 cows on a small fenced lot waiting to be transported out, the ground is always dark brown mud, only, its not MUD- it's years worth of piss liquified shit and the cows are walloing in it, even with the windows in the car closed the stench gets in just driving past, and the farmer has his house right there!
Can only imagine what the stench was with those tens of thousands of cows, pigs, sheep coralled in those pens in Chicago, with decades of piss and shit ground up into a mud that in summer dried up and was carried as dust everywhere. Then the blood, waste etc that wound up discharged into the stream to fester and rot, attract flies by the millions! the flies must have been horrendous!
The 375-acre site had 2300 separate livestock pens, to hold 75,000 hogs, 21,000 cattle and 22,000 sheep at any one time
In 84 I moved to Chicago, and while riding my Motorcycle with my friend , I said to him hey how come I can smell cow shit? He said because that's the remnants of the stick yards
It STILL smells like that til this day.
If you have ever been near a slaughterhouse or a rendering plant then you, too, can confirm this. It is one of the most repulsive, disgusting scents you will ever smell. Utterly horrid.
@@BeranM Actually I have,theres a place like that in Aurora, Illinois. It's a hog rendering plant, and it's awful. 9ur guys were complaining that they need a break, and send someone else over there to work.
The chapter on the eradication of bison and utilizing ranching to harm native people was very enlightening.
Very sad....but true
follow the money
It would not say enlightening as much as it was extremely biased. It ascribes the very worst of motives to people. There were never people who were "native" to America. Everyone traveled to the continent via ship or land bridge. When two civilizations compete for the same resource, the more technologically advanced typically wins the argument. This has remained true around the globe throughout recorded history. This is no more cruel than Mother Nature herself. Humanity has been at odds with nature since building the first campfire. Reshaping the natural world is how humanity survived without benefit of fur or fang or claw.
Sounds about White 🤦♂️
@@valkyriesardo278 This is a huge pile of bullshit. There were zero reasons for European settlers to eradicate the indigenous people of North America. The United States engaged in a program of wilful eradication, sterilization, and eugenics targeting Indigenous tribes. It's not about competing for resources. At the time there was plenty to go around. It was all about white people thinking they were superior both due to religious reasons and faulty science. It's not about humans being at odds with nature or any of that bullshit.
Excellent documentary I learned more about Chicago and US history that I didn’t know. Thank you
Sounds like Berlin NH up here in New Hampshire, the mills that make paper and glue! Ohhh that smell
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair chronicles this time in Chicago Bridgeport / Canaryville area. Great book.
Lived there from 1974, to 1987... I love the childrens' ghost stories of the era. Aka Time Kin, 42nd & Emerald... Great documentary here thanks. Great book, and still have it. Good day.
Really a masterpiece of documentary film making from Daniel Andries - a courageous and project from WTTW.
When we immigrated to Omaha NE lots of Mexican people started taking over the stockyards . I lived in a neighborhood where my neighbors were Lithuanian and their stories wer amazing . I go today and it's completely being taken over by Hispanics. Same story different generations .
I agree with you. We moved from Southern California to a meat packing town in Iowa in 1994. I was in middle school and remember seeing a sea of mainly Mexican immigrant employees come and go from that plant during shift changes. Today almost 3 decades later it’s mainly Asian immigrants that work there. The Hispanics remain in the town but found better jobs in other factories or in construction. It’s all generational, place in time.
@@mimusic1853 growing up did your city in Iowa experience any crime ?
Each successive wave of immigrants provide cheap labor and that isn’t going away anytime soon particularly now that we have no unions and little to no oversight. This country is becoming more urban and darker skinned. In the future we’ll all be bilingual out of necessity. Corporations are well aware of this: P&G and many other large corporations have had bilingual instructions on their products and have now for at least a decade plus.
We all do what is in our best economic interests. Immigrants are doing the same as you are: Trying to provide an income for themselves and their families. I wish them well.
You can still get cheap labor from White Europe. Not allowing immigration from Europe is why America is being turned brown on purpose. Browns and blacks are so much easier to control. Robotics will end the need for even them. @@tundrawomansays5067
South O? Off Q st.
