In Meat We Trust (42 page)

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“puts us back ten years”: Quoted in “Advocate’s Fight for Frankfurter Progressing,” 9.

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“wholesome, appetizing”: B. F. McCarthy, “Frankfurters as Wholesome Food,”
Butchers’ Advocate and Market Journal
82, no. 16 (January 26, 1927): 9.

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“shabby mane and beard”: “How ‘Meat for Health Week’ Was Put Over,”
National Provisioner
69, no. 2 (July 14, 1923): 23.

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“the nation’s best brains”: “Experiment Station to Aid in Research Work on Meat,”
Meat and Live Stock Digest
5, no. 9 (April 1925): 2.

4. Factories, Farmers, and Chickens

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“shot”: Quoted in “An Interview with Jesse Jewell,”
Broiler Industry
22, no. 3 (March 1959): 8. The only substantive account of Jewell’s early years is in Gordon Sawyer,
The Agribusiness Poultry Industry: A History of Its Development
(Exposition Press, 1971), 86–89; but I also relied on interviews with Jewell in poultry and farming trade magazines. I pieced together early interest in broiler making in Georgia and the South from newspapers and government documents, but a dissertation that focuses on Georgia is Monica Richmond Gisifoli, “From Cotton Farmers to Poultry Growers: The Rise of Industrial Agriculture in Upcountry Georgia, 1914–1960” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2007). Another valuable source is chapter 4 of Lu Ann Jones, “Re-visioning the Countryside: Southern Women, Rural Reform, and the Farm Economy in the Twentieth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1996).

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“sucked the food”: Quoted in James H. Shideler,
Farm Crisis, 1919–1923
(University of California Press, 1957), 20.

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“a cheap and abundant food-supply”: W. O. Atwater, “The Food-Supply of the Future,”
Century
43, no. 1 (November 1891): 111.

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“last great nest of chaos”: Deborah Fitzgerald,
Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture
(Yale University Press, 2003), 28.

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“When a nation depends”: Ernest Hamlin Abbott, “Editorial Correspondence from Washington,”
The Outlook
, February 8, 1922, p. 211.

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“The wars of the future”: Quoted in Danbom,
Resisted Revolution
, 42.

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“industrial agriculture”: Frank App, “The Industrialization of Agriculture,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
142, no. 231 (March 1929): 232.

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“green-strucks”: U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Marketing Poultry,”
Farmers’ Bulletin
, no. 1377 (1924), p. 24. There are no substantive histories of the chicken as part of the American diet, or of the early efforts to raise chickens for meat. My account is based on extensive reading in poultry trade journals.

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“Under the machine system”: Franklin Morton, “Feeding Poultry by Machinery,”
Technical World
7, no. 6 (February 1907): 643. This magazine was published by the Armour Institute of Technology, founded by the Armour family. Philip Armour had a long history of encouraging education in general and technical education in particular. A short but useful summary of other meatpackers’ failed forays into poultry is “Chicken Meat in the Diet,”
National Provisioner
30, no. 26 (June 25, 1904): 22.

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“it remain[ed] with others”: “Kosher Killing Poultry,”
New York Produce and American Creamery
62, no. 25 (October 20, 1926): 1024.

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“Of all the toothsome”: The Philly quotes are from [M. K. Boyer], “‘Philadelphia’ Poultry,”
New York Poultry Review and American Creamery
18 (February 19, 1913): 796; and P. T. Woods, “Producing High Quality Chicken Meat,”
Reliable Poultry Journal
7, no. 10 (December 1910): 1046.

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“swell spreads”: John H. Robinson,
Broilers and Roasters: The Specialties of the Market Poultrymen
(Farm-Poultry Publishing Co., 1905), 6. Robinson was a knowledgeable observer of and prolific writer about the early-twentieth-century commercial poultry in- dustry.

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“Hotel men and restaurant keepers”: “New York’s Poultry Needs,”
New York Produce Review and American Creamery
69, no. 9 (January 1, 1930): 430.

