The Rise of Butchertown: 1840 to 1920

The Rise of Butchertown: 1840 to 1920

By Tony Malatore

Introduction

In the nineteenth century, before the arrival of refrigeration. slaughterhouse districts existed on the outskirts of urban areas to provide the local population with fresh meat. Such a district. known as Butchertown, emerged in the 1870s in an unincorporated area north of Oakland that later became part of Emeryville. The meatpacking industry prospered and survived for over 110 years. Why did Butchertown flourish at this particular location? Who were the early pioneers involved in the enterprise? What companies dominated the industry? What changes occurred in Butchertown following the advent of refrigeration and mechanization? What is known about the butchers and the workers who toiled in the factories? Why did Butchertown decline and disappear?

Local nineteenth century newspapers reported the rise and progress of Butchertown in positive terms. ignoring the problems connected with the industry. Huge amounts of offal and refuse was dumped into the Bay on a daily basis without any regard to pollution. Obnoxious odors could be smelled.for miles away in adjacent communities. The butchers who worked in the slaughterhouse factories worked for long hours under dangerous conditions. Few lamented the passing of Butchertown when it finally disappeared in the l980s.

Native & Spanish California Eras

During the Spanish California era, the land that comprises San Francisco’s East Bay remained in a natural state, as it had for eons. The only evidence of human habitation lay buried inside the Emeryville Shellmound, the site of an ancient Ohlone settlement near the mouth of Temescal Creek. For over three decades the land that eventually developed into Oakland’s Butchertown was part of Rancho San Antonio, an immense tract of land (44,800 acres) granted to Luis Maria Peralta.

In 1842 Peralta divided the ranch among his four sons. Vicente inherited the land northwest of Lake Merritt, which included much of future Oakland and all of Emeryville. The Peraltas raised cattle for hides and tallow in the established Spanish and Mexican tradition. Vicente and his family enjoyed a pastoral existence.

The Gold Rush

The bucolic period of Emeryville’s history came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the Yankees. During the largest mass movement of American people ever, thousands of fortune hunters flooded the gold fields and the Bay Area. Squatters and land hungry pioneers streamed into the East Bay during the 1850s and quickly carved up the great ranch.

The gold rush triggered a prolonged period of rapid growth in the East Bay. Numerous cities and communities sprang up in the years before the Civil War. Incorporated in 1852, Oakland soon became the second-largest city on the coast. Emeryville and a few other hamlets began to emerge as northern suburbs of Oakland.

The growth and industrial development that occurred in the vicinity of Emeryville can be attributed to two things. One was the pro-development attitude of the city founders. who welcomed unsavory industries like steel works, horse racing parks, vice districts and stockyards.

Of much greater Significance was the first steam railroad to serve Emeryville, the Northern Railway. This predecessor to the Southern Pacific built a line along the shore of San Francisco Bay reaching from Oakland to Martinez. This route proved crucial to the development of the factories and industrial plants that located adjacent to the right-of-way. With the coming of the Northern Railway, the infrastructure that allowed Butchertown to develop was largely in place.

Hungry Urbanites

“The World Rushed In” is the phrase one historian used to characterized the impact of the California Gold Rush. It may be appropriate to rejoin “…and they were hungry for more than gold.” The rapid urban growth on the heels of the Gold Rush created a huge market for fresh meat where hardly any had existed before. Hoping to take advantage of the seller’s market, enterprising ranchers drove herds of cattle down from the Oregon Territory and west from Denver. Initially headed for the gold country, many entrepreneurs soon discovered that the hungry urbanites provided a more stable market. The shift from the Spanish-Mexican hide and tallow tradition to the new Yankee beef industry constituted a crucial transition that was every bit as abrupt and dislocating as later industrial developments. Predictably enough, after the Gold Rush boom, profits in the East Bay meat industry dropped off. Oakland was still a small town, dependent and dominated by San Francisco.

Yet by the late 1850s. Oakland, “The Athens of the West,” was beginning the slow process of city building. Despite this sizable population increase, the critical mass of hungry mouths had not yet caused the traditional system of meat production and distribution to break down. Neighborhood butcher shops were still able to proliferate rapidly enough to supply the increased demand. Livestock continued to be kept on the back lot or in an enclosed yard until ready for slaughter by the butcher-proprietor, who often lived on the premises. By all accounts, the old order persisted.

