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Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America
How beef conquered America and gave rise to the modern industrial food complex
By the late nineteenth century, Americans rich and poor had come to expect high-quality fresh beef with almost every meal. Beef production in the United States had gone from small-scale, localized operations to a highly centralized industry spanning the country, with cattle bred on ranches in the rural West, slaughtered in Chicago, and consumed in the nation's rapidly growing cities. Red Meat Republic tells the remarkable story of the violent conflict over who would reap the benefits of this new industry and who would bear its heavy costs.
Joshua Specht puts people at the heart of his story--the big cattle ranchers who helped to drive the nation's westward expansion, the meatpackers who created a radically new kind of industrialized slaughterhouse, and the stockyard workers who were subjected to the shocking and unsanitary conditions described by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle. Specht brings to life a turbulent era marked by Indian wars, Chicago labor unrest, and food riots in the streets of New York. He shows how the enduring success of the cattle-beef complex--centralized, low cost, and meatpacker dominated--was a consequence of the meatpackers' ability to make their interests overlap with that of a hungry public, while the interests of struggling ranchers, desperate workers, and bankrupt butchers took a backseat. America--and the American table--would never be the same again.
A compelling and unfailingly enjoyable read, Red Meat Republic reveals the complex history of exploitation and innovation behind the food we consume today.
By the late nineteenth century, Americans rich and poor had come to expect high-quality fresh beef with almost every meal. Beef production in the United States had gone from small-scale, localized operations to a highly centralized industry spanning the country, with cattle bred on ranches in the rural West, slaughtered in Chicago, and consumed in the nation's rapidly growing cities. Red Meat Republic tells the remarkable story of the violent conflict over who would reap the benefits of this new industry and who would bear its heavy costs.
Joshua Specht puts people at the heart of his story--the big cattle ranchers who helped to drive the nation's westward expansion, the meatpackers who created a radically new kind of industrialized slaughterhouse, and the stockyard workers who were subjected to the shocking and unsanitary conditions described by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle. Specht brings to life a turbulent era marked by Indian wars, Chicago labor unrest, and food riots in the streets of New York. He shows how the enduring success of the cattle-beef complex--centralized, low cost, and meatpacker dominated--was a consequence of the meatpackers' ability to make their interests overlap with that of a hungry public, while the interests of struggling ranchers, desperate workers, and bankrupt butchers took a backseat. America--and the American table--would never be the same again.
A compelling and unfailingly enjoyable read, Red Meat Republic reveals the complex history of exploitation and innovation behind the food we consume today.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2019
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July 12, 2019
Author Joshua Specht summarizes his book many times. Probably his best attempt comes toward the end, on page 258:
“In the late nineteenth century, quality fresh beef became daily fare. A multiplicity of regional food markets became a single national one; ranches in the rural West could now feed the urban East. Butchers became slaughterhouse workers, turning animal processing into factory work. Four processes enabled these changes:
1. the re-orientation of the Plains ecosystem from grass-bison-nomad to grass-cattle-rancher through the violent expropriation of the Indian land;
2. the standardization of spaces across the West and the rise of the regulatory mechanisms to promote mobility;
3. the outcome of conflicts around beef processing, distribution, and sale and
4. the dynamics of a consumer politics inextricably linked to beef’s cultural meanings.
Driving each of these processes were human struggles over economic, political and social power.”
If that all sounds a bit too clinical, it wasn’t. The book puts flesh of the bones of this outline (sorry, could not resist) and is a veritable page-turner. You get the history, the politics and the hypocrisy, but, most importantly, you get the picture, in five acts.
First comes a blow-by-blow account of the dirty war that was waged against the Indians so we could replace their bison with our cows, followed by the humiliation of making them accept handouts in beef.
Once the land is secured, the history of beef in America, and Specht’s account with it, moves to the investment mania in cattle, that drew funds all the way from Europe and was based on a deep dichotomy between facts on the ground (which demanded minimal investment in the supervision of cattle) and business cases made on precise but entirely made-up accounting. The author calls this chapter “the Range.” Its hero, the cowboy, became a foundational character in the legend of the West, much as he barely ever fought any Indians.