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But size mattered, too: This observation is based on comments in John H. Robinson, “Laying the Foundations of a Great Broiler Industry,”
Reliable Poultry Journal
34, no. 9 (November 1927): 534.

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“juicy, milk-fed”: M. E. Pennington, “The Handling of Dressed Poultry a Thousand Miles from the Market,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture 1912
, 286.

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“A Chicken in Every Pot”: Advertisement, “A Chicken in Every Pot,”
New York Times
, October 30, 1928, p. 23.

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Bankers encouraged these projects: There is a great deal of information about the gravy trains in regional newspapers, but also see pp. 134–35 of Jones, “Re-visioning the Countryside.”

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“scrubs”: "Poultry Raising Rapidly Growing,”
Augusta (GA) Chronicle
, March 6, 1924, p. A7.

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Other subsidized research: For the role of chickens in research, I am indebted to William Boyd, “Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production,”
Technology and Culture
42, no. 4 (October 2001): 631–64. Also see, for example, F. B. Hutt, “Research with a Hen,”
Science
n.s. 78, no. 2029 (November 17, 1933): 449–52.

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“phenomenal”: D. C. Kennard, “The Trend Toward Confinement in Poultry Management,”
Poultry Science
8 (October–November 1928): 23.

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“commercialized production”: [Oscar B. Hornbeck], “Poultry Standardization,”
New York Produce Review and American Creamery
62, no. 24 (October 13, 1926): 962.

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“and have a few dollars left”: M. M. Daugherty, “Short History of the Broiler Industry,” in
Agricultural Extension Service Pamphlet
, no. 15 (University of Delaware, 1944), unpaginated.

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When Jewell signed contracts: For the wartime stipulations, see Gisifoli, “From Cotton Farmers to Poultry Growers,” 112–14.

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“arranged to help”: Quoted in ibid., 114.

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“serious bottleneck”: From the unpaginated foreword to H. H. Mitchell, “Is Animal Protein an Essential Constituent of Swine and Poultry Rations?”
Ninth Report of the Committee on Animal Nutrition of the NRC, May 1943
(National Research Council, 1943). Also published as NRC’s Circular 117.

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“to repeat feeding trials”: Noble Clark, “The Responsibility of Research Workers in Livestock Production in the War Program,”
Journal of Animal Science
2 (1943): 85.

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“The ultimate objective”: Quoted in Nicolas Rasmussen, “Plant Hormones in War and Peace: Science, Industry, and Government in the Development of Herbicides in 1940s America,”
Isis
92, no. 2 (June 2001): 295.

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“evolutionary changes”: “Some Results of Colchicine Injections,”
Science
92 (July 26, 1940): 80. Also see William L. Laurence, “Finds Twin Stars Change in Circling,”
New York Times
, December 31, 1940, p. 17; and “Drug Speeds Chicken’s Growth,”
Science Digest
12, no. 1 (July 1942): 72.

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In the late 1940s: For the anemia research, see Edward L. Rickes et al., “Crystalline Vitamin B
₁₂
,”
Science
107 (April 16, 1948): 396; and “New Vitamin from Liver,”
Science News Letter
53, no. 17 (April 24, 1948): 259.

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“the lid clear off”: “They’ve Doubled Gains with New Drugs,”
Successful Farming
48, no. 6 (June 1950): 45.

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“[n]ever again”: “Antibiotics Now Proved in Hog and Poultry Ratios, They’re the Biggest Feeding News in 40 Years!”
Successful Farming
49, no. 3 (March 1951): 33. Other useful accounts are in “Drug Promotes Growth,”
Science News Letter
57 (April 22, 1950): 243; and “New Vitamin from Liver.” The B
₁₂
news overshadowed another announcement made almost simultaneously. A scientist working at a corporate laboratory in Indiana had isolated what he believed to be APF. The man’s employer manufactured animal feed that contained soybean plants and dried brewery wastes. When hens ate the stuff, they laid healthier eggs, and their chicks flourished and “grew rapidly.” The scientist speculated that the brewery waste contained a microorganism that facilitated growth. See the reports in William L. Laurence, “New Vitamin Aids Battle on Anemia,”
New York Times
, August 26, 1948, p. 23; William L. Laurence, “Discoveries Concerning Vitamin B-12 Open New Fields in the Science of Nutrition,”
New York Times
, December 5, 1948, p. E9; and Waldemar Kaempffert, “Clinical Advances That Aid Medicine Are Brought to Light by the Chemists,”
New York Times
, September 25, 1949, p. E9.

