Gustavus Swift

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Gustavus Swift

Courtesy of Swift & Company, Chicago

Gustavus Swiftwas the founder of the meatpacking firm Swift & Company and promoter of the railway refrigerator car for shipping meat.

A butcher’s helper at the age of 14, Swift became a buyer and slaughterer of cattle in 1859 and also opened a butcher shop in Eastham, Massachusetts. He became the partner of James A. Hathaway, a Boston meat dealer, in 1872. Three years later Swift, the cattle buyer for the firm, transferred his headquarters to Chicago, where the centre of the cattle market had shifted. Swift felt that meatpacking would be more profitable than meat selling if a method could be devised for shipping fresh meat from Chicago to the East, instead of sending live cattle to be slaughtered on arrival, as was the custom. He therefore hired an engineer to design a refrigerator car; the finished design circulated fresh air that was chilled by passing it over ice. In 1877 Swift successfully shipped the first refrigerator carload of fresh meat to the East. Soon afterward he left Hathaway.

In 1878 Swift formed a partnership with his brother, and in 1885, with capital of $300,000, he incorporated the firm of Swift & Company, with himself as first president. In addition to competing successfully with Nelson Morris and Philip D. Armour, Swift established distributing houses in such cities as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Manila and packing plants at St. Louis, Kansas City, and Omaha. When Swift died 18 years later, the capitalization of his company had increased to $25,000,000.

In 1902, with J.O. Armour and Edward Morris, he formed the National Packing Company—the “Beef Trust”—a combination subsequently dissolved by the U.S. Supreme Court (1905).

Swift was also a leader in turning formerly unused parts of animals into by-products such as soap, glue, fertilizer, and oleomargarine.