Fascinating story. I love learning about our history, Imagine having to work in those conditions nowadays? I never take for granted what I have and never complain anymore!
Early free enterprise was rough compared to standards it grew as it did. It was all it could afford in the early days. But still, you mention Imagine, "HAVING to work in those conditions". They did not have to work by physical force like slavery. The had the opportunity to work, and get themselves out of poverty, and even gain opportunity.
It was a start and offered a better living then they had before employment, so they gladly choose it. I have been through a of of employers in non-union manufacturing, and even gained a couple engineering degrees while working full time, (that did not pay off for employment). I have found new jobs for more money, got laid off because of relocation of the manufacturing, and got fired enough be be fun hobby, still all just above poverty,----before I started my own business. I may not have liked all my employers and I am sure the feeling is mutual to some extent, but they all turned out to be an education I actually got paid for, to help me start my business, and I thank them all for hiring me. Now I realize that about 80% of the 20 places I worked were all owned by guys who worked for somebody else before they started their own business. Notice how you never learn about such opportunity in an economics class. They always talk about "the worker", (like communism does), and never about the opportunity we get from our employers. When I first started my business, I had a partner and it was his idea to go to this meeting, ran by mostly retired businessmen, to give advise to new business ventures, (S.C.O.R.E). I will never forget some of their advise. "If you want to compete in an industry,---work for them first."
Heck---"complaining" is what motivated me to move on. :) I am glad I never worked for a Union now, because I discovered freedom when my business took off.
@@EarthSurferUSA I didn't mean to say they were reduced to slavery, I meant that they had to work to make ends meet and this was the only job for them. They were all taken Advantage of by the owners. Of course the owners were tight with there wallets and only paid what they had to also. Barely a living wage. Never has a worker created any wealth for himself working for others, it's only when he starts his own business can any of us really succeed. That is unless your highly educated or work for the government like a damn Pelosi.
Amen!
@@roofermarc1 I was going to endorse your comment until I got to the part about Nancy Pelosi. It's interesting you didn't mention someone like Chuck Grassley who has been a governmental legislator since 1959.
Snowflakes and Woketards need not apply.
Excellent work highlighting our past and how it continues to be repeated.
I am 63 and milked cows for 42 years, and I understand and agree with just about everything you have said. I farm in Ontario,Canada and the very same thing is happening here, dairy farms are disappearing fast. We had 105 tie stalls. And I loved dairy farming and all of the changing production methods we have seen. From small square bales to large round bales, made wet and wrapped in plastic. My big horse for years was my 966 IH. Great listening to all these memories, much the same life we had. And I too, would do all again !
About the same story here in northeast Texas my friend. I grew up milking cows. In its heyday there were 800 dairies in our county. No more. I doubt there is still 100. I can't say the same for loving it, though it was a good way of life. Everyone now has gone to beef cattle. A lot more to my liking. Take care my northern neighbor. 😁
My great grandfather emigrated from Ireland in the 1860s and through hard work he bought 3 houses and raised 5 children, dealing in hides.
Who cares
@@Will324 don't be racist.
Well, I'm happy for him, but.. a lot of hard work also goes unrewarded so....its a crap shoot.
Sadly those times are in the past. I find it disturbing that a family of 3 just gets by on a salary of 120,000.00 annual.
@@derrick9635not a racist an asshole lol.
Drove through Chicago in 1967 and I'll never forget the stench that overcame us as we passed those yards. I guess by then things were winding down. I can't imagine what it smelled like at the height of Armour's and Swift's time. Brutal! Just brutal!
Born 68’ it still smells a bit ripe around there in the summer. Hormel here now.
I'm glad to see Chicago became modernized and got rid of the stockyards --- so much cleaner now
@@fredwerza3478 Oh, yeah! The pearl of the Midwest.
It was actually your fart
@@ramencurry6672 Duhhhh It was actually your breath blowing back in your face. And go…….
My mother took her Sunday school class to the stockyards once for a tour (how religious?). One boy told her afterwards: "I'll never eat meat again" and became a lifelong vegetarian.