From the range we move, along with the cattle, to “the Market” and the contest fought by countless cities in the West to become “cattle towns,” ideally with access to the railroad. The name of the game here is standardization, to make a town hospitable to both the livestock and the cowboy. But this is also the story of the trail itself, of disease, and of negotiating paths of access in unhospitable terrain. It’s also where the Federal state first makes its appearance, to settle the relevant disputes. If you know the tune (as I do thanks to my Midwest-raised wife’s bluegrass tape) you are invited to sing along:
“Whopee ti yo yo, git along the little dogies,’
It’s your misfortune and none of my own
Whopee ti yo yo, git along the little dogies,
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.”
The winners in this game, the meatpackers of Chicago, are introduced next. This is, pardon the pun, the meat of the book. Four companies managed to place themselves at the hub of the business and set up a business that has since absorbed all profit there is to be made. Not for a decade, but for the last century and a half. While you could argue that this was to some extent the expected outcome thanks to both the desire of the public for cheap beef and to ingenious innovation (including both the invention of the production line for meatpacking and the refrigerated car) Specht explains that somebody had to make this outcome come about. You are treated to chapter and verse on how the meatpackers maneuvered into this position. How they played their suppliers against one another on one side, in order not only to minimize cost, but also to diversify the sourcing of their raw material to make sure all risk from the elements is borne by others; how they played the railroads against one another on the transportation side, at one point coopting a Canadian railway that should have normally not stood a chance of being involved; and how, one city at a time, they took on the butchers. Also, you get the full picture of how the meatpackers enabled the US to wage war much more effectively, by making cheap canned beef available to the US military.
Oh, and if you think it was Robert Bork who first moved the argument from anti-trust to “consumer welfare” there’s a surprise for you here: it’s cheap beef that won the argument for the meatpackers. Every time somebody accused them of price-fixing, whether that was against the butchers or the ranchers or the railroads, the argument was made that they were bringing steak to the table for the masses. Even John Updike, America’s Emile Zola, did not manage to move the needle with his explosive expose, the Jungle. What Americans saw when they read about the dreadful conditions in the slaughterhouse was a sanitary risk, rather than the horrors of exploitation. And the government, of course, under Roosevelt, saw a need (an opportunity, many will argue, though not the author) to regulate.
The story does not end there. You’re also treated to a final chapter on “the Table,” which deals with beef as a positional good. It’s not directly relevant to the narrative (and indeed is scarcely to be found when the author attempts to summarize) but it is still very interesting and relevant context; and it’s closely entwined with the social theories that prevailed in the period when the US rose to prominence.
In short, the history of beef in America is a very good proxy for the history of the US itself, and this is a book that tells it very well.
“In the late nineteenth century, quality fresh beef became daily fare. A multiplicity of regional food markets became a single national one; ranches in the rural West could now feed the urban East. Butchers became slaughterhouse workers, turning animal processing into factory work. Four processes enabled these changes:
1. the re-orientation of the Plains ecosystem from grass-bison-nomad to grass-cattle-rancher through the violent expropriation of the Indian land;
2. the standardization of spaces across the West and the rise of the regulatory mechanisms to promote mobility;
3. the outcome of conflicts around beef processing, distribution, and sale and
4. the dynamics of a consumer politics inextricably linked to beef’s cultural meanings.
Driving each of these processes were human struggles over economic, political and social power.”
If that all sounds a bit too clinical, it wasn’t. The book puts flesh of the bones of this outline (sorry, could not resist) and is a veritable page-turner. You get the history, the politics and the hypocrisy, but, most importantly, you get the picture, in five acts.
First comes a blow-by-blow account of the dirty war that was waged against the Indians so we could replace their bison with our cows, followed by the humiliation of making them accept handouts in beef.
