How steaks changed U.S. history.

hi on the history guide I have a degree in history and I love history and if you love history too this is the channel for you there's an old adage that says you are what you eat and while that's likely talking most about the health of your diet it does illustrate the fact that what a culture eat says much about that culture and likely impacts that cultures history and when we look at the confluence between diet and culture in America one food looms large one food that we eat in larger quantities than almost any other country on Earth one food that is the primary ingredient in one of the most quintessential of American foods the hamburger beef cattle arrived with the earliest European settlements in the Americas in beef production and consumption has been a primary driver of American history ever since although there were wild bovines in the Americas notably the American bison the cattle we use for beef originated in Europe and were brought to the Americas almost as soon as Europeans arrived on the second expedition in 1493 Christopher Columbus brought some cattle primarily intended as draft animals some of these cattle escaped and feral herds were established more were taken on Spanish expeditions to Mexico and South America these cattle were wiry thin fast had long horns for defense and were Hardy and drought resistant in North America cattle ride was some of the earliest European colonists cattle were important to Virginia's Jamestown Colony in 1611 and were imported to the Plymouth Colony in 1624 these were English Braves especially the Devon which is one of the oldest breeds of domesticated cattle cattle were not just used for beef they were used also for milk leather and his beasts of burden as Americas went west cattle went with them but the demand for beef steak grew who is populations and wealth grew due to the relatively easy availability of land in the United States meat generally a and B specifically was far more available in America than he was in Europe where the economics of meat production meant that most meat was consumed by the wealthy in the United States there was enough room that Hertz could be grown near and around cities and that created a thriving market from early on in the nation's history that availability of meat was also a driving force in American immigration when the immigrants wrote letters back home in the early 19th century their relatives often expressed disbelief when they were told that in America people ate meat almost every day meanwhile in the great Southwest the descendants of the cow brought by Columbus moved north herds may have been grazing in what is now Texas as early as the 16th century as Spanish settlers and explorers did not fence their cattle many easily escaped on the great plains had no natural predators and they thrive for the most part even Native Americans left them alone as bison were actually tamer and easier to kill European settlers brought European breeds to Texas in the 1820s and those interbred with the wild Spanish cattle creating the distinct breed called the Longhorn Mexicans had adopted the Spanish tradition of herding cattle on horseback and that method was adopted by European settlers after the Texas Revolution in 1836 many Mexican cows ranchers left leaving the cattle behind European settlers took over the herds as there was no method for refrigeration those herds were raised for their mother and tallow largely used in the making of soap but not generally for meat still ranching was a profitable business and by 1855 there were ten head of cattle in Texas for each person but the u.s. Civil War changed the beef industry in the United States previously beef in the u.s. came from a local butcher who was butchering fresh meat while packing plants have been producing tinned meat preserved in brine in the United States since the 17th century the demand wasn't particularly high because fresh meat was usually available but the huge number of troops involved in the u.s. civil war led to a great demand for tinned meat to feed those troops and that demand was central in establishing the cattle feeding industry on the great plains in places like Nebraska but the war had the opposite effect in Texas when the Union cut off the Mississippi River in 1863 the Confederacy had no access to the Texas herds moreover much of the population that tended the cattle in Texas left to fight the war untended the herds grew when the war ended the men in the East fed by population growth and increasing wealth was outstripping supply meanwhile in Texas millions of Fira Longhorns wandered the Great Plains clearly there was a great deal of money to be made for anyone who could bring those cattle to market thus began the era of the cattle drive but there was a problem farmers in Kansas and Missouri didn't like the Texas cattle which damaged their farms and Longhorns carried a kind of tick that caused disease usually fatal to European breeds but to which the hearty longhorn cattle were resistant an enterprising businessman named Joseph McCoy came up with a solution McCoy realized that rail companies want a more freight business and the stockyards in Chicago were perfect for feeding the growing demand in the East makoy invested it in a small town along the railway called Abilene Kansas where he built stockyards and motels Abilene was west of most of Kansas farming and at the end of the trail that had been established to help supply the Confederacy called the Chisholm Trail ranchers and Texas could drive huge herds of cattle up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene where the cattle would be taken by rail to Chicago slaughtered and shipped in refrigerated cars to Eastern markets cow towns gained reputations as raucous places where Cowboys who had been riding for months spent their pay on liquor and prostitutes everyone got rich the railroads the ranchers the stockyard owners and Joseph McCoy based on his vision more than two million cattle were moved from Abilene to Chicago between 1867 and 1881 the success of his vision is the genesis of the term the real McCoy cattle ranch is expanded across the Great Plains a trend that was made easier as Native Americans were driven onto reservations and the great buffalo herds were hunted to extinction cattle Fugard railroads which facilitated emigration and further drove the wars to remove the native peoples ranchers grace huge herds from Texas to Canada the Great Plains became known as the cattle kingdom amid the cattle boom but the time of the cattle kingdom and the cowboy