Strohmeyer and Wyman. Filling skins, sausage department, Armour's great packing house, Chicago, U.S.A., ca. 1893, photoprint, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/89712084/.
This primary source photograph serves as a window into the Chicago meatpacking industry and the injustices of child labor. Although Midwest livestock operations and the Chicago stockyards served communities with fresh meat and byproducts from pork and beef across the country, it is also evident that immigrants and children suffered poor working conditions and low wages. Studying these issues empowers students to raise their voices to elicit positive changes in the workforce today and to be champions for safe working conditions for all.
The photograph captures men and boys stuffing sausage skins at a table in 1893 at Armour’s great packing house in Chicago, Illinois.
Chicago housed the country’s largest meatpacking industry from the Civil War to the 1920s. The proximity to Midwest livestock and accessibility to railroads put Chicago on the map as a leading pork and beef packer. As demand grew for fresh meat and byproducts such as gelatin, the Union Stock Yard & Transit Company was formed in 1865 to expedite the transportation of livestock. The sprouting industry established major meatpacking plants, dubbed Chicago’s Big Three: Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris. In order for The Big Three to meet the high demands of packing, storing, and shipping meat, they employed more than fifty thousand workers; however, the poor working conditions and child labor caused many to organize and strike. Children were known to suffer effects from diseased meat, including lung infections, bovine tuberculosis, and pickled hands. Government regulation and pro-union labor laws, through affiliates of the American Federation of Labor, afforded workers temporary wage increases, an eight-hour work day, an age minimum of 14 years for factory work, and a prohibition on having children work overnight.
- What do you notice or wonder about the photograph?
- In what time period was this photograph taken? How do you know?
- What goods are being produced, and who is the consumer?
- Why is it important to protect labor rights?
- How can young people influence change in a community?
Common Core State Standards
6-8.4 Craft and Structure: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.
- Analyzing how specific word choices shape meaning: This primary source photograph shows the labor of immigrants and children in the meatpacking industry in Chicago. Chicago was labeled “Hog Butcher for the World” in Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago,” and students can make connections between the content of the poem and the historical context. Additionally, students can determine the meaning of vocabulary words in the poem, including wanton, brutal, and toil; historical terms, including stockyards and Chicago’s Big Three; and literary terms, including hyperbole and personification.
WHST.6-8.7 Research to Build and Present Knowledge:
Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
- Conducting research projects based on focused questions: Students will be able to conduct research investigating the Chicago meatpacking industry, child labor, and the negative effects that immigrants and children faced in the stockyards and factories.
Consider pairing this primary source photograph along with other images in Lot 11985 to study the poem “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg. Students will be able to connect the photograph to the content of the poem, beginning with Sandburg’s first line, “Hog Butcher for the World.” Highlighting the strength of the working class, the poem also brings attention to negative things about the city, including the reliance on cheap labor from immigrants and children. The poem acknowledges poverty and life on the streets: however, the lines also describe Chicago as “husky,” “brawling,” and “Freight Handler to the Nation.” Not only can students research the history of child labor and the meatpacking industry, but also they will be able to analyze the poem for figurative language, including hyperbole, personification, simile, and metaphor. A vocabulary study of words such as butcher, wanton, brutal, sneer, toil, savage, and destiny can be implemented. Finally, students can write their own poems about a special place while incorporating figurative language similar to that used in Sandburg’s poem.
- Child labor can be a sensitive topic for students to study. However, it is essential to understand the challenges and effects of poor working conditions on children from the Industrial Revolution to today so that youth’s rights are protected.
Links to resources for approaching those topics
- he Museum of Tolerance published a Teacher’s Guide, “Children Who Labor,” which includes discussion questions, extensive nonfiction blurbs, and information about the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), an international treaty.
- Photograph: [Carl Sandburg, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing left] / World-Telegram & Sun photo by Al Ravenna]
- Photograph: “Glass works. Midnight. Location: Indiana”
- Photograph and manuscript: [Printed page of text with photo illustration: "Declaration of Dependence by the Children of America in Mines and Factories and Workshops Assembled"]
- Library of Congress: Lot 11985, forty-nine items, including photographs of the meatpacking industry in the early 1900s
- The Poetry Foundation: “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg
- Library of Congress: “Lesson Plan: Child Labor in America”
- Library of Congress: “Child Labor” primary source set
- WTTW Chicago Stories: “The Union Stockyards: “A Story of American Capitalism’”
- Encyclopedia of Chicago: “Union Stock Yard & Transit Co.”