country to Great Britain—always excepting Ireland—but it 
possessed a long-established meat-packing industry. The trade 
with the British market, far from being an innovation in the 
seventies of the last century, was, therefore, in effect, a mere 
extension of a condition which had gradually and naturally 
arisen within the United States itself. Great credit, it is true, 
is due to the enterprise and commercial vision of the men who, 
between 1870 and 1880, entered the packing-trade and gave it 
its present character, but these men—Swift, Armour, Morris 
and others—owed much to the peculiar circumstances which 
gave them their opportunity. These circumstances were, briefly, 
the close settlement of the Atlantic States and the growth there 
of large industrial populations, on the one hand, and the steady 
westward movement of the cattle herds in search of cheap 
pastures, on the other; together they produced the economic 
environment which made possible a large consignment trade in 
meat within the borders of the country itself. 
In the development of this internal trade, there were three 
well-defined stages. First, there was the trade during the early 
settlement of the country and up to about 1850, with conditions 
somewhat similar to those obtaining in this country to-day where 
meat is produced near the centres of population. Butchers’ 
shops were individually owned and killing took place either on 
the butchers’ premises or on the farms themselves. 
The second stage came with the growth of population in the 
east and the concentration of cattle further west, when droving 
hecame necessary and with it the development of organised 
markets in the producing areas where farmers could dispose of 
their stock and unload on to other shoulders the responsibility 
for its movement from the farms to distant centres of consumption. 
The rapid growth of railroad systems, by forging a link between 
the two areas, emphasised the importance of such markets; 
they became convenient points of concentration and meeting- 
places for east and west. In due course, they gave rise to the 
expert marketer whose special study was values and who, unlike 
the farmer, was in intimate touch with demand and prices. 
He acted as agent for the farmer, advised him as to market 
conditions, advanced cash on cattle shipped, marketed it on 
arrival, took over the whole business of salesmanship and 
generally performed the functions of the middleman. During 
this time, considerable packing was taking place in the marketing 
centres, though mainly confined to pork products. In point 
of fact, the packing industry in the United States goes back to 
the seventeenth century when, for the West Indian trade and 
later on for the English trade, both pork and meat were packed 
for export in barrels—hence the term  packing-house products ”’ 
which is still applied to all *“ dressed >> meat in the United States. 
With the concentration of live stock in the west, the packing- 
trade moved westwards also and during the winter months 
great quantities of hogs were slaughtered and packed in salt or