National City was a suburb of East St. Louis, Illinois. Incorporated in 1907, it was a company town for the St. Louis National Stockyards Company. In 1996, the company, which owned all residential property in the town, evicted all of its residents. The following year, because it had no residents, National City was dissolved by court order. Its site was subsequently annexed by nearby Fairmont City, Illinois.
History
Background and context
Following the American Civil War, the American economy began to undergo a dramatic change as smaller markets and operations were being replaced by more centralized and efficient ones.Nore, Ellen. St. Louis National Stockyards Company: East Side Story. This was due in no small part to the advent of the railroads, which by this time crossed much of the country and connected previously isolated producers to one another in a more expedient fashion. This transformation of the nation’s transportation network by railroads had a particularly strong impact on livestock-related industries. It eliminated the need for long cattle drives by connecting the producers of livestock (especially cattle) in the West with the major meat processing companies in the East.James, Charles A. Meatpacking in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area. Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville Press, 1971. It also enabled livestock markets to become transregional, with animals being shipped to large, centralized markets for sale, processing and distribution.Walsh, Margaret. The Rise of the Midwestern Meatpacking Industry. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982. The result of this was that over time, smaller, localized markets became obsolete and a relatively small number of terminal livestock markets—markets built near important railroad centers—came to dominate the livestock and meatpacking industries. St. Louis, Missouri was a natural choice as one of these locations.
Situated near the juncture of the Missouri River and Mississippi River, the city of St. Louis had long been an important transportation center. Its access to these river systems coupled with its central location in the country had contributed to its becoming a major industrial center and railroad hub, with all the U.S.’s major rail lines converging in the city and from there running to all the different regions of the country. As railroads became the primary means by which livestock and processed meat was shipped, St. Louis developed into a major livestock and meatpacking center. This was also due to the fact that most of the U.S. population lived east of the Mississippi River prior to 1900, while most of the animals used to produce the meat it consumed were raised west of it, thus making St. Louis a logical place for the interchange between supply and demand in the meat market. However, the Mississippi River provided a hindrance to this movement of livestock and meat to the East at first, because until 1874, when the Eads Bridge was completed, no bridge linking Missouri to Illinois had been constructed. This meant that livestock from the West had to be unloaded in St. Louis, then ferried across the river to East St. Louis, Illinois, where it would then be stocked until it could be taken by railroad to eastern cities.Petraitis, Thomas. “East St. Louis, Illinois: ‘Hog Capital of the Nation’”, ‘’Ecology of Absence’’, 9 May 2005. Retrieved on 2010-5-5. This inefficiency provided additional costs to producers, both in time lost and money spent on ferry fees. It was these problems that caused a group of eastern financiers to invest in the construction of a large stockyard complex outside the already well-established rail center of East St. Louis.
The St. Louis National Stockyards Company is formed, 1873
National City had its beginnings as a business investment by East-Coast venture capitalists in the early 1870s. East St. Louis mayor John Bowman had envisioned a new stockyard operation in East. St. Louis that would rival the famous Union Stock Yards in Chicago and make the stockyards in nearby St. Louis minor by comparison, and he approached a group of wealthy investors about establishing it.Theising, Andrew J. Made in USA: East St. Louis, the Rise and Fall of an Industrial River Town. St. Louis: Virginia Publishing Co., 2003. Most of these investors were railroad men, and virtually all of them were from the East. The man who led this group of investors was Archibald M. Allerton of the New York law firm Allerton, Dutcher and Moore, who also was one of the owners of New York’s National Drove Yard. Allerton and his fellow investors believed such an operation would be a successful venture, but had several conditions they wanted met before they would invest in East St. Louis: 1) they wanted to build their operation on land not incorporated into any existing city, so as to avoid strict regulations, with a promise that East St. Louis would never attempt annexation of their property, 2) they wanted to build their own infrastructure independently of East St. Louis, and 3) they wanted East St. Louis to provide their property with city services such as fire protection. Mayor Bowman acquiesced to these conditions, and the agreement was made official on July 17, 1872, at the East St. Louis city council meeting. The investors had purchased of land known as Gallagher Pastures (400 acres of which was procured from Mayor Bowman and W.D. Griswold for $145,000, and from Virginia Matthews for $50,000) on the northeast edge of East St. Louis upon which to build their new stockyard operation, and construction had begun on May 30, 1871. Ultimately, they would spend $1.5 million to construct the complex. It included of animal pens and for sheds, as well as the Allerton House (later known as the National Hotel, at which Theodore Roosevelt once stayed)—one of the finest hotels in the area—and a new Exchange Building. On October 31, 1872, the original 17 stockholders who had invested in the new stockyard operation met in Mayor Bowman’s office and elected the first Board of Directors for the operation, with Archibald Allerton as its first President. The St. Louis National Stockyards Company was incorporated in Illinois four days later on November 4 and officially opened for business on November 19, 1873.