The Rise of Butchertown

While giving the impression of stability. the decentralized system was about to give way-but never as quick or extensively as is assumed by most historians. The great California rush started by gold was now reinvigorated by the iron tracks that linked the West to the East. Completed in 1869, the transcontinental railroad was billed as a link to San Francisco. In fact it terminated in Oakland. The steady stream of traffic-all the more vigorous after inexpensive “emigrant fares” became popular in the 1880-transformed Oakland from a suburb of San Francisco into a city by its own right.

As a result, the old system of the country butcher slaughtering and dressing fresh meat in scattered neighborhood locations proved increasingly difficult to maintain. Following a pattern set as early as 1640 in Boston, the loss of nearby pasture land to farming and the growing density of the residential areas fostered the development of a wholesale butchering and meat packing industry in the East Bay. Wholesalers now began to supply retailers with freshly dressed meat, eliminating the necessity for comer butchers to keep livestock.

In the late 1870s the outlines of a central stockyard and packing house district became apparent in what is present-day Emeryville. Listed in early city directories as “the stockyards,” the site was ideal because it was adjacent to the railroad for transportation, as well as to the margins of the San Francisco Bay, which could be used for refuse disposal.

By the 1880s, the area was called “Butchertown.” This more impressive moniker reflected a host of changes at the stockyards. New abattoirs had been constructed, storage facilities and stock yards enlarged, and a number of by-products factories had been established. Also for the first time, Butchertown had a modest passenger train station and a post office complete with a “Butchertown” postmark. Improvements notwithstanding, early Butchertown remained muddy and malodorous especially at low tide. Although the wholesale butcher industry never ranked in the top fifteen local industries, the fast growth seemed ripe with opportunity for both workers and businessmen. By 1880, five East Bay butchers had started small wholesale shops in Butchertown. Besides the local firms, one San Francisco firm operated in the East Bay. Grayson-Owen & Co., perhaps the East Bay’s largest company, predated Butchertown but moved their abattoir operations there as it emerged as a center of industry.

Grayson-Owen

Consistent with the nationwide tend of rapid corporate growth and consolidation in the meat packing industry, Grayson-Owen dominated Oakland’s Butchertown The company started as a partnership between George W. Grayson of Oakland and Jasper Harrell of San Francisco. Grayson, in the unabashed vernacular of the times, listed his occupation as “capitalist.” It is unclear if he ever was a butcher. Harrell was listed as a member of the San Francisco Stock Exchange in 1872; clearly he was not a meat cutter. The company’s name was changed to Grayson-Owen in 1888. By that time, the company had moved their abattoir operations to Butchertown. Soon, they moved their office as well.

Officers

The firm was incorporated in 1900 with assets of $100,000. Although the new leadership brought to power by the incorporation ascended into the structure of the local power elite, a surprising number started out with a butcher’s cleaver and not a white collar. John W. Phillips became the first president of the new corporation. Twenty-three years earlier Phillips had been running his own wholesale butcher shop in the East Oakland community of Brooklyn. In 1887, he started working at Grayson-Harrel. After thirteen years, Phillips had finally bought a sizable portion of the company, and was also an original director and stockholder of an Oakland bank. Phillips retired a very rich man in the early 1920s.

Peter B. Lynch became the new president by 1923. Lynch started working in Butchertown as a weigher at GraysonOwen. He was listed as a foreman in 1899, and was made secretary when Grayson-Owen incorporated the next year. In the 1920s, Lynch was listed as Treasurer for the Emeryville Industries Association, a clear indication that the one-time livestock weigher had entered the business elite. He continued as president into the 1940s.

Irving Lewis, who became Vice-President when the company was incorporated, was the one person without any apparent meat industry experience. In 1888 Lewis was a stockholder in a San Francisco Bank, but he sold out his interests and invested in the original stock issue of Grayson-Owen. In December of 1890 Lewis married J. W. Phillips’ daughter, Clara Eliza. In addition to his position in Grayson-Owen. Lewis became President of the California Ice Company around 1910. Like Lynch in Emeryville. Lewis was active in city boosterism. The 1920 Oakland Tribune Annual features a portrait of the middle-aged Lewis, then President of the Downtown Association, next to an article urging greater city center development.

Only one other person appears to have played a key role in company management before World War Two. Henry F. Westphal was first listed as a butcher in 1884, and by 1892 he was working at Grayson-Owen. For three years he continued laboring as a butcher, then entered sales in 1895. After thirty-eight years with Grayson-Owen, and forty-five years in the industry, Westphal became VicePresident of the company in the 1940s.

