Philip Danforth Armour

Philip Danforth Armour, Sr.
Armour circa 1880
Born	May 16, 1832(1832-05-16) Stockbridge, New York
Died	January 6, 1901(1901-01-06) (aged 68) Chicago, Illinois
Children	J. Ogden Armour (1863-1927) Philip Danforth Armour, Jr. (1869-1900)

A refrigerator car of the Armour Refrigerator Line (ARL), circa 1917

A Pullman-built "shorty" reefer bearing the Armour Packing Co. - Kansas City logo, circa 1885. Note that the name of the "patentee" was displayed on the car's exterior, a practice intended to "...impress the shipper and intimidate the competition..."

Philip Danforth Armour, Sr. (16 May 1832 – 6 January 1901) was an American businessman who founded Armour and Company, an American meatpacking firm.

Biography

Armour was born in Stockbridge, New York to Danforth Armour and Juliana Ann Brooks. He was one of eight children and grew up on his family's farm. Armour was mostly of Scottish and English descent, with his surname originating in Scotland. He was educated at Cazenovia Academy in New York before he dropped out to work on the family farm. Among his other first jobs was that of Driver on upstate New York's Chenango Canal which ran through Madison County at that time and would have been a busy thoroughfare. While not an easy job, the countless miles must have built his legs and tenacity, for in 1852, he walked across the country.^{[citation needed]} He went to mine the gold fields of California, and eventually earned thousands of dollars- a sizeable sum for that time.

He then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a sizeable fortune and started a wholesale grocery business. In Milwaukee, Armour formed business partnerships with Frederick Miles in the grain business and with John Plankinton in the meatpacking industry. With his brother, Herman, he entered the grain business and built several meat packing plants in the Menomonee River Valley. Together they formed Armour and Company in 1867, which soon became the world's largest food processing and chemical manufacturing enterprise, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Armour & Co. was the first company to produce canned meat and also one of the first to employ an "assembly-line" technique in its factories.

In order to get his meat products to market Armour followed the lead of rival Gustavus Swift when he established the Armour Refrigerator Line in 1883. Armour's endeavor soon became the largest private refrigerator car fleet in the U.S., which by 1900 listed over 12,000 units on its roster, all built in Armour's own car plant. The General American Transportation Corporation would assume ownership of the line in 1932.

His meat packing plants pioneered new principles of large-scale organization and refrigeration to the industry. Armour was one of the first to take action to reduce the tremendous waste inherent in the slaughtering of hogs and to take advantage of the resale value of what had been waste products. It was reported that the company used every possible part of the animals to make products other than canned meat, such as fertilizer, glue and pepsin. Armour famously declared that he made use of "everything but the squeal".

The company's reputation was tarnished by the scandal of 1898–99 in which it was charged with selling tainted beef. This event provided fodder for the muckraking novel by Upton Sinclair entitled The Jungle, which was published in February 1906 and became a bestseller.

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. He also created the Armour Mission, an educational and healthcare center. In 1900 his oldest son, Philip D. Armour, Jr., died.^[1]

Armour died on January 6, 1901 of pneumonia at his Chicago home.^[2] He was survived by his wife, Malvina Belle Ogden whom he had married in 1862, and by one son, the other having died about a year before.

Legacy

The town of Armour, South Dakota was named for him in 1885, and the town of Armourdale, Kansas (now the district of Armourdale in Kansas City, Kansas) in 1881. Streets in Cudahy, Wisconsin (a Milwaukee suburb founded by meat packing magnate Patrick Cudahy) as well as Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where the Armour family had a summer estate, also bears his name. The streets of North Redondo Beach, CA are named after prominent American businessmen of the industrial revolution. Armour Lane is one of them.

See also

• Gustavus Franklin Swift
• Hormel

References

1. ^ "Philip D. Armour, Jr., Dead. Younger Son of Chicago's Millionaire Packer Stricken with Congestion of the Lungs in California". New York Times. January 28, 1900. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50E14F9395D12738DDDA10A94D9405B808CF1D3. Retrieved 2010-12-09. "News has been received of the sudden death of Philip D. Armour, Jr., at Montecito, near Santa Barbara. Young Armour was ill but ..." 
2. ^ "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". New York Times. January 7, 1901. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0C12FB3A5C12738DDDAE0894D9405B818CF1D3. Retrieved 2009-07-31. "Philip Danforth Armour -- philanthropist, financier, and multi-millionaire, head of the vast commercial establishment that bears his name -- died at his ..." 

Further reading

• Cleveland, H. I. (March 1901). "Philip Armour, Merchant". The World's Work: A History of Our Time I: 540–547. http://books.google.com/books?id=688YPNQ5HNwC&pg=PA540. Retrieved 2009-07-09. 
• Depew, Chauncey M. (1895). "Philip D. Armour, 'The Pig Industry'" in 100 Years of American Commerce.
• Gunsaulus, Frank W. "Philip D. Armour, A Character Sketch".
• Hill, Napoleon (1987). Think and Grow Rich. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0449214923.
• Kane, Mary A. (2006). "Oconomowoc (Postcard History Series)" Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0738540894.
• Leech, Harper and John Charles Carroll (1938). Armour and His Times, New York: D. Appelton-Century Company.
• Lowe, David Garrard (2000). Lost Chicago. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications. ISBN 0-8230-2871-2.
• White, John H. (1986). The Great Yellow Fleet. San Marino, California: Golden West Books. ISBN 0-87095-091-6.

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
• Profile page for Philip Armour on Find A Grave

Preceded by Creator

President of Armour and Company 1867–1901

Succeeded by J. Ogden Armour

Persondata
Name	Armour, Philip
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	May 16, 1832
Place of birth	Stockbridge, New York
Date of death	January 6, 1901
Place of death	Chicago, Illinois