The predecessor of the Western Livestock Journal—then titled the Farm and Ranch Market Journal—was originally founded in 1922 as part of the infrastructure of the great urban stockyards that were scattered across cities in the Midwest and West.
Beginning at the end of the Civil War with the Chicago, IL, terminal market, these stockyards would be the center of livestock commerce and the packing industry for most of the next century.
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The Farm and Ranch Market Journal—which was originally associated with the Los Angeles Union Stockyards in California—and publications like it, were daily papers that served as an important resource for price discovery and the news, particularly as it related to agriculture and the livestock industry. However, before the Los Angeles Stockyards would be opened and the Farm and Ranch Market Journal established, the industry had to develop the infrastructure that would make these terminal markets viable.
Due to the lack of refrigeration, livestock were initially processed in population centers where the meat was consumed. Since most of the U.S.’ early population was located on the East Coast, a system had to be developed to transport the livestock in the West to the Eastern cities. With the advent of the railroads, this came in the form of small stockyards that were scattered at railheads as early as the late 1840s in cities like Chicago where livestock could be gathered and rested for shipment east.
The livestock were then typically harvested and the meat sold in neighborhood butcher shops. This system gave market access to the rapidly expanding cattle industry in the Midwest, and allowed the forages and crops of the fertile lands of the region to be converted into high quality protein in the form of meat. However, the system of where the livestock were shipped and how they were harvested rapidly changed with the end of the Civil War.
As the West was populated with cattle, the railroads found that hauling them was very profitable, so the rail companies invested heavily in the livestock marketing infrastructure. This resulted in them building the great terminal stockyards in cities throughout the Midwest and West. They were referred to as terminal markets because they had the capacity to harvest and process the livestock in adjacent packing plants to the stockyards.
The first and greatest of these terminal stockyards was opened on Christmas Day of 1865 in South Chicago. Nine railroads had purchased 320 acres to build this terminal market, which initially had 40 acres of pens and would eventually be serviced by all the major packers of the day, which included among others, Swift, Armour and Wilson.
There were also a number of smaller packers associated with the various markets, which typically included at least one kosher kill. Although Chicago would remain the dominate stockyards, other ones sprang up in cities like Saint Joseph, MO, Omaha, NE, Kansas City, MO, Fort Worth, TX, and Denver, CO. The last of these great stockyards would not open until 1921 in Los Angeles.
To feed these urban markets and packing plants with livestock, large ranches would often have rail spurs to load out their animals. In other cases, the railroad companies or producer consortiums would build holding pens where livestock could be gathered and from which railcars could be loaded.
In the later years as sale barns developed and they became an important part of the infrastructure, they typically would have rail spurs associated with them to load railcars for shipment of animals, so they could be harvested in the city packing plants.
These stockyards bustled with activity and had amazing infrastructures. At its peak, the nation’s dominate stockyard in Chicago produced 82 percent of the country’s meat. It was known as the busiest square mile in the nation covering 475 acres with 130 miles of railroad track and 15 miles of road around its perimeter, and employed upwards of 25,000 people. Like all the major stockyards, it had a grand exchange building where companies had their headquarters. This included their newspaper, which in Chicago came in the form of the Chicago Daily Drovers Journal.
Many great technological improvements sprang from the Chicago Union Stockyards including multistory packing plants, which for their day were a model of efficiency in terms of assembly (disassembly) line processing, long before Henry Ford started making cars. Other improvements included the use of ice starting in 1871 to cool carcasses, which allowed livestock to be processed in the summer. In 1882, Gustavus Swift invented the ice-cooled railcar, which allowed fresh carcasses to be transported to the Eastern population centers instead of just being marketed as processed meat.
The Chicago Union Stockyards also had many features not typically found at most of the other markets including the Pedigree Livestock Building where breed associations were headquartered rent free; an amphitheater for livestock shows; the Stockyards Inn; and the famous Saddle and Sirloin Club. However, in time many of the other stockyards followed Chicago and would start livestock shows in an effort to improve the quality of livestock they were being supplied with. This would include the famous National Western Stock Show in Denver, and its historic amphitheater.
Producers marketing their livestock at the various stockyards used commission firms to broker the sale of their animals. The commission firms would have a block of pens dedicated to their company, and the producer would pay the stockyards a yardage fee for their livestock’s feed and water while they were there. The commission firms themselves would serve much as a real estate agent representing a person’s livestock to packers or feeders and then taking a commission on the sale.
This is where the daily papers were such a critical part of the infrastructure, because of their important role in price reporting from the numerous commission firms and the packing plants they did business with. They not only reported market news for the stockyard they were associated with, but also reported prices from other major markets from across the country, which was critical for price discovery.
In addition, these papers would report on industry news that would have an effect on the market, as well as general news since these were often the only paper people associated with the stockyard would read in a day. Some examples of these papers included the Kansas City Drovers Telegram, Livestock Reporter in Fort Worth, and Record Stockman in Denver. When the Los Angeles Union Stockyards opened in 1921, an early priority was attracting a paper to cover both the market and the news. This is where Nelson Crow, who was the grandfather of Pete Crow, the current publisher of Western Livestock Journal, would come in.
In 1916, the USDA established a Market News Reporting service, and one of its first employees was Nelson Crow. Nelson started his market news job in St. Joseph, MO, before moving to cover the Chicago Stockyards, and finally being transferred to San Francisco, CA.
He quickly caught the eye of the Union Stockyards and Transit Company, which owned the Los Angeles Union Stockyards, and in 1922, they recruited him to start a paper to service the last of the great stockyards to be built. Nelson had learned to type while he was in the Army, and the Union Stockyards and Transit Company offered him a loan to start the paper, then called the Farm and Ranch Market Journal.
The Los Angeles Stockyards was unique in that it was not serviced by any major packers, but instead had as many as 36 small processors. This diffuse market made price reporting that much more important and challenging. At the time, the area around Los Angeles was also a major cattle ranching, dairy, and cropping region before it was overtaken by urban sprawl.
California in general was also one of the largest cow-calf areas in the country, and in addition, the Los Angeles market would draw cattle from as far away as Montana and Texas. This made for a dynamic market to report on.
Compared to most of the other stockyard papers, Western Livestock Journal quickly gained a reputation for its sharp commentary on the issues of the day and original reporting—areas of excellence that it has maintained to this day. Nelson, the founder, would also branch out into additional publications including a monthly livestock magazine, a dairy journal, and a version of WLJ centered east of the Continental Divide, which was headquartered in Denver.
There will be time to reflect and share stories of the past as WLJ approaches a century of serving as the community news source for beef producers. — Dr. Bob Hough, WLJ correspondent