My great grandfather worked on the stockyards when he moved our family up to Chicago from Mississippi during the Great Migration. He was eventually able to buy a three flat home on 16th & Kedzie right as the Jewish population was moving out. This was an incredibly enlightening documentary.
That's what's up, because my grandfather did the same in K Town on 14th and Karlov after the Greeks left
What's a 3 flat home? A home with just 3 walls?
@@JM-yx1lm three story home
@@JM-yx1lm that would be a 3 upright
Does someone thought of as chattel buy/sell? The cow can also be thought of as chattel.
Heard about the stockyards in American Experience's episode "The Poison Squad"
It got me thinking about Portland, Oregon's version of them.
Swift operated one on the north end of town and we also had our own Bubbly Creek: the Columbia Slough.
Now the Slough is filled with homeless excrement and trash, and stolen car hulks
The exbo center replaced the stockyards in Portland
What an amazing documentary on this slice of American and Chicago history!
A very well made documentary. I never knew the history in depth as this video has presented. My mother grew up in Chicago, and did tell me stories about the slaughter houses, but this really brought it to light. Thanks!
@James Sheppard on chigacgo south side boi that saying has a whole new meaning
The jungle by Upton sinclare book describes the stock yards,which brought about major changes. Good book,will scar you.
If you liked this documentary, you should read 'The Jungle - Upton Sinclair'. A very good book about the stockyards, specifically about the ones in Chicago.
Its bullshit
I’m not from the Midwest but I do like a Chicago hotdog
Used to live bout 1 mile from the stockyard, in. Greeley Colorado while attending the University of Northern Colorado. Although the stockyard was east of the campus . . . when we the wimd blew west, seemed the yard was RIGHT NEXT DOOR. SMELL . . . was unimaginable ! 💀
and i'm the guy that accidentally destroyed the Grand Piano in the auditorium in 1974---did u ever hear anything about that?
When I was a boy in the sixties, my dad used to fish in the cedar river next to Rath packing plant in Waterloo Iowa and there was a huge pipe where the animal guts and blood used to dump into the river!
And we all lived and thrived through it.
Bet the fish loved it!
this documentary reminds me of "The Jungle," by Upton Sinclair, that was part of history class in high school.
And of course, you noticed how the book was featured heavily in the last 1/3 of the same video you are commenting on....
@@email4664 well I am 47 years old and only 2 years removed from suffering 2 simultaneous ruptured brain aneurysms. glad you can feel high and mighty in a comment section on you tube..
wow, did you sit next to me when it dawned on me that this was basically a documentary of "The Jungle." you are fvcking phenomenal along with your creative handle of E mail. where did you come up with such a catchy hancle? were you working hand in hand with Al Gore when HE invented the internet?
Man just shut up,you're doing too much..
@@joshualangdon3070 hahaha ha nice!
I really loved this documentary. I still love reading The Jungle every few years. My grampa was a big wig in the Chicago PD and we often times went to the back of the yards when I was a young boy. It's truly an amazing piece of history and the people that worked there and lived in the area gave Chicago a lot of character and strength. When i was a young kid, Chicago was a great city. I lived on the west side and we had huge diversity in our neighborhood. We all took pride in it and it was ours. Sadly, Chicago has turned into a dangerous place these days. I worked in the loop my entire career and routinely went out to luch and dinner very often in Chicago. These days, I won't even go into the city limits. It makes me very sad to think that it has bexome so out of control. It's still a gorgeous city and i credit Richie Daley for making it one of the most beautiful big city's in the world. Thanks for the great vid WTTW....love your channel
I'll never forgive Daley for the idiotic parking lease deal. Literally sold off for pennies on the dollar so he could patch a budget for 1 year.
Chicago is statistically still much safer now than it was in the 70's, 80's and 90's. There is a very sad spike in crime that peaked in 2021 but things are slowly getting better. It is perfectly safe to go out to lunch and dinner in the loop.
Some parts of Chicago are dangerous. Others are not. Crime has boldly come to "the Magnificent Mile" and people do on occasion get robbed in broad daylight. Chicago has neglected some parts of the city for decades. A lack of full service grocery stores, vacant lots and houses, underfunded schools, inadequate public transportation, and little to no support for small businesses has created an "Other Chicago". What is happening is to be expected.
