The Political Uses of Food Protests: Analyzing the 1910 Meat Boycott

Abstract

In 1910, a meat boycott spread through the United States. Tens of thousands of people pledged not to eat meat for thirty days to demand lower prices and protest the practices of the Meat Trust. The movement, though its outcomes were limited, was supported by consumer organizations, labor unions, lawmakers, suffragists, and women's clubs. It thus intersected with struggles that were at the heart of the Progressive Era's reform movements. This article will explore how various organizations (labor unions, the Socialist Party, suffragists, the National Consumers League) used, or did not use, this event to further their own goals. It will argue that food protests constitute a site from which to analyze particular transformations of the protest landscape of the time, such as the rise of consumer politics; it will also show that as transversal spaces of mobilization, food protests should be studied through the significance of their object. Food, as a meeting point between the individual body and society, can epitomize the blurring of the lines between private and public that characterized Progressive reform movements.