For the most part it seems Grayson-Owen was managed by men who had practical experience in the meat industry. Although there were outside investors. insiders with the exception of Lewis still managed operations. Professional managers played no recognizable role in the company’s early history. Blue collar origins notwithstanding, Grayson-Owen’s managers had a high profile in the local business community as demonstrated by their participation in civic booster organizations. They seemed to echo on the local scene the same power that the Big Five meat packing companies enjoyed on the regional and national scene.

But for all of its trappings, Grayson-Owen remained a relatively small-scale operation that shared more with the one-man shops next door in Butchertown than with its huge corporate cousins in the midwest. At the largest plants in the country, 230 men formed one crew to slaughter and dress cattle. One such crew certainly amounted to more workers than in all of Oakland’s Butchertown. Grayson-Owen only employed forty men as late as 1907.

Pioneer Firms

It did not require a great deal of money to open a small wholesale butcher shop. and the low cost of entry encouraged many butchers to start their own firms. Most of the pioneer firms [those listed in 1878) consisted of very small enterprises that employed only the owner proprietor and perhaps one or two others. In Oakland. there were five such shops run by Messrs. Lapham, Morris. Smith. Hawkins, and Jungerman. Of this group that opened shops in 1878 and 1879, only Morris was still in business in 1881-he closed seven years later. Besides the relatively established firms of GraysonOwen, and the small shop run by Morris. no other Butchertown shop listed in 1888 was still in business just six years later. In the place of the six shops that closed, five new ones opened. The high turnover belied an essentially stable market structure dominated by the one big firm and the handful of smaller competitors.

Oakland Meat Company

One of the new firms was run by John Stewart, an Oakland butcher. whose shop first opened its doors in 1881. Stewart must have been an exceptionally keen businessman as well as an able butcher-his company stayed in business for over twenty-five years.

In 1894 two brothers. William M. and Urotes M. Slater, also opened a wholesale shop in Butchertown. By allegedly luring away skilled workmen from other firms. the Slaters established themselves in the market and operated for twenty-three years. Just one other local firm appears to have been established before 1900 and remained open for more than five years. That was the Oakland Meat Company, a partnership of four East Oakland butchers established in 1899. Although one of the partners dropped out, the other three persevered. Perhaps as a result of the stability gained by the combined resources of the three founders. the Oakland Meat Company operated into the 1940s. However, none of the original partners remained associated with the firm after 1923.

The relatively modest scale of operations which allowed easy entry into the market also meant there was often ) little equity available to fall back on during difficult times. Sampling the city directories in two-to four-year intervals between 1878 and 1923 reveal that two-thirds of all wholesale butchershops identified as belonging to an individual were listed only once. All together. thirty wholesale butcher shops opened and quickly closed their doors during that same period. Successful businesses tended to be partnerships. and were in a very small minority. Making a living by running your own shop proved to be an ideal often sought, but difficult to achieve.

San Francisco Firms

Besides the multitude of small locally-owned shops, the San Francisco firm of Ames operated in Oakland from 1878 to 1881. After Ames shut down, other San Francisco firms such as Crummey & Hall and South San Francisco Meats subsequently entered East Bay operations. Curiously. none of the firms directly identified with a San Francisco ownership remained in operation for more than a few years. The East Bay must not have been perceived as a lucrative enough market to justify a long term business commitment. Western Meats, a large midwest-based company, opened a plant in Oakland in 1896. Initially the lone representative of a large national company, it proved to be the vanguard of a new movement.

Perhaps in part because only one national firm stabilized the market. Butchertown remained fiercely competitive. In the years between 1897 and 1907. only five firms, Grayson-Owen, Stewart. Slater Bros, Western. and Oakland Meat, managed to stay in business for even two years. Except in the case of the Western Meat Company. all the other businesses in Butchertown could be characterized as small ventures. They employed few workers and were managed and owned by men with yard and bench experience. Only Grayson-Owen, and eventually Slater Brothers, had grown even to modest proportions before World War One. A study of the origins of Oakland’s wholesale butcher industry supports the idea that national firms were slow to enter this small regional market.

The Other Half: Workers

While managers and owners enjoyed something of a high profile, leaving records of their deeds in newspapers and historical almanacs. the lives of the workers remains little known and less understood. One exception is found in historical descriptions of the Annual Butchers’ Day Picnic at Shell Mound Park. For the Butchers. it was the proudest day of the year, but for.the public it approached a scandal. Started before 1892, the summertime picnic eventually drew 20.000 butchers and their families from as far away as San Jose and Martinez. Following the afternoon festivities. the event would sometimes end with the spectacle of luckless cattle racing on the horse track for the dubious honor of being the first to slaughter.

