Meat industry and trade

James Rudolph Garfield, Commissioner of Corporations, is an artist finishing a large mural of a bull, “Saint Bovine,” sitting on a cornucopia overflowing with cuts of meat. Caption: Suggested decoration for the Senate Chamber at Washington.

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Comments and Context

James Rudolph Garfield was Commissioner of Corporations in the new cabinet agency, the Department of Commerce and Labor, and as such was the administration’s real driving force to reform the activities of trusts and corporations in the United States. His tools were persuasion, diplomacy, political pressure, consultation, and proposals for legislation and regulations.

Uncle Sam, as a matador, wipes the blood off his sword after dispatching a bull labeled “Beef Trust” in a bullring with a portly man labeled “Monopoly” anxiously leaning over the wall.

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Comments and Context

In 1902, on the heels of filing an anti-trust action against the Northern Securities Company, President Roosevelt instructed his attorney general, Philander C. Knox, to bring a similar suit against the six largest meat processing and packing companies in the United States. It was claimed that they colluded, fixed prices, and stifled outside competition.

Puck offers a large axe labeled “Repeal of Beef Tariff” to Philander C. Knox who is holding a tiny sling-shot labeled “Sherman Anti-Trust Law.” Standing in the background is a large bull labeled “Beef Trust.” Caption: Puck (to Attorney-General Knox) — You’ll never hurt that animal until they give you this ax!

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Comments and Context

Evidently the bombshell that was the anti-trust suit against the Northern Securities was not enough for Puck. It was a bombshell because the action of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Attorney General, Philander C. Knox, not only took other cabinet members by surprise, but the Wall Street titans — sometime rivals but collaborators to form this railroad monopoly — J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, and James J. Hill, likewise had no inkling of the government’s suit. Morgan transmitted to Roosevelt his accustomed method of dealing with federal scrutiny: “If we have done anything wrong, send your man to my man and they can fix it up.” But Roosevelt wanted the backroom methods, and not the mere combination of the Northern Pacific; Great Northern; and Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroads, “fixed.” The suit to dissolve the trust was settled in the government’s favor in 1904, but this cartoon by Joseph Keppler, Jr., appeared only two months after Knox filed the Great Northern suit. Puck wanted the government to continue its serious trust-busting with hardly a delay.

A large group of happy animals gather around a sign that states “Meeting to thank the Meat Trust for raising prices.” A bull stands on a platform, addressing the gathering. Caption: The Orator — Let us give thanks, my friends, to the noble Meat Trust for putting up prices. In Europe the laborer has meat once a week. Here he has been eating it three times a day. The higher we come the longer we live.

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Comments and Context

What appears to be a light Aesopian jest cuts to the main argument of low-tariff advocates and free-traders. Cartoonist Pughe illustrates the dilemma inherent in “protective” high tariffs on foreign, imported goods. Industries, and presumably their workers, benefited from cheap foreign imports having duties imposed. But when domestic industries and agricultural/farming interests were thereby “protected,” they often felt free to raise their prices, to the ultimate disadvantage of the consumer.

President Roosevelt is pleased with how Secretary of Agriculture Wilson is handling the packing men. The Congressional situation in Iowa concerns him. He comments on the political conditions in various states, concluding that upsets in local matters will lead to suffering in the general government. He feels Congress was unwise in its treatment of the labor people. Roosevelt believes “in refusing any unjust demand on labor just as quickly” as any such demands on capital.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-09-11

President Roosevelt is sure that after reflection John A. Sleicher will come to the conclusion that William Jennings Bryan can be defeated by politicians other than Roosevelt. He thanks Sleicher for showing him the nice cartoon, and returns it as requested. Roosevelt clarifies to Sleicher that, regarding the matter of meat packers, he never quoted Upton Sinclair, and if the meat packers had been content to allow Congress to pass legislation quietly they would have avoided the negative publicity that has resulted.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-07-12

President Roosevelt does not understand what Bishop McDowell objects to in Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson’s statement of his attitude. The meat packing industry has behaved unwisely and has tried to prevent appropriate legislation, and Roosevelt believes that it is necessary for Wilson to make the packers understand that the government wants to see real improvement from them.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-07-11

President Roosevelt authorizes Ambassador Reid to inform the Grocers Federation that the new laws the United States Government “can and will guarantee the fitness in all respects of canned meat containing [a] Government stamp.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-07-07

President Roosevelt asks Commissioner of Labor Neill to inspect the beef-packing buildings of Chicago on January 1, 1907, and report to him on the differences in conditions there compared to his recent inspection.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-28

President Roosevelt sends Speaker of the House Cannon a self-explanatory telegram regarding the printing of the year of manufacture on cans of preserved meat, and says that he has “never known greater unity of opinion among outsider than this to the effect that the date of the year should be put on the cans.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-26

