Америкалық кәсіпкер және ет өнеркәсібінің негізін қалаушысы

American entrepreneur in the meat industry

Gustavus Franklin Swift, Sr. (June 24, 1839 – March 29, 1903) was an American business executive. He founded a meat packing empire in the Midwest during the late 19th century, over which he presided until his death. He is credited with the development of the first practical ice cooled railroad car, which allowed his company to ship dressed meats to all parts of the country and abroad, ushering in the "era of cheap beef." Swift pioneered the use of animal by products for the manufacture of soap, glue, fertilizer, various types of sundries, and even medical products.

Following the end of the American Civil War, Chicago emerged as a major railway center, making it an ideal point for the distribution of livestock raised on the Great Plains to Eastern markets. Getting the animals to market required herds to be driven distances of up to to railheads in Kansas City, Missouri, where they were loaded into stock cars and transported live (on the hoof) to regional processing centers. Driving cattle across the plains led to tremendous weight loss, and a number of animals died in transit. Upon arrival at the local processing facility, livestock were either slaughtered by wholesalers and delivered fresh to nearby butcher shops for retail sale, smoked, or packed for shipment in barrels of salt. Certain inefficiencies were inherent in the process of transporting live animals by rail, particularly due to the fact that approximately 60% of the animal's mass is inedible. Many animals weakened by the long drive died in transit, further increasing the per unit shipping cost. Swift's solution to these problems was to devise a method to ship dressed meats from his packing plant in Chicago to the East.

In response to public outcries to reduce the amount of pollutants generated by his packing plants, Swift sought innovative ways to use previously discarded portions of the animals his company butchered. This practice led to the wide scale commercial production of such diverse products as oleomargarine, soap, glue, fertilizer, hairbrushes, buttons, knife handles, and pharmaceutical preparations such as pepsin and insulin. Low grade meats were canned in products like pork and beans. The absence of federal inspection led to many abuses. Sausages might incorporate spoiled meat, dead rats, sawdust or anything else that might have been mixed with the meat. Rancid and rejected meat was frequently repackaged and resold. (Swift once bragged that his slaughterhouses had become so sophisticated that they used "everything but the squeal.") Transgressions such as these were first documented in Upton Sinclair's fictional novel The Jungle, the publication of which shocked the nation and led to the passing of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

The meat packing plants of Chicago were among the first to utilize assembly line (or in this case, disassembly line) production techniques. Henry Ford states in his autobiography My Life and Work that it was a visit to a Chicago slaughterhouse which opened his eyes to the virtues of employing a moving conveyor system and fixed work stations in industrial applications. These practices symbolize the concept of "rationalized organization of work" to this day. Swift adapted the methods of the industrial revolution to meat packing operations, which resulted in huge efficiency by allowing his plants to produce on a massive scale. The work was divided into myriad specific sub tasks, which were carried out under the direction of supervisory personnel. Swift & Co. was broken down organizationally into various divisions, each one responsible for conducting a different aspect of the business of "bringing meat from the ranch to the consumer". By developing a vertically integrated company, Swift was able to control the sale of his meats from the slaughterhouse to the local butcher shop. Swift devoted a great deal of time to indoctrinating employees and teaching them the company's methods and policies. He also motivated his employees to focus on the company's profit goals by adhering to a strict policy of promotion from within. The innovations that Swift championed not only revolutionized the meat packing industry, but also played a vital role in establishing the modern American business system, with an emphasis on mass production, functional specialization, managerial expertise, national distribution networks, and adaptation to technological innovation.