1867 To 1950
In its early years Armour sold every kind of consumer product made from animals: not only meats but glue, oil, fertilizer, hairbrushes, buttons, oleomargarine, and drugs made from slaughterhouse byproducts. Armour operated in an environment without labor unions, health inspections or government regulation. Accidents were commonplace. Armour was notorious for the low pay it offered its line workers. It fought unionization by banning known union activists and by breaking strikes in 1904 and 1921, employing African Americans and new immigrants as strikebreakers. The company did not become fully unionized until the late 1930s when the Meatpacking Union succeeded in creating an interracial industrial union as part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
During the Spanish-American War (1898) Armour sold 500,000 pounds of beef to the US Army. An army inspector tested the meat two months later and found that 751 cases contained rotten meat. This resulted in the food poisoning of thousands of soldiers.
In the early 1920s Armour encountered financial troubles and the Armour family sold its majority interest to financier Frederick H. Prince. The firm retained its position as one of the largest American firms through the Great Depression and the sharp increase in demand during World War II. During this period, it expanded its operations across the United States; at its peak the company employed as many as 50,000 people.
In 1948, Armour, which had made soap for years as a by-product of the meatpacking process, developed a deodorant soap by adding the germicidal agent AT-7 to soap. This limited body-odor by reducing bacteria on the skin. The new soap was named "Dial" because of its 24-hour protection against the odor-causing bacteria. Armour introduced the soap with a full-page advertisement using scented ink in the Chicago Tribune.
After World War II Armour and Company's fortunes began to decline. In 1959 it closed its Chicago slaughterhouse operations.
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