The Union Stock Yards were the largest stockyards in the U.S. and received about 45,000 cattle, 75,000 hogs and 50,000 sheep daily. Published by Gerson Bros. Many of the animals arrive at the stockyards on railroad cars. Publisher name unknown. Cows graze under an elevated station near the stockyards while people watch them. Publisher name unknown. Depending on the direction of the wind, a dreadful stench from the animals at America’s largest stockyards would blow across certain parts of the city, even all the way to Cicero Avenue on the Southwest side, my grandparents told me. Chicago was often referred to as the “slaughterhouse of the world,” as millions of livestock passed through the site each year. Conditions at the almost 500-acre stockyards at Exchange and Halsted Streets were terrible for both workers and animals. Immigrants and poor whites and blacks worked together in the packinghouses butchering thous...