@@BenjaminCommet the reputation that Chicago has been given is not accurate. Chicago is not even in the top ten of most dangerous cities. The powers that be in Chicago had better start building up some of its long neglected neighborhoods.
Police should be allowed to do their jobs with the left handcuffing them!
Excellent still-motion photography job. Enabling viewer's to better understand what the orator was describing. Special thanks to the special guest speakers. Sharing personal information pertaining to the meat processing industries. Many a WW-2 soldier enjoyed eating a can of Spam from his ration kit. While out on duty away from the front. I probably would have muscled the meat warehouse establishments to purchase my products. Or my competitor would have. As time passes for the workers. Plant conditions & pay scales improved. Smithfield Virginia ham & sausage plant. I remember that stench whenever I drove by there.
Despite the high rent, rising food prices, violence and poverty, I've been a Chicagoan for 41yrs, having visited places such as Mississippi, Wisconsin, Philadelphia, and Louisiana, I always come back home to Illinois and I love My city, I really do 🫡🫡🫡❤ the food, architecture, monuments, history, landscapes, sports teams, music, AND people, there's no place like SWEET HOME CHICAGO !
Chicago has the most heartless people. It's ALL yours !
Well stay there Lmao you’ll be the next victim
Love your city even through the ups and downs. A true Chicagoan.
same here 32 years old from bridgeport which is right by the back of the yards south side
Through the good and the bad I love Chicago. True Chicagoans.
Interesting documentary. I was born in the early 1970s, my family living in Ida B Wells housing on 37th & King Dr. What's really crazy is, if we traveled south using the Dan Ryan, getting on at 39th & Wentworth, you could smell what was left of the Stockyards. I recall it like yesterday, the scent was hella strong! You'd really smell it this time of year, especially when it was warm out
When do you think the smell would go away ?
I remember going to old Comiskey Park in the '70's, it smelled like the stockyards and cheap cigars.
I grew up in the back of the yards in the 70s and 80s you could still smell it but no longer
I loved the Union Stock Yard restaurant...picking out your own cut, and having them grill it to perfection.
Aging yourself
"We're at the beginning of things. Not the ending." We all need to be aware of not just the food we eat. Rather the industrial processes because it is definitely a part of our lives and the world.
My family came from Germany to Chicago. In searching ancestry, I found many butchers, meat packers, etc
how ironic ... butchers from Germany ... Came in handy in Germany in 1930s-1940s ... but instead of cattle, it was PEOPLE
Are you American?
Skilled craftsman no doubt.
@@rhuephus that was an asinine statement
I've been reminded of a movie about meat industry I believe Kansas City A Gene Hackman movie called "Prime Cut" I saw it in the mid 60's as near as I can remember I certainly would like to see it again.
Thanks I shall look for this movie.
It was about human trafficking where girls and women were drugged and auctioned off to the highest bidder like prime beef.
Sissy Spacek was also in it
The smell of the stockyards when I was a kid in Canaryville in the 60's was the smell of opportunity, employment and prosperity.
The Killing Floor is a 1984 film by Bill Duke on workers fighting to build an interracial labor union in the meatpacking industry in Chicago. In July 2021, the film was shown in the Cannes Classics section at the Film Festival.
Love this video .. i was born in raised in canaryville. I always loved hearing about the old stock yard.
I was a child when we moved from the back of yards, never forget the neighborhood getting over ran by rats when the stockyards shut down, we lived on 47th and Loomis so a block from there. I do have some good memories of the area.
Them rats was probably just moving out to search for food since their easy meals were probably gone
Back in 1899, my great-great-grandmother Carrie Martin and her husband Thomas moved into a house on Halsted between 43rd and Root Street that was across from the entrance to the Stockyards. For the next ten years, she had a barbershop on that block. I have her business card from that first address, and it has her address, photo, “Lady Barber,” and her additional offerings of “First-class laundry” and “Fine cigars and tobaccos.” I like to imagine a stockyard worker coming from his third-floor walkup in the morning, stopping by her house for a trim and shave and to drop off his dirty clothes, then after work, picks up his clean shirts and gets a few cigars for the evening, maybe before stopping at the Cahill & Brothers bar at Halsted and Root.
