Philip Danforth Armour
| Philip Danforth Armour | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 16 1832 Stockbridge, New York |
Philip Danforth Armour (16 May 1832 – 6 January 1901) was an American businessman.
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Biography
Armour was born in Stockbridge, New York to Danforth Armour and Juliana Ann Brooks; he was mostly of Scottish and English descent, with his surname originating in Scotland.[1] He was educated at Cazenovia Academy in New York before he dropped out and went to work on the family farm. In 1852 he walked across the country to mine the gold fields of California, and earned US$8,000 by the time he was 24. He used those funds to set up his first meat market in Placerville, California.
He moved from California to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a sizeable fortune and started a wholesale grocery business. With his brother, Herman, he entered the grain business and built several meat packing plants in the Menomonee Valley. Together they formed the Armour and Company in 1867, which soon became the world's largest food processing and chemical manufacturing enterprise, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
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.
In 1893, he donated $1 million to found the Armour Institute of Technology (a privately endowed coeducational college), which merged with the Lewis Institute to become the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1940.
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.
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.
Armour died on January 6, 1901 of pneumonia at his Chicago home. The town of Armour, South Dakota was named for him in 1885. A street in the Milwaukee suburb of Cudahy, Wisconsin (founded by meat packing magnate Patrick Cudahy) also bears his name.
References
- White, John H. (1986). The Great Yellow Fleet. Golden West Books, San Marino, California. ISBN 0-87095-091-6.
Further reading
- Lowe, David Garrard (2000), Lost Chicago. Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, NY. ISBN 0-8230-2871-2.
See also
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: ' | President of Armour and Company 1867–1901 | Succeeded by: J. Ogden Armour (son) |
Categories
1832 births | 1901 deaths | Businesspeople | Businesspeople of the 19th century | People from Chicago | Chicago culture | French Americans | History of Chicago | People in rail transport