was short-lived initially excessive to me admit that the herds competed with each other and the land became over grazed and then in 1885 a recession reduced demand and then repeated droughts and harsh winters decimated herds the time of open range grazing was coming to an end and that was facilitated by two new technologies in 1874 Joseph Glidden a businessman from Illinois developed a method to mass-produce barbed wire the new wire allowed a revolution FinCEN was expensive in the West synthesis were usually made of wood which is scarce on the Great Plains wire fences were less expensive but they tended to break when pushed by something as big as cattle barbed wire was stronger as it twisted to pieces of wire together and the barbs kept the cattle from pressing against the wire barbed wire allowed the Great Plains to be fenced but another technology was needed to move from the era of open range to the era of ranching in 1854 an engineer and inventor named Daniel Halliday invented the first commercially successful design for a self-governing windmill by the 1870s the invention was spreading across the Great Plains the windmill allowed a former arranger to retrieve water from aquafers freeing them from competition over water sources a college dissertation in 1895 concluded of the windmill without them we must emigrate with them we can irrigate the transition was not smooth larger and wealthier ranchers were the first to start to use the fencing to cut off large tracts of land sometimes well beyond their legal claims so-called fence cutting wars erupted and often became a form of class warfare between wealthy ranchers and smaller herdsmen and farmers probably the most famous of these was the Johnson County War fought in Wyoming between 1889 and 1893 nearly 40 people were killed in the conflict between large ranchers and smaller settlers over range in water rights and the army was sent to intervene eventually the rangeland was regulated with laws that governed the use of public lands cattle ranching moved largely to fenced ranches rather than open range in 1906 Upton Sinclair wrote the book the jungle revealing abhorrent conditions in the US meatpacking industry while he was trying to address working conditions the public was most revolted by the description of the sanitary conditions the book resulted in the creation of many US consumer protection laws and a federal Meat Inspection Act to ensure that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions demand for better quality meat led the US Department of Agriculture to start grading meat in 1926 but 1980s over 90% of beef sold in the US was graded but the grading system favors well marbled beats meaning grain fed so today most meat is raised on ranches but finished in feed yards who fatten the cattle on grain the great ranches largely disappeared as the ranchers now centred on breeding alone the shift of feed yards also change the way that meat was packaged instead of shipping live cattle in trains to stockyards in Chicago to be slaughtered Packaging houses were built till the large feed Lots where the cattle were being raised now cattle were being slaughtered right next to the place where they were being grown and only the frozen cuts needed to be shipped the meat changed too as the demand for better quality beef and ranching practices changed Scottish Aberdeen Angus cattle were first imported to do the United States in 1873 they were found to intermix easily with Longhorns the result was called a Black Angus now the most popular beef cattle breed in America the ready availability of beef gave rise to the food that most defines American cuisine today in the early part of the 19th century most immigrants from Northern Europe came through the German port of Hamburg and they brought with them local recipes for minced cooked meat that dish became popular in American restaurants under the title steak Hamburg style or hamburger steak there are many claimants in the 1880s and 1890s for who invented the idea putting hamburger steak inside two slices of bread who you think invented the hamburger today depends upon where you live but whoever it was the idea sold Americans eat an estimated 50 billion hamburgers each year averaging more than three hamburgers a week for every man woman and child in the country McDonald's alone sells an average of more than 1500 burgers a minute per capita meat consumption in the United States doubled between the 1930s in the 1960s and reached its peak in the 1970s although it has declined some sense Americans are still among the highest per-capita consumers of beef in the world the US Department of Agriculture attributes recent declines to product shortages which have increased the price of beef relative to chicken but the USDA predicts that the price of beef will be declining in the next decade and demand will increase again there are significant indications though that culture has changed in per-capita consumption will never reach the highs that it had in the 1970s the beef industry is facing new challenges for example demand for hormone and antibiotic-free beef and new threats from ever improving plant-based meat substitutes which are becoming more popular and in the most dramatic innovation in the industry in 2013 for the first time lab-grown beef that is beef muscle grown in a petri dish was ground into a hamburger and eaten and that new technology might be available in stores in the near future as several startups are pursuing the technology beef production and consumption has been a large driver of American history as economics and culture are always great drivers of history but the effect of the beef industry and American history really does prove the adage we really are what we eat I'm history by now hope you enjoyed this edition of my series five minutes of history short snippets of forgotten history five to ten minutes long you'd enjoy please go ahead and put that thumbs up button which is there on your left if you have any questions or comments feel free to write those in the comment section I'll be happy to respond and if you'd like five minutes more forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 423,211

Rating: 4.9519901 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, cattle, us history, steak, beef industry, history guy

Id: 0tZe3XFZChs

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/good_choice13]

The History Guy is one of the best things on YouTube!!

[u/cellis12]

I can't think of anything better than a big thick juicy porterhouse steak sizzling on the grill, now that's living.