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THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
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 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
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EDWARD A. CUDAHY 
 
THE EDUCATION 
 OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 BY 
 
 W. KANE, SJ. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 1941 
 
Copyright, 1941 
 By E. A. Cudahy, Jr. 
 
 Printed by 
 
 The Effingham County Printing Company 
 
 Effingham, 111. 
 

 T5 jM^u* 
 
 ■ ■ 
 
 TO 
 
 THE MEMORY OF 
 
 ELIZABETH MURPHY CUDAHY 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A preface is a good place for apologies. The first 
 apology this book may seem to call for is in connec- 
 tion with its title, since the title must bring to mind a 
 much cleverer book, The Education of Henry Adams. 
 But on that point the author's conscience is not much 
 disturbed. Whatever guilt there be in the borrowing, 
 Henry Adams shares it with the present writer, or 
 with a dozen or so more of us; because we have bor- 
 rowed from a still more clever book, Xenophon's 
 Education of Cyrus. In point of fact, and comparing 
 small things with great, the title in all these books only 
 emphasizes the complete equality between life and edu- 
 cation. 
 
 A more profound apology is due for the imperti- 
 nence of trying to put into words the majestic mystery 
 of any man's life. We know so little even of our own 
 lives that we should be abashed before the notion of 
 prying futilely into the life of another man. Yet our 
 curiosity is insatiable; and oddly enough, most of us 
 are more curious about others than about ourselves. 
 
 If the writer may offer any plea in extenuation, it 
 is this: the man about whom he has dared haltingly 
 to write has done such an admirable job of his life 
 and education that it seemed a pity not to blazon it 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 abroad — at least as modestly abroad as this inadequate 
 book can reach. 
 
 For the lack of competency with which the blazon- 
 ing has been done, apology is useless. Only the charity 
 of the reader can cover that. But there is possible one 
 other minor plea in extenuation. It is that the work 
 of writing this book was done under the handicap of 
 Edward Cudahy's modesty. The notion had never 
 entered his mind that either he or any one else should 
 write an account of his life. He had not kept letters, 
 or a diary, or other sort of personal record. He was 
 too busy living his life to have time or thought for re- 
 cording it. The single letter of his, briefly quoted in 
 the appendix, was caught almost by accident, and be- 
 cause the present writer was by then on the trail of 
 any material he could get hold of. 
 
 Edward Cudahy was embarrassed by the suggestion 
 that he help the writer by recalling incidents in his 
 own career. Only his generous kindness and his 
 friendship for the writer kept him from vetoing abso- 
 lutely any attempt to put together even so bald and 
 hasty a sketch of his life as this will be. As he phrased 
 it: 
 
 "Only men of some eminence or public position have 
 their biographies written. There is nothing in my life 
 that would interest any one." 
 
PREFACE XI 
 
 But that modesty itself is part of Edward Cudahy's 
 life and education. And if something fine and noble 
 and "eminent" in a true sense does not shine through 
 his modesty, it will still be the fault of the writer, not 
 of the subject of this book. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I BACKGROUNDS 1 
 
 II CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 37 
 
 III APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 60 
 
 IV WIDENING HORIZONS 80 
 
 V MASTERY IN BUSINESS 104 
 
 VI THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 133 
 
 VII PRINCIPLES AT WORK 161 
 
 VIII THE USES OF WEALTH 203 
 
 IX THE USES OF ADVERSITY 234 
 
 X THE EDUCATED MAN 254 
 
 APPENDIX I 273 
 
 APPENDIX II 278 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 edward A. cudahy Frontispiece 
 
 EDWARD AND ELIZABETH CUDAHY facing page % 
 
 EDWARD CUDAHY'S BROTHERS AND 
 
 sister facing page 160 
 
 THE ELIZABETH M. CUDAHY MEMORIAL 
 
 library facing page 224 
 
CHAPTER I 
 BACKGROUNDS 
 
 Edward cudahy's education is his life. The ex- 
 ternal events of his life get their meaning from 
 the effect they have had upon him, for better or for 
 worse. That is just common sense. And that is what 
 we mean by saying that each man is the measure of his 
 world. In the interplay between the two, the man him- 
 self and the world round about him, is to be found the 
 whole story of his development as a human being, the 
 whole story of his life. 
 