Once the land is secured, the history of beef in America, and Specht’s account with it, moves to the investment mania in cattle, that drew funds all the way from Europe and was based on a deep dichotomy between facts on the ground (which demanded minimal investment in the supervision of cattle) and business cases made on precise but entirely made-up accounting. The author calls this chapter “the Range.” Its hero, the cowboy, became a foundational character in the legend of the West, much as he barely ever fought any Indians.
From the range we move, along with the cattle, to “the Market” and the contest fought by countless cities in the West to become “cattle towns,” ideally with access to the railroad. The name of the game here is standardization, to make a town hospitable to both the livestock and the cowboy. But this is also the story of the trail itself, of disease, and of negotiating paths of access in unhospitable terrain. It’s also where the Federal state first makes its appearance, to settle the relevant disputes. If you know the tune (as I do thanks to my Midwest-raised wife’s bluegrass tape) you are invited to sing along:
“Whopee ti yo yo, git along the little dogies,’
It’s your misfortune and none of my own
Whopee ti yo yo, git along the little dogies,
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.”
The winners in this game, the meatpackers of Chicago, are introduced next. This is, pardon the pun, the meat of the book. Four companies managed to place themselves at the hub of the business and set up a business that has since absorbed all profit there is to be made. Not for a decade, but for the last century and a half. While you could argue that this was to some extent the expected outcome thanks to both the desire of the public for cheap beef and to ingenious innovation (including both the invention of the production line for meatpacking and the refrigerated car) Specht explains that somebody had to make this outcome come about. You are treated to chapter and verse on how the meatpackers maneuvered into this position. How they played their suppliers against one another on one side, in order not only to minimize cost, but also to diversify the sourcing of their raw material to make sure all risk from the elements is borne by others; how they played the railroads against one another on the transportation side, at one point coopting a Canadian railway that should have normally not stood a chance of being involved; and how, one city at a time, they took on the butchers. Also, you get the full picture of how the meatpackers enabled the US to wage war much more effectively, by making cheap canned beef available to the US military.
Oh, and if you think it was Robert Bork who first moved the argument from anti-trust to “consumer welfare” there’s a surprise for you here: it’s cheap beef that won the argument for the meatpackers. Every time somebody accused them of price-fixing, whether that was against the butchers or the ranchers or the railroads, the argument was made that they were bringing steak to the table for the masses. Even John Updike, America’s Emile Zola, did not manage to move the needle with his explosive expose, the Jungle. What Americans saw when they read about the dreadful conditions in the slaughterhouse was a sanitary risk, rather than the horrors of exploitation. And the government, of course, under Roosevelt, saw a need (an opportunity, many will argue, though not the author) to regulate.
The story does not end there. You’re also treated to a final chapter on “the Table,” which deals with beef as a positional good. It’s not directly relevant to the narrative (and indeed is scarcely to be found when the author attempts to summarize) but it is still very interesting and relevant context; and it’s closely entwined with the social theories that prevailed in the period when the US rose to prominence.
In short, the history of beef in America is a very good proxy for the history of the US itself, and this is a book that tells it very well.
April 13, 2023
I expected this book to be a micro-history of beef in America when I picked it up. +Turned out, this book is an exposé of the American cattle-beef industry's dark genesis through false romanticization of wild west ranchers in the American public's mind, violent exclusion of people and heavy industrialization of the process to provide cheap beef. From expropriation of native lands and buffalos from plains Indians militarily for ranching to brutal labor exploitation in the stockyards & slaughter houses, politics and policies tailored to serve the corporations and ranchers, the back story of cheap meat in America is not at all rosy as we think. Like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" , this book is startling and informative.
February 20, 2021
This is one of the best books on nineteenth century American history that I have read even if occasionally the author presses a point a little too repetitively at times and he cannot help wearing his slightly standard issue liberal-leftism on his sleeve every now and then.
These are minor flaws though. The book is actually well and clearly written. If you can find a contemporary academic without his bias then you have truly struck gold. Indeed, by contemporary standards Specht is rather restrained and we should thank him for that.
I say that it is book of history (and it is) but it can perhaps equally be read as a text on the sociology of American capitalism. He uses the cattle-beef complex to eluicidate much deeper themes as someone studying the military-industrial or security state systems might do.
