Armour Packing Company - Kansas City, KS

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Kansas City, Wyandotte, Kansas, United States

The Armour Packing Company was originally brought to Kansas City, KS by partners Philip Danforth Armour (1832-1901) and John Plankinton when it was called Plankington & Armour and was erected in 1871^[1]. This was an expansion from their large packing houses in Milwaukee, WI and Chicago, IL. Growing industrial cities from the East were clamoring for pork and beef.

When John Plankington retired in 1885, the Armour Brothers organized. The Armour family members that made up the firm included:

• Philip Danforth Armour (1832-1901), founder
• Simeon Brooks Armour (1828-1899), eldest brother
• Andrew Watson Armour (1829-1892), brother and his sons,
  • Kirk B. Armour
  • Charles B. Armour

According to Wikipedia^[2], "In its early years, Armour sold every kind of consumer product made from animals: meats, glue, oil, fertilizer, hairbrushes, buttons, oleomargarine, and drugs, made from slaughterhouse byproducts. Armour operated in an environment without labor unions, health inspections, or government regulation. Accidents were commonplace. Armour was notorious for the low pay it offered its line workers. It fought unionization by banning known union activists and breaking strikes in 1904 and 1921 by employing African Americans and new immigrants as strikebreakers. The company did not become fully unionized until the late 1930s when the meatpacking union succeeded in creating an interracial industrial union as part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations." A feature story in the Kansas City Journal-Post of Oct. 16, 1904, used the attached photograph.

By 1918 a quote from ^[3]"And in September 1918, Kansas City broke them all. As World War I entered its final fateful months, the Kansas City stockyards handled more than 55,000 cattle in a single day and 475,000 for the month. That fall, during a remarkable three-month span, more than 1.3 million cattle passed through the city’s yards. The Kansas City cattle business was impressive, but add to these figures hundreds of thousands of sheep, hogs, and horses, and more than 3.3 million animals were yarded in the city. First seven, then 12, then 34 railroads brought these animals into the city and out again to distant markets."

Sources

1. ↑ Ray, M., 2021. Armour Packing Company | KC History. [online] Kchistory.org. Available at: <https://kchistory.org/islandora/object/kchistory%253A109094> [Accessed 10 April 2021].
2. ↑ En.wikipedia.org. 2021. Armour and Company - Wikipedia. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour_and_Company> [Accessed 10 April 2021].
3. ↑ Herron, J., 2021. Making Meat: Race, Labor, and the Kansas City Stockyards. [online] The Pendergast Years. Available at: <https://www.pendergastkc.org/article/making-meat-race-labor-and-kansas-city-stockyards> [Accessed 10 April 2021].

Plankington & Armour's Packing House, The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, Missouri, 15 Jan 1873, Wed • Page 4, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/75486146/the-kansas-city-times/