 We cannot isolate Edward Cudahy from his environ- 
 ment and hope to make any sense out of an account 
 of his growth, his achievements, his education. Hence 
 we must recognize that Edward Cudahy' s story, like 
 that of every other man, begins in a way long before 
 he was born, because the environment in which he was 
 to educate himself existed before he did. His world 
 was waiting for him, fashioned by other intelligences 
 and wills than his own. 
 
 How far back ought we to go in the chain of events 
 and circumstances which ultimately fixed his immedi- 
 ate surroundings of family life, religious influences, 
 social position and traditions, opportunities and handi- 
 caps? There must be some reasonable limit in the 
 
2 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 casting back, some point of departure whence the story 
 of his life may take a fairly definite beginning. 
 
 In this brief sketch of the education of Edward 
 Cudahy, we may begin with the town of Callan, in the 
 County of Kilkenny, Ireland, which Edward Cudahy 
 never saw, but which was the home of his family for 
 many generations before he was born. His traditions 
 were rooted there. We shall have to review, hurried- 
 ly, the circumstances that sent his family out from their 
 ancient home to a strange, new land, and try to catch 
 at least a glimpse of the qualities they brought with 
 them, and of the way in which they adapted themselves 
 to the conditions into which Edward Cudahy actually 
 was born. That seems to be neither too far back nor 
 too abruptly near. 
 
 All of that immediate family history was overshad- 
 owed by one terrible event, the Great Famine, which 
 profoundly influenced the larger history of Ireland and 
 the United States, and which included in its sweeping 
 effects the impoverishment of Edward Cudahy's family 
 and their enforced migration to America. 
 
 II 
 
 The Great Famine in Ireland happened nearly a 
 century ago, in the dread years between 1845 and 1850. 
 The immediate cause of the famine was a disease that 
 blighted the potato crop. Its more remote causes were 
 
BACKGROUNDS 3 
 
 the economic exploitation and religious persecution 
 which had long despoiled the Irish people of adequate 
 use of the land for their own nourishment, and had 
 driven them to rely upon potatoes as their chief food. 
 
 It was neither the first nor the last of the famines 
 that spread death across the land from which the Eng- 
 lish people drew a great deal of food; but it was the 
 most appalling. Famine in Ireland had killed 150,000 
 people in 1740 and 1741; but during the Great Famine 
 of 1845 to 1850, as Francis Hackett puts it, "in the 
 midst of plenty, at the door of the wealthiest nation in 
 the world, 729,033 victims died — more than the British 
 Empire lost in the four years of the World War." 1 
 
 In desperation, vast numbers of the Irish people fled 
 from a country in which the conditions of living had 
 become intolerable. There is evidence that certain 
 English officials welcomed such emigration, as releas- 
 ing the land of Ireland to become a huge feeding 
 ground on which cattle and sheep for English con- 
 sumption might be raised. 2 The statistical records 
 show a total emigration from Ireland, between 1845 
 and I860, of 2,125,527 persons, to which must be 
 added 867,000 more in the succeeding ten years. It has 
 been estimated that of those nearly three millions of 
 emigrants three-fourths were between fifteen and thirty- 
 
 i The Story of the Irish Nation, New York, 1929; p. 268. 
 
 2 T. P. O'Connor, The Parnell Movement, New York, 
 1886; pp. 195-204; and for statistics on emigration, pp. 64, 
 79, 199-200. 
 
4 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 five years of age. Death had made a fearful win- 
 nowing of the Irish people; and those who could up- 
 root themselves from their native land to seek a live- 
 lihood in other countries were the most vigorous of the 
 Irish in body and spirit, the men and women of more 
 than average fortitude and enterprise, the stuff of 
 pioneers. 
 