I am not going to try and reproduce a complex argument with many fine gradations. What is interesting is the final result which strikes me as providing close to an iron law of capitalism under the American Constitution - the alliance of oligipolistic business with consumers and the State.
The idea that oligopolistic business runs the State is flawed. What actually happens is that consumers as voters drive the State into managing centralised production sufficiently that it provides low prices and quality at the expense of other players in the game.
Oligopolistic business engineers itself prior to state intervention into providing cheap goods and state intervention appears later to make sure the goods stay cheap and the quality remains good. In return, the oligopolists retain their oligopoly and their substantial profits.
In the case of the cattle-beef complex, the losers are the localised middle men (wholesale and independent butchers), suppliers of raw material (the cattle ranchers large and small) and the packers' semi-skilled labour in whom consumers have no interest with little sympathy.
As Upton Sinclair, the socialist novelist, gloomily pointed out regarding the reception of his expose of worker conditions, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach". The public stressed about the sanitary issues and gave not a hoot for the condition of the workers.
On the other hand, one might feel sorrier for the cattle ranchers and their own labour force (the cowboy) if one was not made aware (as Specht makes us aware) of their initial wealth and wages depending entirely on their collusion in the systematic expropriation of indigenous lands.
In fact, small and large-scale and perfectly normal greed, whether as bison hunters, ranchers or settlers, did for the 'Indians' who should not be romanticised in their turn. These were also appropriative players who had only appeared on the Plains after the 1680s.
The book, in five well argued chapters, takes us through the expropriation of the nomads, the rise of the ranches, the creation of a market for beef through the creation of mobility (trails and railroads), the dominance of the Chicago meatpackers and the culture of beef consumption.
It all hangs together not as an event but as a process that Specht rightly refuses to see as an inevitable result of technological and managerial innovation. There were accidents, chances and competitive struggles that built this system even if I would tend to think the final result inevitable.
Specht underplays the inevitability because he wants us to think in 'what if' terms but the dominant hegemony here lies not in the economic players on their own but in the US Constitution and its inherent bias towards commerce and property. The law ensured the complex.
The United States in the late nineteenth century was (and is) the perfect form of the 'bourgeois state' guaranteed not to become anything other than it is by the processes of accrued federal power and judges interpreting the law to protect business as property and consumer as individual.
Thus, while players could draw the State into doing its will in opening up territory (as the ranchers did), that same State consolidated industrial power by regulating only for consumer interests (price and quality) and weakening local state resistance to interstate commercial power.
This casts new light on the nature of progressive reform which now looks more like a rationalisation of the polity in favour of a collusive alliance of capital and consumer rather than offering much relief to victims of the process - Indian, primary producer, small business or labour.
American progressivism, when it does good things, does so as a by-product, cleaning up the mess, if you like. Progressivism never challenges market individualism, federal power or the core tenets of property ownership.
Specht clearly does not like this very much but, with socialism using state power to protect the victims an impossibility, reform had to be merely 'progressive' to permit the capital accumulation necessary for innovation and maintain elite legitimacy amongst most voters.
And let us not be naive ... as in the Soviet Union and Communist China, an American socialism, electorally impossible, would have ended up with its own exploitative structures but with different victims. On the Soviet analogy, it might have been better for the indigenous peoples!
It was a system of exploitation much like that observed in all industrialisations and modernisation from the mill towns that Engels observed through Stalin's forced industrialisation to today's gig economy and centralised high profits of the consumer-pleasing logistics industry.
The people have desires and needs en masse. Those thrust to one side or exploited are a minority of the members of the total system. The Chinese Communists have understood the ineluctability of this approach to growth and refuse to be tormented by its necessity.
The United States being a democracy, the victims do get a chance to complain and delay. Their situation is at the very core of populist resistance, resistance that can rarely cohere because of internal conflicts of interests and seems only to delay the inevitable.