Reports of gambling and prostitution at or near the park were Widely known but usually overlooked-hundreds of respectable families continued to enjoy Shell Mound Park on a regular basis. But when the crowd included throngs of butcher workmen, the park was perceived by respectable folks as absolutely intolerable. Middle class mothers reportedly demanded to know when Butcher days were planned so they could warn their daughters to stay well away. For at least one day a year the butchers had turned the table. forcing the mainstream to bend a little and take note of their strength even if the public only dwelled on their rambunctious behavior.

Such impressionistic evidence is useful because so little else is know about the workers in the wholesale butcher-shops. Even such basic facts as the number of workers in Butchertown remain in question. The published census material for 1880 to 1910 treated slaughterhouse workers inconsistently. The most relevant data is drawn from 1900. when 160 butchers were listed in Oakland. This figure represented retail and wholesale butchers. but did not include unskilled and semiskilled workers in the slaughterhouses. In the entire Bay Area in 1899, which included the much larger industry in San Francisco. on average only 290 people worked in “slaughtering and meat packing.” For Butchertown, a likely estimate would certainly be less than 100 workers, including some in the associated byproduct industries. Hazarding a guess is made all the more difficult because in most places the meat packing industry was notoriously seasonal, with many more people working in winter rather than summer.

Golden Gate District

City directories, which often listed occupations, are another source of information. The 1892 Husted’s Oakland City Directory was unique because it listed residents by neighborhood. Golden Gate, an early suburb of Oakland, was located adjacent to Butchertown. A total of 439 men were identified as living in the Golden Gate community. The neighborhood was so dominated by the stockyards that about one in eleven men listed their occupation as butcher, making it the largest single identified occupation other than laborer. If one expands the group to include those who worked in unskilled and semiskilled occupations in the meat and by-products industries, two in eleven worked in Butchertown. Using the rough figure of 100 workers, the Golden Gate residents amounted to as much as three-quarters of the entire East Bay wholesale meat workforce, as well as a sizable proportion of those working in by-product industries. Of the Golden Gate slaughterhouse workers (except those employed in by-products), 33 of the 54 men were listed at least twice between 1878 to 1925. By tracking this group and with a stretch of the imagination — a sketchy composite profile of the early Butchertown workers begins to emerge.

The most basic fact is that most of the laborers stayed only briefly-more than half were no longer listed four years later. Such a high degree of “out fall” was typical of working age men in nineteenth century cities. Most of the butchers living in Golden Gate in 1892 were newcomers: not even one-third of those listed had been in Oakland even four years earlier. Only one butcher, Frank Fratus, was listed earlier than 1881.

The men who remained in Oakland changed residences often. However, while all but one person had changed addresses at least once, few decided to move away from the immediate area. In 1892, 27 of the 39 workers who listed a specific address were concentrated along a four-block strip of San Pablo Avenue and the first block of adjoining 78 streets. Clearly, this part of the Golden Gate neighborhood had many assets. The distance between San Pablo Avenue and Butchertown was only about one mile, making it a short enough walk to work, but far enough away so the stench was not overpowering at home. Also, San Pablo Avenue was an emerging commercial strip lined with shops, cafes and saloons, with horse car service to downtown Oakland and Berkeley.

The other major area where butchers lived was in the midst of the plants themselves. On adjacent streets near the foot of 63rd, 64th, and 65th streets, a handful of dormitories, bunk houses and one or two hotels could be found, including the Golden Gate-a popular nightspot.

Upward Mobility

A typical, though idealized, route to success for an upwardly mobile butcher can be extracted from the overall work histories of the butchers. The lowest prestige job was stockkeeper or yard hand. With experience, luck, and perhaps a family friend, the yard hand advanced to become a slaughterhouse operative, a semi-skilled occupation. These two jobs were the only other previous occupations butchers ever listed. Next in prestige and income was the position of butcher, a title which could include many various grades. From here, only a lucky few rose up to become foreman, and only one advanced to manager. This was Henry Westphal, who eventually became Vice-president of Grayson-Owen. Some of the butchers, perhaps frustrated at their small chance of promotion, chose to open their own wholesale or retail shops. Both the company man and the man with a company represented the pinnacle of achievement to which a butcher could reasonably aspire.

The wholesale butchers worked in small shops; only Grayson-Owen employed as many as forty men in 1907. While laboring under the owner’s watchful eye had no correlation between whether the employee considered the job rewarding or not, it does indicate that the industrial discipline of the huge slaughterhouses-complete with mid-level management, deceptive wage schemes, and scientifically regulated work schedules-could not have existed in Oakland after 1900. It is also apparent that family could be an important stabilizing factor. Some sons may well have served apprenticeships with their fathers while others benefited from butchertown jobs won with the help of extended family. The modern system based on objective qualifications was slow to supplant the traditional system based on family and ethnicity.

