Armour and Company

Armour and Company, founded in Chicago in 1867, is the largest meat packing plant in the city, as well as one of the largest meat packing companies in the country. Very successful, Armour has a troubling history, especially its anti-union practices, including the banning of known activists and the use of Negroes as strikebreakers. Additionally, it was culpable in a nationwide scandal during the Spanish-American War, where 500,000 pounds of rotting beef, rejected by the British military, were sold to the Americans at bargain prices, resulting in the food poisoning of thousands of soldiers, sometimes their deaths. Finally, lately, Armour appears to be behind a fairly steep price hike in meat throughout the country, despite there being no apparent cause or rise in prices anywhere else in the meat industry.