In early April 15, 2016, I took my kids to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, the Simply it, on a “happy Friday” when they don’t have school. The restaurant is located on a busy street at 2269 North Lincoln Park Avenue, right next to Starbuck Coffee, not too far from my daughter’s future high school, Lincoln Park. The kids rushed to order their favorite grill beef sandwich while I picked a crab and asparagus soup for the twenty month baby. Looking at them, all enjoy their food, I can’t help wondering if they have ever given any thought of where they food come from, how it was made, how the food preparation has impacted our life as a young generation living in a fast-moving society in such as big city like Chicago- where part of it used to
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By the early 1900s, the leading sectors of national economy was controlled by corporate alliances knowns as “trusts”. There were a Sugar Trust, a Streel Trust, Tobacco Trust and a Beef Trust. According to Eric Matthew Schlosser, an American journalist and author known for investigative journalism, with his well-known book called Fast Food Nation, “in 1917, at the height of the Beef Trust, the five largest meatpacking company-Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson and Cudahy- controlled about 55 percent of the market. As consequence, government official believed that the concentrated economic power posed a grave threat to American democracy” (Schlosser 476). Worrying about the negative impact the monopoly can cause to the economy in general and the fair competition in particular, the policy makers support and implement the congressional investigation against price fixing in the meat packing industry. In 1890, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act had been passed. In the next two decades, the federal Government tried to break up the Beef Trust, with little success. In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Federal Trade Commission to investigate industry and the FTC inquiry concluded that “the five major meatpacking firms has secretly fixed the prices for years, ad colluded to divide up market, and had shared livestock information to guarantee that ranchers received the lowest possible prices for the cattle” (Schlosser 476). Being aware of the unfavorable the verdict on antitrust trial may bring, the five meatpacking company signed a consent decree in 1920 to force them to sell off their stockyards retail meat stores, railway interests and livestock journals. A year later, Congress created the Packers and Stockyards Administration (P&SA) to prevent price-fixing and monopolistic behavior in the beef industry. As a
By the early 1900s, the leading sectors of national economy was controlled by corporate alliances knowns as “trusts”. There were a Sugar Trust, a Streel Trust, Tobacco Trust and a Beef Trust. According to Eric Matthew Schlosser, an American journalist and author known for investigative journalism, with his well-known book called Fast Food Nation, “in 1917, at the height of the Beef Trust, the five largest meatpacking company-Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson and Cudahy- controlled about 55 percent of the market. As consequence, government official believed that the concentrated economic power posed a grave threat to American democracy” (Schlosser 476). Worrying about the negative impact the monopoly can cause to the economy in general and the fair competition in particular, the policy makers support and implement the congressional investigation against price fixing in the meat packing industry. In 1890, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act had been passed. In the next two decades, the federal Government tried to break up the Beef Trust, with little success. In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Federal Trade Commission to investigate industry and the FTC inquiry concluded that “the five major meatpacking firms has secretly fixed the prices for years, ad colluded to divide up market, and had shared livestock information to guarantee that ranchers received the lowest possible prices for the cattle” (Schlosser 476). Being aware of the unfavorable the verdict on antitrust trial may bring, the five meatpacking company signed a consent decree in 1920 to force them to sell off their stockyards retail meat stores, railway interests and livestock journals. A year later, Congress created the Packers and Stockyards Administration (P&SA) to prevent price-fixing and monopolistic behavior in the beef industry. As a