In some ways. the hard job of making a living as a butcher was softened by the small scale of Butchertown, which minimized the harsh industrial conditions associated with the Midwest. The strength of the family was also significant. A well-placed family member could hold the key to many jobs. While much of Oakland looked down on slaughterhouse workers. the sense of community in the small area where most of them lived helped to boost self-esteem. Most importantly. the butcher trade offered opportunities to advance to middle-class status. either by opening one’s own shop or by working one’s way up in an established firm.

The Great Transformation

Improvements in technology were about to set in motion changes that would eventually render Butchertown an obsolete remnant of the old order. The technology-driven change opened the door for regional and then. later. national companies to enter the Oakland market. In 1893 Miller and Lux. a California-based firm operating in Los Angeles and San Francisco. established a plant in Oakland. although it left after Just three years. Then in 1896. the Nevada-based Western Meat Packers Co. moved into the East Bay market. Unlike Miller and Lux. it chose to locate a few miles south of Butchertown, still on the same railroad line. With solid financial support and controlling interests in cattle and range land. Western was able to penetrate the market and operated for twentyseven years. When the company decided to locate outside of Butchertown, they broke with the trend toward centralization that was first established in the 1870s.

At first. it was hardly apparent. Butchertown was the undisputed center of the local industry. and one new plant did not make or break a trend. But Butchertown’s declining significance was finally fixed between 1907 and 1914. when three of the Big Five national meat companies 79 situated their new shops in Oakland. far away from Butchertown. Also during this time. a number of new small wholesale shops were opened in outlying areas to serve the growing suburbs. Not only were shops that opened after about 1900 decentralized; they also enjoyed much better odds of surviving than their 19th century counterparts. From 1880 to 1900. only about one in five businesses survived for ten years. But from 1900 to 1915. almost every other shop survived the first decade. This partly reflected the general prosperity of Oakland’s expanding economy. but was also the result of the huge resources behind the national firms who established shops after 1907.

New Technology

To a degree. Butchertown was being left behind in a time of general prosperity. This was due to two closely related factors: first, the physical structures and land around Butchertown were so developed that there was little room for expansion. Second. the changing technology and a new form of transportation (the automobile) made new construction on outlying property much more attractive than renovating existing plants to modem standards. Butchertown did try to keep abreast of changes companies adopted trucks early on and many firms modernized in the early teens-but it could not help but fall short against the impersonal forces of technological change. Ironically. the national firms prospered in part because the local independents were saddled with outdated facilities.

During World War I, the price of meat reached an all-time high. completing a trend that began with the Civil War. Like the boom and bust cycle after the Gold Rush. the sizable profit potential flooded the market with new entrants and resulted in a post-war spate of business failures. Meat prices did not regain the 1914 level again until World War II.

In Oakland, the number of firms did expand, although the rate of business failure was no worse than usual. Oakland seems to hav.e bucked the national trend. The total number of businesses listed increased each year, with the largest increase in new entrants occurring in the early 1920s. In 1923. for example. nine new wholesale butchers were added to the listings. a mark not surpassed until after World War Two. The wave of expansion bypassed Butchertown entirely; however, only previously established firms continued to operate there.

In many ways this story is a microcosm of the large scale changes that have occurred in the meat industry. As expected. the Big Five eventually moved in and began to compete with East Bay independents. The course of business development also seemed to follow a predictable path. The leading local company. Grayson-Owen, came under partial control of investment bankers and stock brokers in 1900. But even after incorporation. former butchers continued to manage the company. Ironically. the firm’s stockbroker Vice-president was eventually replaced by a one-time butcher.

Small Independents

Most striking about Butchertown’s development was the Vitality of the small independents. Between 1880 and 1920, over forty shops opened their doors, though thirty shut them again rather quickly. Despite the eventual outcome. these figures testifiy to a belief that progress was within the grasp of the little man. The success of two Oakland partnerships that grew to rival Grayson-Owen in the earlier days are also notable: the Slater Brothers. and the partners in Oakland Meat Company. had the skill to create long-lasting trade. and continued to compete even after the nationals moved in. In 1989. the last firm operating in Butchertown closed. ending the industry’s century-plus history in that location.

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This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical Essays book.

Feature Image: California Photo Views.