Armour and Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armour and Company was an American slaughterhouse and meatpacking company founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1867 by the Armour brothers led by Philip Danforth Armour (1832–1901). By 1880 the company was Chicago's most important business and helped make the city and its Union Stock Yards the center of the American meatpacking industry. It is currently a brand of meat-based lard and canned entrees including hash, chili, stews, and potted meats, as well as dried and powdered pig thyroids. The rights to the food brand are owned by Pinnacle Foods, and to the pharmaceutical brand by Forest Laboratories, Incorporated.
In the early years, Armour sold every kind of consumer product made from animals. Not only meats but glue, oil, fertilizer, hairbrushes, buttons, oleomargarine, and drugs were made from slaughterhouse byproducts. Armour operated in an environment without labor unions, health inspections or government regulation. Accidents were commonplace. Armour was also notorious for the low pay it offered its line workers, and it actively fought unionisation, banning known union activists and ruthlessly breaking strikes in 1904 and 1921 by employing African Americans and desperate immigrants as strikebreakers. It was not fully unionized until the late 1930s when interracial unions became more commonplace.
In the early 1920s, Armour encountered financial troubles and the Armour family sold its majority interest to financier, Frederick H. Prince. The firm retained its position as one of the largest American firms through the Great Depression and the sharp increase in demand in World War II.
In 1948, Armour, which made soap for years as a by-product of the meatpacking process, introduced the first deodorant soap, Dial, which became as strong a seller as its meat products, and eventually became its own corporation.
Over the years, Armour & Co. expanded its operations across the United States, at its peak employing as many as 50,000 people. After World War II, its fortunes began to decline. In 1959, it closed its Chicago slaughterhouse operations.
Armour and Company was sold to Greyhound Corporation in 1970, who moved its headquarters from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona and eventually renamed itself the Dial Corporation. In 1987, in the aftermath of bitter labor disputes among bus drivers, the Greyhound Lines portion of the business was sold to outside investors, but the company continued to market processed meat under the Armour name.
The food-related brands of the Dial Corporation, including Armour, were finally sold to Pinnacle Foods in 2004. Under Pinnacle ownership, over 150 meat products under the Armour label are manufactured under license by ConAgra Foods.
Armour's most famous product is Armour hot dogs, which were advertised on television for decades using a catchy jingle which, despite the years that have passed since it was widely heard, much of the American population can still sing from memory.
