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Slaughterhouse In The 1900's

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In the early 1900’s, the conditions in the slaughterhouses were ghastly. First of all, the basic surroundings of the workers were horrid. The floors of the killing floors were layered in blood. It smelled bad and was unsanitary. Also, there were blood-curdling screeches of dying animals constantly ringing throughout Union Stockyards ("Slaughterhouse to the World" 5). Hours in the stockyards were awfully long and had excruciating temperature circumstances. Workdays were ten to twelve hours and were from Monday to Saturday. The hot, summer weather caused temperatures inside the packing plants to get scorching. This was partly due to poor ventilation. In contrast, during the winter, it became freezing because there was a lack of insulation ("Slaughterhouse to the World" 5). …show more content…

Speeding up was led by a laborer who set the pace of work. They gradually increased the tempo of which the assembly line moved. It allowed thousands of animals to process ("Slaughterhouse to the World" 4). The grueling work pushed the laborers to their physical and mental limits. Those who couldn’t keep up were easily replaced by the abundance of workers available (Sinclair 71). Along with poor natural conditions, there were numerous machine malfunctions. There was a report of a steam hoist collapsing through a floor. Also, accounts of boilers and rendering tanks exploding were told. A man named Fred Prill had his arm stuck in sausage rollers, and it had to be amputated. Finally, a worker fell into a rendering tank and was “…boiled almost to jelly” (Carrol 121). The packers did not give any health benefits to the workers either ("Slaughterhouse to the World" 5). Furthermore, the meat manufactured was as disgusting as the work conditions. During the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Chicago packers supplied food. They produced Tinned

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