Making Machines of Animals: The International Livestock Exposition

Recent works on industrialized agriculture have allowed us to view the process through the lens of a single cultivar, a specific place, or the development of institutions. Neal Knapp wants to shift our attention toward Chicago's International Livestock Exposition. He argues that the exposition enabled meat-packers and land-grant university professors to broadcast their industrial agendas to producers and agricultural colleges.The organizers of the First International Livestock Exposition in 1900 aimed to address two crises faced by processors: an insecure supply of livestock and public anger at the Beef Trust. To solve these problems, meat processors and agricultural scientists sought to redesign pigs, cattle, and sheep to produce more meat per animal, along with greater quantities of high-value cuts. These packers and professors designed the International to be a spectacle where they could expose the poor-quality “scrub” animals that were sent to meat markets for processing while showcasing how modern science could improve farm life and the output of high-quality meat. According to Knapp, the International's success resulted in a feedback loop wherein farmers and students of agriculture brought the new practices back to their farms and colleges, where they redesigned the livestock that fueled the meat-packing industry and the ongoing efforts of the International.Knapp is particularly interested in the role of breeding and genetics. At first, packers and scientists concentrated their efforts on selecting cattle breeds that would meet their physiological standards. They focused almost entirely on purebred animals imported from Great Britain. For cattle, this meant Aberdeen-Angus, Shorthorns, and Herefords. As they established this genetic baseline, they moved toward “breeding up,” or improving herds with prize-winning purebred sires, resulting in the elimination of undesired physiological traits.According to Knapp, “the galvanizing ideology that helped define animal superiority and animal inferiority was eugenics” (11). Agricultural scientists argued that Longhorns and other scrub cattle from the American Southwest and Mexico were disease-ridden and overbred. Knapp posits that these scientists were informed by a desire to eliminate degeneracy—a core eugenics argument—conflating racial hierarchies in humans with breed taxonomies in animal species. While Knapp's evidence and arguments regarding livestock taxonomies are convincing, his claims regarding how agricultural scientists were motivated by racial hierarchies is more tenuous.For historians who analyze the impact of spectacles such as the International, one of the core challenges is to show how the event transformed practice. In this, Knapp's analysis of livestock judging at the International draws effective lines of causation. Each year student judges from major agricultural colleges extensively prepared to evaluate livestock according to the rigorous standards of each competition. Their preparation required them to internalize idealized livestock physiology as prescribed by agricultural scientists and meat-packers, rating animals accordingly. Successful participation as a judge garnered prestige for each college team and formed the foundation for how these students and their professors managed demonstration herds, taught classes, and communicated with farmers. Knapp cites convincing evidence of how college judges went on to wield agricultural influence after graduation.In his final chapter, Knapp overreaches somewhat. Until that point, the book is well-researched and tightly organized, rarely extending chronologically beyond 1920, when, Knapp argues, the International's influence began to fade. Nonetheless, Knapp draws lines of causation between the International of the early twentieth century and trends that are more associated with the post–World War II era, such as dependence on antibiotics, feedlot overcrowding, and the loss of manure as a fertilizer due to monocropping. Knapp's research here is thin, and his conclusions are thin on primary sources.Knapp makes two important historical interventions. First, by effectively situating the industrialization of livestock within the first two decades of the twentieth century, he establishes a robust line of feedlot causation that brings the origins of full-time commercial feeding earlier into the twentieth century than other scholars. Additionally, recent works on industrial agriculture have focused on single crops, specific places, or the development of farm institutions such as cooperatives. By shifting our attention to spectacles such as the International, Knapp encourages us to seek out alternative pathways for how agricultural knowledge and practice traveled in the early twentieth century.Making Machines of Animals is useful for historians of agriculture and environment. Instructors seeking to bring fresh thinking into the teaching of meat-packing, the Progressive Era, and race in the early twentieth century will also find utility. And, at a slim 138 pages, the book may be a tempting option for upper-division undergraduate courses where instructors must make choices between articles and full-length books.