This may, of course, be different in the first half of the 21st century because the 'losers' (notably the steady slow proletarianisation of the middle classes) may add up to a majority that can be organised yet the worst 'losers' seem to be divided and managed from the get-go by the elite.
Back then, since consumers did not come to America (if they were immigrants) not to eat beef and have a better and more free life and since America really did offer opportunities for advancement through hard work, consumers as voters were never going to be interested in a socialist alternative.
Indeed, the 'progressives' were to consolidate their hegemony in early twentieth century America by crushing its socialist and anarchist rivals in the wake of the Russian Revolution through often brutal means without much of a whimper from the majority of voters.
Liberal capitalism in America might sometimes look weak and sentimental on the outside but, inside, it is as hard as steel, maintaining the triangular relationship between centralised corporate power, federal intervention and consumer/voter desire by any means necessary.
Specht's book is not as explicit as this. It does not need to be. The facts are all there, laid out sequentially (because it is a process and this is a history) and I am afraid those facts may depress any genuine socialist (rather than the ersatz type thrown up on the Left of the Democrat Party).
You can draw your own conclusions on whether this book is particular to its time and place (roughly the US between 1850 and 1910) or whether it suggests some general character to American capitalism - and whether recent events in the US can be seen through its prism.
Specht drops the odd and rare hint about the persistence of the system at a global level but he is too good a historian to go hurtling off into speculation or partisan position-taking. His sympathies are clear but suitably vague.
I have ideas but this is not the place for them. The best thing to do is to recommend this book to a much wider audience than specialist economic or American historians as an important insight into the trajectory of capitalism in a market society based on the rule of eighteenth century law.
January 4, 2021
I'd go 3.5 stars.
First off, humans can really suck. The stories early in this book about how white people decimated indigenous people made me feel sick.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts:
Beefs move to the center of the American diet depended on bison hunters and ranchers ecological remaking of Western lands with the support of the US Military. Further, this process produced a set of narratives that not only justified seizing American Indian lands but also placed ranching at the heart of the story of the American West. The open range was more imagined than real. (Ryan's note, the song 'Home on the Range' is bs).
Because judges, politicians, and bureaucrats all accepted the argument that low prices were the most important goal, meatpacking would therefore be regulated in a way that ensured cheap beef at the same time that it promoted centralization and tolerated rancher precariousness and worker exploitation.
The rise of the cattle-beef complex was about fulfilling aspirational eating.
Consumers reconciled themselves to industrial meat products by distancing themselves from industrial meat production.
First off, humans can really suck. The stories early in this book about how white people decimated indigenous people made me feel sick.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts:
Beefs move to the center of the American diet depended on bison hunters and ranchers ecological remaking of Western lands with the support of the US Military. Further, this process produced a set of narratives that not only justified seizing American Indian lands but also placed ranching at the heart of the story of the American West. The open range was more imagined than real. (Ryan's note, the song 'Home on the Range' is bs).
Because judges, politicians, and bureaucrats all accepted the argument that low prices were the most important goal, meatpacking would therefore be regulated in a way that ensured cheap beef at the same time that it promoted centralization and tolerated rancher precariousness and worker exploitation.
The rise of the cattle-beef complex was about fulfilling aspirational eating.
Consumers reconciled themselves to industrial meat products by distancing themselves from industrial meat production.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 13, 2022
Specht traces the historical development of the United States beef supply chain from expropriation of Native American land and the elimination of the buffalo through the development of a national transportation network and the consolidation of the packing industry, ending with beef's shift from being a food on the dinner plate of elite males to a commodity consumed by all social classes in the early decades of the 20th century. At each junction, he takes pains to illustrate how individual actors and localized conflicts played critical roles in the emergence of system whose functional organization transcends these elements.
If this sounds like a story you would like to hear told with enough detail to engage interest but without obsessing on minutia, Red Meat Republic will prove to be a worthwhile read. If, on the other hand, you are deeply interested in historiography, you may find the book to be a credible but not entirely convincing contribution to a literature cast in the mold of William Cronon's 1991 book Nature's Metropolis. If on the third hand you are a food system activist looking for a diatribe against meat, you will collect stories that might be used as ammunition, but you will have to marshal them into the diatribe yourself. Specht is hardly apologetic about the role of greed and corruption in his story, but the overall tone of the book is descriptive, rather than rabble rousing.