Being a farmer who processes our our own meat it amazes me that people are so oblivious to the fact of how their big macs are made and that animal shit actually stinks. WTF?????
I like the smell of cow shit but don't ask me to clean the gd chicken house.
@You're just a nasty person, so just stop trying to sound like you're nostradamus goofy.
I know right, most Americans are so oblivious to the actual process of eating food, have no idea how hard it is just to grow a garden, butcher a hog, deer, or cow. the amount of effort it takes to proces and save even small game. If they survive the coming changes they'll soon figure it out.
It is hilarious the reactions of people that know we Butcher and eat our animals. And not from the store. But yet they don't feel sorry for their cheeseburger when they eat it , or the meat they buy at the store. I told a lady the other day the eggs are chicken embryos. I don't think she'll ever eat another egg again. Just oblivious and blissfully ignorant. My friend's daughter told a school mate that they butchered their cow. The kid was so upset she had to go home for the day. I can't imagine the snowflake parents behind that
Oh yeah my grandfather used to kill a pig for us when we visited is a big process
I worked for Hudson Foods with Turkey meat 1996-1999 and I can tell you personally "Swift" is the best company with the highest standards for their meat.
I really enjoyed this well done documentary.
I lived about 8 miles northwest of the stockyards and you could smell them when the wind was coming from that direction. You also had the odors from the tanneries like Gutmens and other animal parts processing companies around chicago that were part of that industry.
Back then Chicago was an industrial giant with a distinct culture of it's own and a bar on every corner where parents would take their children after church on Sunday where they could have a soda and some pretzels or chips while their parents socialized.
Almost all of those corner bars served lunch for all the many factory workers throughout the city.
That all died when Daley jr. became mayor and killed businesses with his taxes on them.
Everyday you would see semi trucks full of cattle or hogs going down Elston Avenue on their way to the stockyards.
I really miss those days.
Sounds like Olde Philadelphia, particularly the Infamous Kensington Neigjborhood. Not too many people are aware that all the streets head downstream to Kensington ave where they could easily hose all the sewage down to the main street where the storefronts were, easily washing the day away with the last door shut for the day. Bars on every corner, six churches in my neighborhood for each nationality. The Polish, the Irish, the German, the Lithuanian, the Italian, and the Baptist. Every kid went to school at the church their family went to service at on Sundays. And the Gangs that worked the alleys and the docks, scimming taxes, running the daily numbers, protection rackets, burglary, theft, liquor, the after hours social clubs. Each 2 square mile area was like its own small town. The good old days, days we likely will never see again in our once great nation.
@@stephenbishop355 all those gangsters in Philly ran that whole town --- the good ole days
@@stephenbishop355 We will see them again. This is a human problem, ie a political problem. I think it has grown in the recent past. No easy solutions. Exploitation is still a huge thing.
@@glenn6583 There is a solution. Not sure how hard it would be to perform, but the solution is pretty much the same solution we came up with when we formed the USA; Living under the philosophies of individual liberty protected by law and all people (all free), to participate in free enterprise, (I just defined human morality).
But this time, it is the founding of the USA that will be the New World Order. Not communism. Politics,--is the application of philosophy, and the philosophies being imposed on us through Politics is collectivism/communism. There is a reason why your philosophy course in college was a mixed bag of garbage, by mostly insane people who probably would have been institutionalized with that talk after the age of reason, with you still getting a good grade having no idea why, and just glad it was over, never to be thought of again. It is time we brought philosophy, (how man should live), back into the political argument, (or for the first time if it never was), and drag the commies into the light. Yea! :)
@@stephenbishop355 ah yes. The good old days of exploitation and extortion.
Lol wtf is wrong with you boomers.
I bought my first Stetson hat at Morris Men's Wear at the Stockyard Inn before it closed and was torn down. I was the last cowboy in Chicago.