The early years (1873-1907)
Consolidation and national prominence
Once established, the St. Louis National Stockyards did not take long to become a major player in the livestock and meatpacking industries. The first shipment of cattle had arrived at the complex in June 1873, almost five months before the yards officially opened, and many more shipments would follow. The National Stockyards had been built to accommodate up to 15,000 head of cattle, 10,000 sheep, 20,000 hogs, in addition to a large quantity of non-meat animals such as horses and mules. This large capacity did not go unnoticed by the meatpacking firms in the East, who very shortly after the Stockyards’ inception began to build plants there—which the Stockyards’ board had anticipated by purchasing enough land to accommodate packinghouse operations alongside the yards. The centralization of stockyard operations along railroad terminals had led the major meatpacking companies to follow suit, locating their major operations near the stockyard operations to trim shipping costs connected to transporting whole animals by killing and processing their meat in a single location and shipping only the finished product. The first packinghouse operation to build a plant at the National Stockyards was the White House Provision Company. It was followed soon after by Richardson and Company’s East St. Louis Packing and Provision Company, which opened on November 13, 1873. Richardson’s was able to process 2,000 hogs per day at its beginning, and by the end of 1874 was processing 6,000 per day. Other packing companies began to arrive right on their heels. The St. Louis Beef Canning Company relocated to the Stockyards in 1879, and was followed closely by plants owned by the big-name meatpacking firms. Nelson Morris began operations at the Stockyards in 1889, Gustavus Swift arrived in 1893, and Philip Armour commenced production in 1903. There were also many other smaller firms who built plants near the yards, who along with the big operations helped to make the St. Louis area—and specifically the St. Louis National Stockyards—one of the nation’s premier meatpacking centers, with the Stockyards directly employing 1,200 workers and processing approximately 50,000 animals weekly and boasting sales of more than $2 million each year at the turn of the 20th century.
Related industries and infrastructure
The centralization of the stockyard and packinghouse operations at the St. Louis National Stockyards also led to the creation and expansion of other related industries at the site. The National Stock Yards National Bank, established with the yards in 1873, became a major financial institution in the St. Louis area, helping to finance the day-to-day operations of the yards. Up until the end of World War II, it would be the largest Illinois bank outside of Chicago. Another major development came as the meatpacking firms began to realize that they could use the vast amount of animal by-products produced by their factories to create new industries—some of which became established at the Stockyards. Other industries related to livestock also became established there, such as seed and feed businesses, companies that dealt in hardware and farm machinery, lumber, and fertilizer, and tanning and rendering plants.“The National Stockyards”, ‘’University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign East St. Louis Action Research Project’’. Retrieved on 2010-5-5.
Other services and infrastructure soon followed. The St. Louis Live Stock Exchange was established in 1885 to manage livestock trading at the site, and it did not take long until the Stockyards had a United States Post Office, telegraph offices and the offices of The Daily National Live Stock Reporter, a trade newspaper. The Stockyards had paved roads, which East St. Louis did not have at the time, and its own waterworks that provided cleaner drinking water for the animals there than was available for the people living in downtown St. Louis at the time. It also boasted a system of fire hydrants to protect the operation from catastrophe. In the words of Dr. Andrew Theising, a scholar who has studied East St. Louis and the surrounding area, the St. Louis National Stockyards had quickly become “a world unto itself”, and it would not be long until it became officially a town unto itself.
National City, Illinois incorporates, 1907