Swift & Co. (Chicago, 1918)

[brandm24]

This is an odd token issued by Swift & Co. form Chicago in 1918. While interesting, I'm not sure what the purpose of it is or how it was distributed.

Swift stopped processing meat in Chicago in 1943 but their headquarters remained there until 1973. There meat division was spun-off from the parent company and sold to a holding company called Esmark in the mid 1980s. Swift has their headquarters in Greeley, Colorado presently.

Some of the text is a bit hard to read but basically breaks down their expenses based on a dollar. They pay 85 cents for an animal, $12.96 for labor and expenses, and  the remaining $2.04 is their profit.

I suppose it was used for advertising purposes but that's just a guess. This piece is considered to be a So-Called Dollar and is listed in the references as HK-906. It's aluminum and 38mm.

( Images courtesy of celluloid / eBay)

Bruce 

[krishna]

  

[Figleaf]

To understand the message of this fun medal, you need a vital piece of information. I don't have year to year US inflation figures, but I do have figures per decade. Average annual inflation in the period 1910-1919 was 7.3%. That is the second highest figure in the 20th century. To put that in perspective, the highest figure of the century is 7.4% for 1970-1979, the decade of the oil crisis and high social unrest because of progress in the fight against racial segregation and the last years of the Vietnam war.

In other words, in 1918 there was very high inflation and social unrest because a mass of soldiers were coming home, needing a job while the economy was acting up.

The message on the medal now becomes clear: "our prices have gone up, but that is owing to the rising price of live cattle and freight, not because our profits have gone up." In today's terminology: we are passing on increased cost to customers but we don't practice greed inflation, where we increase prices more than inflation.

Peter

[brandm24]

Looking at it from that perspective it makes more sense. Inflation and other economic conditions always factor in when comparing values from the past to "today's money." That was also the period of the horrible influenza pandemic, but I'm not sure how that would effect prices. I still wonder how these were distributed though.

Thanks for the info, Peter.

Bruce