Did you get to meet Bruzzy Thompson...he was a man from the community known as Canaryville and was always in and around Morris Mens Western Wear. Also, he too was dressed like a Cowboy.
Please read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair to learn more in depth about Chicago, the Stockyards, the meat packing plants and the immigrants who worked in them.
It's a good documentary but don't really care about reading a book about meat packing that much.
@@JM-yx1lm
It's an excellent book and it's not just about meat packing, it's about human struggle.
@@JM-yx1lm
Aw C'mon !
@@paulrodgers5559 it is a human struggle to survive economically due in no small part to the so called “Reagan Revolution.” Thank St. Ronnie for destroying unions and living wages, outsourcing by *supporting corporations to go offshore to make their products tax free.* (Yeah, very low to no taxes on goods produced overseas.) There are many factors that have led to economic decline in the US but in my lifetime boom and bust cycles are back again. We learned nothing from the Crash as the safeguards that were put in place to ensure no more Great Depressions occurred were systematically dismantled. And here we are: A gig economy and minimum wage part time jobs.
Yes, I read that book in the early 70's when I was a young teen - left quite an impact on me!
They were still in operation in 1968 . I was at the '68 Chicago Auto Show across the parking lot from the slaughterhouse at the amphitheater . Remember those great Maxwell Street Polish sausages ? On Maxwell Street in the yellow building ? Great times they were .
Yes, I remember those great polishes. Can't get one like them anywhere,
Nice to have access to these local documentaries. Thanks for sharing.
Hell of a documentary. Really enjoyed it as one with a agricultural background.
Hell…I was born in 1955 and remember the smell on the West side of Manhattan in the early 1960s when there were still slaughterhouses in and around the meat packing district.
BYW…William Cronin’s book “Natures Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” is a great history of Chicago’s key role as a exchange hub for a whole array of commodities including meat, lumber, shoes, wheat to name a few.
Manhattan still stinks and is ridiculously overpriced now..
@@jasonallen3678
Was always pretty expensive.
Stink? Yes… but believe me, it WAS far worse when the city actually had a functioning “industrial” waterfront…which included slaughterhouses. The Hackensack Meadows in New Jersey had feed lots and I believe slaughterhouses. The whole region had awful water and air pollution that many have lost sight of today. A population born after the mid-1970s can’t appreciate just how much better things are today environment-wise.
Yes…”bridges and roads” are looking more beat up and in need of repair/renewal/repainting…but the air and water IT most definitely better.
BTW…in the 1910s my great grandfather loved hunting in the Hackensack Meadows.
@@josephhuether1184 In the 50s one of my uncles worked in a slaughterhouse up in New Jersey. A cow got loose from a stall that hadn't been closed right, ran him over, and kicked him in the head. He was unconscious for three days. After that, his family said he was never quite right. I remember him coming over to visit one Christmas and he had this huge dent in his forehead still where it had caved in his skull. He didn't talk much and the eye under where he'd been kicked was always looking off in the same direction. He had to be hand-fed and sometimes he'd start shouting unintelligibly. My aunt said the company never acknowledged he'd been hurt and when he wasn't able to work they fired him.
my first job was in a butcher market learning to cut meat. I was still in high school. A skill you never forget.
My father was born on 44th and Halstead, at home. That neighborhood on the south side was and is called " the back of the yards".
yes! Back Of The Yards my neighbor... not long ago, you still smell wired smell. in 70's we would sit by the sidewalk on 47th Bishop street and we would see the trailers passed by with pigs. Yes, they would make lost of noise. We would feel bad... the rats us the problem... peace
Canaryville then back of the yards slightly south and west. P
Facinating , brutal and thought provoking.
This is a great series. I remember watching it when it first aired.
Tough to get thru but very important history thank you for making this
My Grandparents worked in the shock yards. And lived next to the yard. My Dad said he can smell them. 50 years later. Yuck
My great-grandmother worked at an Armour packing house here in S Georgia. The packing house sits unused, next to a removed rail spur, at the end of Armour Road. Armour Rd. has always been a low-income area.
Fascinating documentary. Thanks so much for this.
I remember sleeping in my bedroom on 38th and Lowe. Summer breeze roll in and boom. You would get that stock yard smell.