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“pave the way”: Quoted in Nick Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,”
American Historical Review
112, no. 2 (April 2007): 363. For a superb assessment of the long march toward food-based diplomacy, see chapters 1 and 2 of Cullather’s
The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia
(Harvard University Press, 2010).

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“moving forward”: Lauren Soth, “America’s No. 1 Farm Problem,”
Successful Farming
49, no. 3 (March 1951): 47, 63.

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One USDA analyst: See “Beef Production in U.S. Undergoes Marked Changes,”
Meat and Live Stock Digest
3, no. 5 (December 1922): 4. Also see the analysis in W. C. Davis, “Methods and Practices of Retailing Meat,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Department Bulletin
, no. 1441, 1926.

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“[t]ime-saving, convenience”: U.S. House of Representatives, Joint Commission of Agricultural Inquiry,
The Agricultural Crisis and Its Causes
, H. Rep. 408, 67th Cong., part IV, pp. 3, 4.

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“one head or 1/7,680 of a car”: “Distribution of Perishable Commodities in the Chicago Metropolitan Area,”
University Journal of Business
4, no. 2 (April 1926): 163. For the study of and typical comments about inexperienced grocers, see A. H. Fenske, “‘Too Many Retailers,’”
National Provisioner
69, no. 18 (November 2, 1923): 52; also see Day Monroe and Lenore Monroe Stratton,
Food Buying and Our Markets
(1925; reprint, M. Barrows & Company, 1929).

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These inefficiencies: On the history of the chain stores, see especially Tracey Deutsch,
Building a Housewife’s Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century
(University of North Carolina Press, 2010); and Richard S. Tedlow,
New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America
(Basic Books, 1990). But also see Susan Strasser,
Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market
(Pantheon Books, 1989); and Gene Arlin German, “The Dynamics of Food Retailing, 1900–1975” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1978). For A&P in particular, see Marc Levinson,
The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America
(Hill and Wang, 2011); and William I. Walsh,
The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company
(Lyle Stuart, 1986).

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“[c]hain store merchandising”: “Merchandizing [
sic
] Packaged Meats Without Freezing,”
National Provisioner
82, no. 16 (April 19, 1930): 21.

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“It is now possible”: Howard C. Pierce, “Looking Forward in Marketing Poultry and Eggs,”
United States Egg and Poultry Magazine
37, no. 3 (March 1931): 67. Pierce made his remarks to a gathering of poultry producers, but his point applied to the chain’s policy for all meats.

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“The packaging of coffee”: Gove Hambidge, “Meats in Packages,”
Ladies’ Home Journal
46 (December 1929): 89.

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“should be of no significance”: Quoted in [John H. Cover],
Consumer Attitude Toward Packaging of Meats
(National Provisioner, 1930), 43.

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“we’ve got to sell”: Claude W. Gifford, “Are ‘Chains’ Dictating Your Prices?”
Farm Journal
83 (June 1959): 33.

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“This starts the price-cutting”: Quoted in Howard H. Fogel, “What Retailers Say About Broilers,”
Broiler Industry
27, no. 1 (January 1964): 19, 20.

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“See that batch”: Quoted in Frederick G. Brownell, “Super Cows and Chickens,”
American Magazine
141 (June 1946): 110. For the USDA calculation, see “Improvement in Meat Chicken Astonishes Even the Experts,”
American Egg and Poultry Review
12 (April 1951): 36.