 The majority of those Irish emigrants came to the 
 United States. For the most part, they came poor, from 
 an environment in which it had been made nearly im- 
 possible for them to climb out of dire poverty; they 
 came without much formal education, because facilities 
 for schools had been denied them. Moreover, they 
 came into a civilization which, although it offered them 
 the great gift of political freedom, was in many ways 
 hostile to them. In that mid-period of the nineteenth 
 century, the majority of the people of the United States 
 were by no means a notably religious people; they had 
 abandoned all but a nominal Christianity ; but their cul- 
 ture had retained one element of the Protestant re- 
 ligious tradition, a dislike of Catholics; and because 
 that Protestant culture stemmed from England, they 
 cherished a particular hostility toward Irish Catholics. 
 
 The poverty that had been ruthlessly forced upon 
 the Irish people was cast up to them as a supreme dis- 
 grace, in a country that, more than any other, had come 
 to worship wealth. Their lack of school education was 
 sneered at, even though at that stage of our history 
 
BACKGROUNDS 5 
 
 illiteracy was as common in the United States as it was 
 in Ireland. And the Catholic faith of the Irish immi- 
 grants was met with a mixture of horror and hatred 
 even more abiding than the scorn of their poverty. 
 
 These are old wrongs that time has dulled and char- 
 ity has forgiven. The Irish people have tenacious 
 memories; they are good haters as well as generous 
 lovers ; it was only their despised Catholic religion that 
 taught them to forgive and forget the injuries and in- 
 sults inflicted upon them. But these old wrongs were 
 terribly new and galling when the Irish people came 
 out of the Famine; their dead were too close to them. 
 Even in the kindlier tolerance of today we must call 
 back to memory the injustice and the contumely of 
 that older day in order to have any understanding of 
 the Irish millions who came to form a large part of the 
 population of our United States. The Irish in America 
 had to win their place under a terrific handicap. 
 
 Ill 
 
 One little family group in that sad exodus from 
 famine-wracked Ireland was named Cudahy: Patrick 
 Cudahy, his wife, Elizabeth Shaw Cudahy, and the four 
 children they then had. 1 They were not outstanding 
 
 1 The name, like many another Irish name, was spelled 
 in a variety of ways when transliterated into English. The 
 nearest to the Gaelic form seems to have been Codihie. Some 
 of the English equivalents have been Cudihy, Cuddihy, Cu- 
 dahy, Quiddihy, Cudehy, Cuddy, Cody, For further discus- 
 sion of the name and genealogy, see Appendix I. 
 
6 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 in that migrating mass of poor Irish people. They 
 were not wealthy or well-read or of assured social po- 
 sition. They came to the United States in the hard, 
 rough way of the poor, on a sailing vessel, The Good 
 Wind, that took three months to reach Boston. They 
 came to work with their hands, as most of the Irish 
 people came, amongst a people who had no great love 
 for them, even whose decent human kindliness was 
 tinged with a patronizing contempt. They were in- 
 distinguishable amongst the millions who fled sorrow- 
 ing across the salt sea from the land of hunger and 
 death, with little money to make a new start in a 
 strange country, with no more capital than their brains 
 and energy, and no better backing than their courage 
 and their trust in God. 
 
 But after all, that is a good capital and a good back- 
 ing. Measured by time or by eternity, intelligence and 
 character and the grace of God have compassed the 
 only lasting achievements. All they ask is a fair field 
 and no favor; and they can, at a pinch, go ahead with- 
 out the fair field. It is not empty conjecture to reckon 
 that the Cudahy family brought with them from Ire- 
 land a hidden treasure of this wealth that passes un- 
 seen across every frontier, unchallenged through every 
 customs' port. Their family story is one of the many 
 minor epics of America, a heroic climb out of what the 
 v/orld calls failure up to what the world calls success. 
 