Personally, I liked the book, but wanted more detail, and a clearer statement of the principles or mechanisms that Specht thinks precipitated the events he describes. I found some of what I wanted in the footnotes, and can accept (heck, I can even praise) Specht's decision to produce a main text that will not alienate general readers who are looking for a ripping yarn.
August 28, 2022
Well researched, fascinating subject. Beginning with the theft of Native American land by ranchers to the ranchers being screwed over by railroad barons Sprecht follows the history and shows how the system that we have now for meat production was not inevitable, but a product of economic and political choices. I enjoyed how much context he provided, this is one of the best examples I have read recently which managed to zoom in on details, but still pull back enough to see the whole picture. While, I wouldn't have minded a but more moralizing- his restraint is understandable. I did not like how repetitive some arguments were.
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June 24, 2020Documenting change, providing a big picture, fair moral showcase, and complex affiliations - Specht has met some bars for a great history book. From grass-cattle-rancher on stolen indigenous land to standardisation in business structuring, from circulating dispute of meat production and market to cultural symbols of meat consumerism, the coverage of transformations have hit several climaxes.
My main take on consumer culture is the mental association to standard and system imaging, the speed of consumption that drives buyers to focus on sanitation and price is surely robust to what's unsustainable to environmental action. Green NGOs often lopsided on carbon emission and muted cattle impact by their patrons, it is a vicious cycle to block our motivation to act up.
The case for meatpackers of Chicago indicates business history in relation to social change. As the most resource-intensive input for both human function and production, meat seemingly play a role in soft militarisation or nuance strategies for social progress. I love how Specht layout the developmental history of the industry, and provide immense potentiality to interweave with political economies and sociology.
Another interesting observation on the public bias on ranching, where we often imagine a mono industry that controls the whole lots of cows, but the reality is more prone to micro-cattle with many small business operations. The lack of public education in our food system is horrific, I see this book as part of the constellation of knowledge that is desperately needed to be taught in school.
Beyond spatial politics and communities, Specht has provided a timely history that intertwines with American modernity and many more replicated cattle models in the world.
My main take on consumer culture is the mental association to standard and system imaging, the speed of consumption that drives buyers to focus on sanitation and price is surely robust to what's unsustainable to environmental action. Green NGOs often lopsided on carbon emission and muted cattle impact by their patrons, it is a vicious cycle to block our motivation to act up.
The case for meatpackers of Chicago indicates business history in relation to social change. As the most resource-intensive input for both human function and production, meat seemingly play a role in soft militarisation or nuance strategies for social progress. I love how Specht layout the developmental history of the industry, and provide immense potentiality to interweave with political economies and sociology.
Another interesting observation on the public bias on ranching, where we often imagine a mono industry that controls the whole lots of cows, but the reality is more prone to micro-cattle with many small business operations. The lack of public education in our food system is horrific, I see this book as part of the constellation of knowledge that is desperately needed to be taught in school.
Beyond spatial politics and communities, Specht has provided a timely history that intertwines with American modernity and many more replicated cattle models in the world.
March 14, 2021
I expected this book to talk about cultural transformation in regards to expectations around food. I figured it would delve into the 19th century meat-packing industry, perhaps even the current one as well.
While it did touch on those topics (for about a chapter a piece), this book mainly focused on land and ranchers. How America stole Indigenous land to create the 'wild west' and ranching. How the ranchers in turn were screwed by industry barons and side-lined. How railways were complicit and then outmaneuvered by big business. The author focused on how the system that came out of all that was just one of several possible outcomes. We treat the farm-to-table system as inevitable, but it really wasn't.
It was a thoroughly researched and interesting, if a little dry in places, book. I feel I learned quite a bit. However, it rarely included the stories of specific people which could have humanized the tale. Specht keeps the lens on the macro systems, rather than discuss the human costs in anything other than broad terms. He only just begins to mention the affect this had on people at the end of the book (e.g. class divisions around cuts of beef).
