June 18, 1931 – Here is a parade I bet you wish
you could have seen . . . stretching down Michigan Avenue and State Street for
more than two miles, with Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden and the United
States Assistant Secretary of Agriculture R. W. Dunlap on the reviewing stand,
the parade seeks “to convince the public that meat prices are the lowest in
years.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 19, 1931] That’s right . . . It’s a Meat Parade! There are “100 cowboys, 14 bands, several
hundred farm boys and girls of Four-H clubs, 500 butchers with cleavers from
the stockyards, floats designating various carcasses and cuts of dressed meat
and comparative prices with a year ago, trucks of hogs, sheep and beef on the
hoof and at the rear a drove of sheep ambling along the boulevard and into the
loop”. One of the truckloads of steers
carries a banner proclaiming “Chicago buys more than $500,000,000 worth of live
stock annually.” A placard accompanying
a float composed of a giant hot dog informs spectators that 5,000,000,000 hot
dogs were consumed during 1930. The Tribune photo above shows the drove of
sheep being herded past the Michigan Avenue entrance to the Art Institute.
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