I lived at 63rd and Central and during WWII I remember the smell every summer evening as you tried to sleep and the stench was terrible. We were miles and miles away and it was terrible.
Yeah this was back in the time when people work for a living nothing but respect man
Merci beaucoup pour l'histoire de Union Stockyard Chicago❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤😊❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Millions of blessings,
Esther St Juste
Cheap labor equals a cheap life. Just like with taxes, the hardest workers benefit the least. No incentive.
You can work “hard” or you can work “smart”
I don’t feel bad for low earners who think they are doing something by working” hard”. I worked hard milking cows and that will never make you rich. Why? Because most people with hands and half a brain can milk a cow and this is why working hard doesn’t guarantee high pay and high quality of life.
@@suitedsuperhero3155 people dont know this your right
You can tell a fool, but you can't tell them much. No incentive.
Always go union . I don’t work without a contract
@@tonyrizzo615 if unions are so grate then why force them on those that don't want them? I always laugh when those who claim to be conservative and still are pro union when your extortion I mean dues go to protect lazy worthless workers, the union bosses and democrats
I used to visit a friend from school on 44th and Archer in Chicago during the 80s and even at that time you could smell the stockyards.
At least there were jobs in Chicago's South Side in those days.
I love every ones choice of words in this documentary
We lived in a village of Shannon south of Chicago my father was a butcher he owned a meat locker the local farmer brought their cows and hogs in to be cut up and wrapped up and frozen
I’m not that old (68) but I can definitely remember as a kid the foul stockyard and feed lot odors from the west side of Manhattan and some areas of the Hackensack meadows on New Jersey.
Of course today, meat packing takes place in relatively remote rural areas in the south and western plains states.
Absolutely brilliant documentary. Eye opening. Bravo!!!
Nice video! My parents talk about remembering the meat packing smells….thanks for the video
This was a very deep documentary..
Great documentary & rate this right up there with the Pullman documentary ! Historic Chicago stories.
I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary. Thank you!
This is very interesting. What a great channel I have found. Thank you. I'm going to watch several others. Always been intrigued by Chicago. I would like to visit one day. I live in Niagara Falls, Canada, or not too far away.
Very well produced documentary.
What a fantastic show I'm 61 years old and I can't even imagine what it was like to make $0.14 an hour to support a family and what they lived through. what a great documentary would a great show thank you.
Why do people like you never consider cost of living was remarkably lower and people back then knew how to cook, can, bake etc?
Applying standards and inflation of today to then is so mindless.
@@TingTingalingy and why do people like you not see that it was clearly still awful pay and conditions as depicted in the documentary?
@@Pandaluver67899 it's non sequitur to apply standards of today on the past. It's completely illogical and doesn't account for MANY things.
@@Pandaluver67899 well because thus is the greatest country on the planet..not a perfect country but out of the entire world Americans have more freedom an opportunity than any other place...we lead the world in innovation..because we have a free market..there's lots of corruption but there's corruption everywhere ppl are..it's a human condition..an Jobs today ain't that bad ppl who don't make enough can get government assistance..
We had a packing house here in town. Mainly Czechs who worked there in the beginning.
I was the "stunner" not long after i left high school in 1996; our hammers had a crimped .22 rimfire bullet that we loaded into the "hammer" (was similar to a 14lb hammer cut in half, with a spring & firing pin between the 2 halves, kinda).
Cattle would come up the race (or backwards if Halal), locked in the box and a swift knock on the head firing rhe crimped .22
A "swift" knock on the head
💪
Interesting story , quite educational. Though The Armour hot dog song is still stuck in my head
Very interesting and great documentary. Surprised there isn't a bigger interest in Mary McDowell in Chicago for what she did for the city.
39:59 sums it up… the elites pay to rewrite history and suppress opposing views.
Thank you. Watching from Alaska.
My Grandfather was one of the last butchers of the era. By the 1960s I believe he had to close his local business. He did work at the local Red Owl I believe in the meat department until he retired later.
Thank you for shining light on this.
A great video. The multiple story tellers made it interesting.