2.5 stars. Educational, but the focus on the early part of the story wasn't what I was hoping for.
While it did touch on those topics (for about a chapter a piece), this book mainly focused on land and ranchers. How America stole Indigenous land to create the 'wild west' and ranching. How the ranchers in turn were screwed by industry barons and side-lined. How railways were complicit and then outmaneuvered by big business. The author focused on how the system that came out of all that was just one of several possible outcomes. We treat the farm-to-table system as inevitable, but it really wasn't.
It was a thoroughly researched and interesting, if a little dry in places, book. I feel I learned quite a bit. However, it rarely included the stories of specific people which could have humanized the tale. Specht keeps the lens on the macro systems, rather than discuss the human costs in anything other than broad terms. He only just begins to mention the affect this had on people at the end of the book (e.g. class divisions around cuts of beef).
2.5 stars. Educational, but the focus on the early part of the story wasn't what I was hoping for.
September 2, 2020
This was a fascinating read, if a tad bit dry at times. It was fascinating to see how much things that happened over 100 years ago still affect the way we view our country and how we approach our food consumption. I was particularly struck by the conversation about how cattle raising was instrumental in dispossessing Native American tribes from their lands and the mythologizing of the "wild and open range" that helped cement the narratives that supported Indian removal/genocide and stereotypes. In terms of the actual meat industrial production itself, it was amazing to see just how little has changed. I'd have loved to have had more discussion about where we can go from here, but that was beyond the scope of this book. Still it gives you a lot to chew on!
July 12, 2023
The mythic, 19th century cowboy was really just an agricultural worker. That's one of the implications of this fascinating history of the rise of the beef industry in the U.S. Joshua Specht's well-written and well-argued narrative connects the dots between the 19th century financial speculation-driven expansion of cattle ranching in western states and territories, the brutal displacement of native peoples, the boom and development of cities along western cattle trails, the emergence of monopolistic meatpacking corporations, the collapse in the price of beef, and the rise of a vast popular culture and mythos around beef-eating. Not only will this book change your understanding of the settling of the American West, you'll never be able to watch a western movie in the same way again.
November 3, 2022
I've been more concerned about famine lately & this book helped out with not only the political economy of food especially beef, but also with explaining the racist messaging that indoctrinated people into normalizing beef.
Also note, the discussion about buyers not being tied to place, but sellers being so should be instructive on institutional power dynamics/imbalances when discussing things like anarchism, anti-revisionism, and the GPCR.
The part about the rails ending up giving the workers power is an interesting mood. Like strikes? Real estate?
Also the book condemns voting with your dollar as not being revolutionary but revisionist.
Also note, the discussion about buyers not being tied to place, but sellers being so should be instructive on institutional power dynamics/imbalances when discussing things like anarchism, anti-revisionism, and the GPCR.
The part about the rails ending up giving the workers power is an interesting mood. Like strikes? Real estate?
Also the book condemns voting with your dollar as not being revolutionary but revisionist.
April 6, 2024
Like meandering through a museum based on the history of meat- same tone
“As it does today, beef held special importance for Americans, and this importance justified. The system that left consumers largely satisfied with those factors they found most salient - taste and sanitation - even if it did not address other factors of periodic concern, such as labor conditions are environmental degradation. Consumers reconcile themselves to industrial meat products by distancing themselves from industrial meat production.”
“As it does today, beef held special importance for Americans, and this importance justified. The system that left consumers largely satisfied with those factors they found most salient - taste and sanitation - even if it did not address other factors of periodic concern, such as labor conditions are environmental degradation. Consumers reconcile themselves to industrial meat products by distancing themselves from industrial meat production.”
July 12, 2020
The history of beef in the US. An interesting account of cattle growing and meat packing- mostly pre Civil War through “The Jungle.” This book helped me understand why beef is so prevalent in North America. It was also an interesting look at the evolution of politics and business. While our current regulations (grazing land, anti-trust laws, FDA approvals) can seem restrictive, they were derived for good reason. Should they evolve? Sure, but we should have perspective on why they came to being.
