Philip Danforth Armour
Philip Danforth Armour | |
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Born | Stockbridge, New York, U.S. | May 16, 1832
Died | January 6, 1901 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | (aged 68)
Burial place | Graceland Cemetery |
Spouse | Malvina Bell Ogden |
Children | J. Ogden Armour (1863–1927) Philip Danforth Armour Jr. (1869–1900) |
Relatives | Herman Ossian Armour (brother) Alice de Janzé (great niece) |
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Philip Danforth Armour Sr. (16 May 1832 – 6 January 1901) was an American
During the
Life and career
Armour was born in
With his sizable fortune in hand, Armour then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, starting a wholesale grocery business. In Milwaukee, Armour formed business partnerships with Frederick Miles in the grain business in 1859. He worked with Miles for three years before he partnered with John Plankinton in the meatpacking industry, creating the company Plankinton, Armour & Company. Philip helped Plankinton start up "a new plant on the Menominee River so that the firm could handle government pork contracts."[5] They experienced prompt success through the distribution of sought after meats, produce, and grains to westward-moving settlers and fortune-seekers. It was also during this period when Armour married Malvina Belle Ogden in 1862.[6] Armour demonstrated his uncanny ability as a young businessman by taking advantage of changing meat prices during and after the Civil War. According to Deborah S. Ing, author of Philip Armour's biography in the American National Biography Online, "the most important business coup of Armour's early career occurred near the end of the Civil War when he predicted heavy Confederate losses and thus the dropping of pork prices…he made contracts with buyers at $40 per barrel before prices plummeted to $18 when the war ended in a Union victory. This deal netted him a profit of $22 per barrel or a total of $1 million to $2 million."[6] Armour's savvy decision elevated the status of Plankinton, Armour & Co., allowing the firm to expand into other cities.
Later with his brother, Herman, he again entered the grain business and built several meat packing plants in the
In the winter of 1879–1880, Armour traveled to
In order to get his meat products to market Armour followed the lead of rival
In the late 1880s, he was solicited by
His meatpacking plants pioneered new principles of large-scale organization and refrigeration to the industry. Armour implemented the assembly line in order to speed up production, was one of the first to reduce the tremendous waste when slaughtering of hogs by refining and selling waste products. His biggest concern was ensuring that every part of the animal was made useful, "thus, out of meatpacking came auxiliary industries such as glue, fertilizer, margarine, lard, [and] gelatin."[11] Armour famously declared that he made use of "everything but the squeal". By developing these profitable manufacturing innovations and expanding the reach of his company, Armour & Co. became one of the largest meatpacking firms in America by the 1890s. It earned an estimated $110 million in 1893 and established Armour's position as one of the great industrialists of the Gilded Age.[12]
Labor issues
Since the end of the Civil War, labor activists in Chicago had been fighting for powerful labor unions that would negotiate the
Embalmed beef scandal
The company's reputation was tarnished further in 1898, when Major General Nelson A. Miles, Commanding General of the United States Army, claimed that the major meatpacking companies of Chicago—including Armour's—were sending chemically-treated meat to soldiers fighting in the Spanish–American War. An investigation followed, but no definite verdict was reached. Skeptics would claim that Armour simply bribed the panel while Armour would defend his innocence for the rest of his life. Even so, the damage was done. The evidence that was found provided fodder for the muckraking novel by Upton Sinclair entitled The Jungle, which was published in February 1906 and became a bestseller. Armour's reputation never recovered from the 1898–1899 scandal.[6]
Death and legacy
In 1893, Armour donated $1 million to found the Armour Institute of Technology (a privately endowed coeducational college), which merged with the Lewis Institute to become Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1940. Both Armour Square Park, which is adjacent to both IIT and Guaranteed Rate Field as well as the surrounding neighborhood of Armour Square on Chicago's South Side are named in honor of him. The Armour brothers Joseph and Philip founded the Armour Mission,[17] an educational and healthcare center. In 1900 his son, Philip D. Armour Jr., died.[18][2] Armour died at age 69 on January 6, 1901, of pneumonia at his Chicago home.[19][2] He was survived by his wife, Malvina Belle Ogden whom he had married in 1862, and by his son, J. Ogden Armour. His family call him "P. D."[20]
The town of
The Union Pacific Railroad uses Armour Yellow[21] as one of its official colors, the same hue used by Armour refrigerated cars in the early 20th century.[22]
See also
Footnotes
- ^ PBS. "Chicago: City of the Century". PBS. American Experience. Archived from the original on February 9, 2017. Retrieved September 8, 2017.
