Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 07.djvu/108

LEFT PACKING INDUSTRY 76 PADELFORD water, spiced, and stuffed by machinery ' into the intestines which are used for sausage casings after they have been thoroughly cleaned by machinery. In dressing cattle, the parts to be sold as fresh beef are allowed to cool for forty- eight hours, and then shipped. The poorer grades of beef are used for can- ning, which is becoming a more impor- tant division of the industry than it was formerly. In 1906 a Federal Meat Inspection Law was passed, requiring several in- spections of the animals by expert vet- erinarians before slaughtering, and again during the processes of slaughter- ing and curing. Before that time there had been inadequate protection against tainted meats, though there had been government supervision of the industry since 1891. There has been a growing tendency in the United States to concentrate the industry in the hands of a few com- panies, controlled by a small group of men. As early as 1890 the four largest packing concerns entered into an agree- ment not to enter into competition with one another. The danger of such a monopoly of the food supply was soon evident to the government, and in 1902 an investigation of the industry was made by the Department of Justice, and the Supreme Court of the United States issued an injunction restraining the packers from conducting their business in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. This injunction, however, did not seem to change the policy of the packers but rather forced them to re- sort to guarded methods of controlling the food supply of the country. In the past ten years there have been frequent Congressional Committees appointed to investigate the packing industry, and the magazines and papers have contained countless articles on the subject. In June, 1919, the Federal Trade Commis- sion made a detailed report of the busi- ness conducted by "The Big Five" pack- ers, Armour & Co., Swift & Co., Libby, Wilson and Cudahy. This report stated, among other charges, that the Big Five had secured control of the meat supply of the country, that they had unfairly used this control to keep up prices, to crush competition, and to secure special privileges from the rail- roads, and to demand excessive profits harmful both to the consumer and to the producer. The Commission recom- mended government requisition of (1) rolling stock used for the transportation of animals, (2) the principal stock yards of the country, (3) all the pri- vately owned refrigerating cars, (4) marketing and storage facilities. In December, 1919, Attorney General Palmer announced that the packers had agreed to retire from all business ex- cept meat packing and distribution of dairy products, to sell all their holdings in the large public stock yards, and in stock-yard newspapers, to abandon the use of countless branch warehouses, all over the country, and to disassociate themselves from the retail meat business, which they had formerly controlled, as well as many of the chain stores. How- ever, this agreement of the packers did not immediately result in the lowering of prices, and in 1920 a number of bills were introduced into Congress in an en- deavor to restrain the monopoly of the Big Five. Chief among these were bills backed by the farmers of Kansas. The chief centers in which the packing in- dustry is conducted in the United States are Chicago, Omaha, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and New York. The foreign trade of the packers is greatly increasing with the improved facilities for refrigeration in trains and steamships. The latest available figures are from the United States census of 1914, and give 1,279 slaughtering establishments, with a capital of $534,274,000 and prod- ucts valued at $1,651,965,000. Chicago heads the list of centers of the industry with 24 per cent, of the business done. PACTOLUS, anciently the name of a small brook of Lydia, in Asia Minor, which rises on the N. slope of Mount Tmolus (modern Buz Dagh) flows N. past Sardis (Sart), and empties itself into the Hermus (Kodus). It is never more than 10 feet broad and 1 foot deep. The sands or mud of Pactolus were long famous in antiquity for the particles of gold dust which they con- tained. The brook is now called Sara- bat. PADDLE FISH, the Polyodon spatula, a large fish allied to the sturgeons, so named from the elongated broad snout with which it stirs up the soft muddy bottom in search of food. It often reaches a length of from 5 to 6 feet. The paddle fishes are exclusively North American in their distribution, being found in the Mississippi, Ohio, and other great rivers of that continent. PADELFORD, FREDERICK MOR- GAN, an American educator, born at Haverhill, Mass., in 1875. Graduated from Colby College in 1896 and took post-graduate courses at Yale and in Europe. From 1899 he was professor of English at the University of Idaho