Armour and Company was an American slaughterhouse and meatpacking company founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1867 by the Armour brothers led by Philip Armour (1832-1901). By 1880 their company was Chicago's most important business and helped make the city and its Union Stock Yards the center of the American meatpacking industry.
In the early years, Armour sold every kind of consumer product made from animals. Not only meats but glue, oil, fertilizer, hairbrushes, buttons, oleomargarine, and drugs were made from slaughterhouse byproducts. Operating in an environment without labor unions, health inspections or government regulation, Armour was notorious both for the poor quality of its canned goods and sausages — its cheapest meats — which were often contaminated with rat droppings, sawdust, dead vermin and rotten meats mixed with the good; and for its unsafe work condition, in which its often immigrant employees were exhorted to work ever faster on meat processing lines that used very sharp knives and dangerous machinery. Accidents were commonplace. Armour was also notorious for the low pay it offered its line workers, and it actively fought unionisation, banning known union activists and ruthlessly breaking strikes in 1904 and 1921 by employing African Americans and desperate immigrants as strikebreakers. It was not fully unionized until the late 1930s when interracial unions became more commonplace.
In the early 1920s, Armour encountered financial troubles and the Armour family sold its majority interest to financiers. The firm retained its position as one of the largest American firms through the Great Depression and the sharp increase in demand in WWII. Over the years, Armour & Co. expanded its operations across the United States, at its peak employing as many as 50,000 people. After World War II, its fortunes began to decline. In 1959, it closed its Chicago slaughterhouse operations. Armour and Company was sold to Greyhound Corp. in 1970, who moved its headquarters to Arizona. In 1983, the company was purchased by ConAgra Foods which continues to market processed meat under the Armour name. ConAgra presently markets over 150 meat products under the Armour label.
Armour's most famous product is Armour Hot dogs, which were advertised on television for decades using a catchy (according to many insidious) jingle which, despite the years that have past since it was widely heard, much of the American population can now sing from memory.
See also=
- Gustavus Franklin Swift, founder of Swift and Company