- ^ a b c d "P. D. Armour Dead. Chicago Millionaire Yielded to Long Illness. Fever Rallied After Son's Death". The Republican (Laport, PA.). January 7, 1901. p. 8.
- ^ Wentworth, Edward N. (1920). Biographical Catalog of the Portrait Gallery of the Saddle and Sirloin Club. Chicago, IL: Union Stock Yards. p. 178.
- ^ a b c d PBS. "People & Events: Philip Danforth Armour (1832–1901)". PBS. American Experience. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016. Retrieved September 8, 2017.
- ^ Wade, Louise Carroll (2003). Chicago's Pride. University of Illinois Press. pp. 64–65.
- ^ a b c Ing, Deborah. "Philip Danforth Armour". American National Biography Online.
- ^ Johnston, Charles (1920). Famous Leaders of Industry. L.C. Page and Company. p. 7.
- ^ a b Bontemps, Arna (1961). 100 Years of Negro Freedom. Dodd, Mead & Company. p. 77.
- ^ Dolinar, Brian (1961). The Negro in Illinois: the WPA Papers. University of Illinois Press. p. 58.
- ^ ISBN 9780820010359.
- ^ Ing, Deborah. "Armour, Philip Danforth". American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press.
- ^ Ing, Deborah. "Philip Danforth Armour". Britannica.com.
- ^ Green 2006, pp. 23–24
- ^ Green 2006, p. 104
- ^ Green 2006, p. 159
- ^ "Armour and His Men". The New York Times. March 18, 1899. p. 6. Retrieved November 12, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Armour Mission records, 1845–1934". University Archives and Special Collections Finding Aid Portal. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ^ "Philip D. Armour Jr. Dead. Younger Son of Chicago's Millionaire Packer Stricken with Congestion of the Lungs in California". The New York Times. January 28, 1900. p. 3. Retrieved November 12, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
News has been received of the sudden death of Philip D. Armour Jr. at Montecito, near Santa Barbara. Young Armour was ill but ...
- ^ "Philip D. Armour Is Dead. Chicago Millionaire Passes Away After Two Years' Illness. Sought Health at Home and Abroad. Began to Sink with the Commencement of Winter. His Wealth Estimated as High as $50,000,000". The New York Times. Chicago. January 7, 1901. p. 1. Retrieved November 12, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
Philip Danforth Armour – philanthropist, financier, and multi-millionaire, head of the vast commercial establishment that bears his name – died at his ...
- ^ "Amour Affable, But Bored by Flutter of Formal Society". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 17, 1927. p. 5. Retrieved November 12, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Armour Yellow on Union Pacific". UtahRails.net. August 25, 2015. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ^ Daniels 2008, p. 97
References
- Armour, Philip D. (1895) "Chapter LV: The Packing Industry" in Depew, Chauncey M. (Ed.) 100 Years of American Commerce, pp. 383–388. Signed by "Philip D. Armour".
- Bontemps, Arna. 100 Years of Negro Freedom (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1961).
- Cleveland, H. I. (March 1901). "Philip Armour, Merchant". The World's Work: A History of Our Time. I: 540–547. Retrieved July 9, 2009.
- Daniels, Rudolph L. (2008). Sioux City Railroads. Images of rail. Charleston, SC: ISBN 978-0-7385-5222-4.
- Dolinar, Brian. The Negro in Illinois: The WPA Papers (University of Illinois Press, 2013).
- Green, James (2006). Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America. New York: ISBN 0-375-42237-4.
- Gunsaulus, Frank W. "Philip D. Armour, A Character Sketch". New York Public Library Digital Collections.
- Hill, Howard Copeland. "The development of Chicago as a center of the meat packing industry." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10.3 (1923): 253–273. in JSTOR
- Kane, Mary A. (2006). "Oconomowoc (Postcard History Series)" Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-4089-4.
- Leech, Harper and John Charles Carroll (1938). Armour and His Times, New York: D. Appelton-Century Company.
- Skaggs, Jimmy M. Prime cut: Livestock raising and meatpacking in the United States, 1607–1983 (Texas A and M University Press, 1986).
- Walsh, Margaret. The rise of the midwestern meat packing industry (University Press of Kentucky, 2015).
External links
- Armour Square Park of the Chicago Park District
- History of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
- Biographical sketch for Philip Armour on PBS American Experience Archived December 7, 2016, at the Wayback Machine