President Roosevelt was interested in the article by Louis F. Swift that William B. Howland sent to him, and comments that it “really takes exactly the position I have taken.” He comments, however, that “Swift and his people” tried to influence the legislation in favor of the meat packing industry, rather than allowing the executive branch to direct the investigations into conditions. He asks Howland to show this letter to Lyman Abbott.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-20

President Roosevelt comments to Senator Proctor that he has not felt as strongly about the point that Proctor mentioned as the people championing the other side of the argument, and says that his “object is to be sure that the inspection is complete.” He presents several options for providing funding of governmental inspection of meat packinghouses, and believes that any of the methods would work. He does not want to keep seeming to interfere with Congress, and has been trying to keep out of its business.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-18

President Roosevelt has gone over Representative Wadsworth’s bill closely, and believes that it is a poor substitute for the presently existing bill. Roosevelt believes Wadsworth’s amendment, as written, “is framed so as to minimize the chance of rooting out the evil in the packing business.” While this may be attractive to the meat packing business in the short term, Roosevelt believes it would be extremely harmful in the long run, and would hamper the Secretary of Agriculture’s work. While Roosevelt admits that he may sign the bill if it is passed, as it is a slight improvement on existing conditions, he would only do so with an accompanying memorandum stating the defects of the bill. Passing the bill in the form Wadsworth suggests would harm both external and external trade.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-14

President Roosevelt emphasizes that he wrote to Lyman Abbott because he trusts the Outlook more than other periodicals, listing a number of other problems and biases he sees in other prominent periodicals. Roosevelt thinks they should make it clear that “we war on the evil of human nature, whether shown in the labor man or the capitalist,” and illustrates this statement by describing how he is fighting both against capitalist organizations in enforcing government inspection of meat packing plants, as well as fighting labor unions in his prosecution of Charles H. Moyer and Big Bill Haywood, who have been accused of the assassination of ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho. Both sides, in their respective cases, claim to want justice while working to prevent it.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-18

President Roosevelt was pleased to hear from John Nicholas Simpson, and assures him that he is doing his best to pass a bill related to the meat packing industry. Roosevelt fears that the opposition of the beef-packers will have a dampening effect on the livestock industry as their misdeeds are brought to light, but feels that if good legislation is passed the ultimate effect will be good.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-13

President Roosevelt forwards his son Kermit Roosevelt a note he received from Endicott Peabody which he believes shows that Kermit’s decision has raised him in his estimation. The situation with meat packers has been “perfectly crazy,” and has engendered a large amount of resistance from rich industrialists. Roosevelt comments that while the capitalists who first made big fortunes were disagreeable, they nevertheless had “tremendous energy and a great deal of cold clear-sightedness,” which is lacking from their descendants. The present Congress has achieved a great deal, and Roosevelt believes that it is one of the most productive he has had since becoming president.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-13

President Roosevelt sends Congressman Wadsworth the reports of an inspection made by a committee appointed by the Department of Agriculture into conditions at meat packinghouses. Prior to the completion of these inspections, Roosevelt ordered a similar investigation be made by Commissioner of Labor Charles Patrick Neill and James Bronson Reynolds. Their report is not yet concluded and contains some details not touched upon by the Department of Agriculture’s reports, but there is no significant disagreement in the two studies. Roosevelt believes that the simple fact of investigations into conditions at the packinghouses has already produced beneficial changes, and provides the text of a letter attesting to this. In order to continue this improvement of conditions, Roosevelt calls for “immediate, thoroughgoing and radical enlargement of the powers of the Government in inspecting all meats which enter into interstate and foreign commerce.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-08

President Roosevelt believes the telegrams that Senator Burkett sent him could all have been prepared by the same person, as they all contain very similar messages asking Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and the Bureau of Animal Industry to announce that “government inspection is thorough and covers domestic and foreign meats.” To do this immediately, Roosevelt says, would be lying, and the only way to comply with these requests is to enact a rigorous law allowing such an announcement to be made.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-08

President Roosevelt explains that the only way to achieve the goal of assuring foreign nations that American meat is thoroughly inspected is to secure the passage of the Beveridge amendment, or one containing similar provisions. Any loss of trade rests on the shoulders of the people who have violated the law, and Roosevelt considers it imperative that legislation be passed to correct this both for the health of the United States’ own citizens and for the health of foreign trade.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-07

President Roosevelt has spoken to a number of people regarding the amendments Representative Wadsworth proposed to the Beveridge amendment, and after careful consideration believes each change to individually be for the worse, and collectively to be ruinous to the bill. Given that it seems unlikely for common ground to be found on the, Roosevelt now feels that he must release the reports detailing the conditions in the beef-packing industry in order to drive meaningful legislation and effect change.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-05-31