A vibrant 1922 persuasive map by meatpacking giant Armour & Company, making the case for the strategic importance of its industry.

Armour’s Food Source Map depicts the United States in outline, with vibrantly-colored vignettes highlighting the agricultural products of each state. The map is in fact so crammed with cows, pigs and sheep, and fields of corn, citrus and wheat, that the viewer comes away with the impression that the country’s economy was primarily agricultural.

The map is flanked by three columns of text at lower left and at upper right a long quote from J. Ogden Armour (1863-1927), son of company founder Philip Armour. These make the syllogistic argument that, because agriculture is essential to the American economy, livestock raising is essential to agricultural production, and meat packing is essential to livestock raising, meat packing is therefore essential to the American economy.

The verso contains a long, illustrated history of how the “nation’s ever-growing food problem has been met by packing industry.”

References
Hornsby, Picturing America, p. 7. Rumsey #9905.002. Not in Persuasive Cartography: The PJ Mode Collection.