Philip Danforth Armour (1832-1901) was a typical American industrial capitalist of the period following the Civil War. He helped build meat-packing into a great industry by using new technology and working out distribution methods for domestic and foreign markets.

Philip Armour was born on May 16, 1832, at Stock-bridge, N.Y. His father was a farmer of Scotch-Irish and Puritan origins. Young Armour went to a district school, then to the nearby Cazenovia Academy, from which he was dropped. In 1852 he left for California and worked as a miner and, more successfully, as a contractor selling water and digging water ditches for miners. After 4 years--during which he accumulated some $6,000--he returned to the family farm but soon left it permanently. He became a provisions and grain dealer in Cincinnati and then in Milwaukee, two early hog-packing centers.

Meat-packing (largely of hogs) was a wintertime farm industry: slaughtering took place after...