February 24, 2021
I think I hyped this up in my head too much - not saying it wasn't wonderfully researched and written, I just have been wanting to read this for MONTHS and months and months. I love protein histories and learned a lot about labor, race, imperialism, and capitalism that was encapsulated in beef. I wasn't able to finish the final section before I had to return it to the library, but it taught me a lot about Chicago and did its job. Nice nice nice, 8/10.
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July 7, 2023Good, academic history of the social, cultural, and economic impacts of the American "cattle-beef complex" from the last half of the 1800s to the turn of the 20th century. It's a little light, but to the point. A couple of my favorite points: competition between small ranchers and corporate cattle, and how the standardization of the industry incorporated small ranchers into the system when corporate ranches failed. I also liked the attention on consumers' driving demand for fresh beef.
January 27, 2023
Only the final chapter and conclusion discussed the cultural history of beef, which is what I was really looking for. The rest of the chapters were a detailed explanation of how industrial beef production came to be. The author's conclusion is that our current system of industrial food production is a contingent creation based on politics, not an inevitability based on technology.
December 1, 2020
Generally very good and thorough, but I did feel like the last chapter was comparatively glossed over, which covered a lot of the social science that I was most interested in. Still, I would highly recommend giving this one a read with current dietary trends and social structures in mind.
April 18, 2022
A balanced and informative essay on our food production history.
Very well written book with well researched and in-depth historical accounts of why beef will remain the staple food-source for a long time to come. Excellent read.
Very well written book with well researched and in-depth historical accounts of why beef will remain the staple food-source for a long time to come. Excellent read.
September 11, 2019
Disappointing, the last chapter broke new ground the rest would largely be known to anyone with a high school U.S. history course under their belt. The last chapter is however, very good.
March 18, 2020
Title is honestly the only general description you need. Can be a bit dry, but filled with useful information of how the meat industry influenced American development.
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April 16, 2020Certainly doesn't read like a first book based on a dissertation with its elements of synthesis and popular history mixed in nicely.
May 24, 2020
Solid history, and I learned a lot about the ride of beef in the US. Much stronger in the 19th century than the 20th, though. And pretty pedantic throughout.
October 31, 2020
It is written in a very academic style, much like a thesis, which is was.
October 14, 2022
Very informative on the inpact of cattle on American history.
Recommended.
2/3 penmenship
3/3 informative
3/3 well researched
2/2 discretionary
Total is 10 out 11 points
Recommended.
2/3 penmenship
3/3 informative
3/3 well researched
2/2 discretionary
Total is 10 out 11 points
May 2, 2023
Growing up in a Chicago burb I always heard how wonderful meat is, how healthy people eat lots of it, and how important it is to eat beef every day. Talk about a sales pitch! It’s ingrained in midwesterners.
This book gave me a different perspective. I learned the other stories, the ones that were hidden from the general public.
It’s a great book!
This book gave me a different perspective. I learned the other stories, the ones that were hidden from the general public.
It’s a great book!
March 20, 2024
Fair and balanced. Not the most exciting book, but I learned a lot and although there was a bit of repetition the book ran smoothly. Almost no beef bashing and the other usual mess.
March 15, 2023
This was quite an interesting way to view some US history. And the meat packing industry has way more to do with the American love of beef than I would have thought. If you like American history from about 1880 - 1930, this has some insights into how it turned out.
January 4, 2023
Best book of the year, for me. Specht provides some fantastic historical detail to the cowboy era, the big business of meat packing & transportation, and the Federal government slaughtering tremendous bison herds in order to subjugate Native American tribes.
The writing is engaging & thorough, without belaboring the point. I hope Specht writes more!
The writing is engaging & thorough, without belaboring the point. I hope Specht writes more!
August 9, 2022
Had some interesting parts, but overall just a 'mehhh....' kind of book that did it's best to castigate cattle ranchers, packers, railroads, and stockyards.
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