 Most of the members of the family became wealthy, 
 
BACKGROUNDS 7 
 
 which is, unfortunately, a first test of success every- 
 where in this world. Some of them were happy in 
 their life and their work, and some were unhappy. 
 Some of them attained a success much more substantial 
 than the mere amassing of wealth. But they were all 
 vivid and vital people, marked by a vigor of mind and 
 body that is an evident family trait, a sort of Mende- 
 lian dominant. It was more than an ironic turn of the 
 wheel, it was a symbolic epitome of the family story, 
 that within ninety years from the immigrant landing of 
 the Cudahys, a son of one of the immigrant children 
 should go back to Ireland as the United States Minister 
 to the free commonwealth of Eire. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Cudahy family came from the town of Callan, 
 near the western edge of County Kilkenny, about ten 
 miles south-west of the town of Kilkenny, which in 
 Gaelic is Cill-Chainnigh, the Church of St. Canice, who 
 died in the year 598. Callan, although not so old as 
 Kilkenny, is a very old town, dating back at least to 
 the thirteenth century, since it was given a charter in 
 1217 by William Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke. 1 
 In the fifteenth century, it was a fortified town, with a 
 
 1 J. Carrigan, History and Antiquities of the Diocese of 
 Ossory, 3 vols., Dublin, 1905; III, pp. 291-295. See also Wil- 
 liam Healy, History and Antiquities of Kilkenny, etc., Kil- 
 kenny, 1893; I, pp. 113-118. 
 
8 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 wall and moat. It was important enough for Edmund 
 Campion to mention it in 1569, immediately after Kil- 
 kenny, which he called "the best dry town in Ireland." 1 
 It stood a siege against Cromwell's men, and was tak- 
 en by them, after a heroic resistance, on the 29th of 
 January, 1650. A curious old Topography spells the 
 name "Callen", and has this to say of the town: 
 
 "Callen is on the King's-river, called from King 
 Nial, who lost his life in his pious endeavors to save 
 one of his subjects who rode in to try the passage, and 
 was hurried down the stream with violence. Battle of 
 Callen 1407, 4th year of Henry IV, gained by the Eng- 
 lish over the Irish." 2 
 
 The name of the town is from the Gaelic root, 
 "Cala", which Joyce translates as "a marshy meadow 
 along a river or lake; a landing place for boats." 3 But 
 by the nineteenth century there was little Gaelic spok- 
 en in Callan, and not much more knowledge of its 
 ancient history amongst the people of the town. The 
 heavy hand of English rule had been upon them for 
 centuries. The old defending wall and moat were pretty 
 well gone; only some fragments were recognizable 
 
 1 The History of Ireland, Ware's edition, 1633; c. 1. 
 
 2 Matthew Sleater, Introductory Essay to a New System 
 of Civil and Ecclesiastical Topography, and Itinerary of 
 Counties of Ireland, with Remembrance of Memorable 
 Events, Recorded at Places where they occurred. Dublin, 
 1806 ; p. 77. Sleater was a Protestant clergyman of the Es- 
 tablishment. 
 
 3 P. W. Joyce, Irish Local Names Explained, Dublin, 
 1902; p. 97. 
 
BACKGROUNDS 9 
 
 at the east end of Mill Street, near the home of 
 Patrick and Elizabeth Cudahy. Callan was a humdrum 
 country town in their day, and it was destined to 
 dwindle to a village. Before the Great Famine, Callan 
 was still the second largest town in the County, and 
 had a population of over 10,000; in the census of 1926, 
 its population was given as 1,510. 
 
 Frederick Lucas, the brilliant Member of Parliament 
 and founder of The Tablet, has much to say about 
 Callan in his famous "Statement" 1 to Pius IX con- 
 cerning the curious politico-ecclesiastical situation ex- 
 isting in Ireland in the 1850's. He described Callan as 
 being, like most other towns in Ireland, the center of a 
 farming district, whose people "practise such small 
 trades as are immediately dependent on agriculture." 
 The famine came with additional and appalling sever- 
 ity upon Callan because of the "inhuman cruelty" of 
 one of its principal landlords, the Earl of Desart. From 
 Desart's estate, "in and around Callan, eighty-two 
 families, numbering at least 442 persons, were ejected, 
 their houses for the most part destroyed, and the un- 
 fortunate inmates left to shift for themselves, at a time 
 when the famine raged in all its intensity; when fever 
 added its ravages to famine; and when the general 
 
 1 Lucas wrote his "Statement" in 1855. It is printed 
 nearly in full in The Life of Frederick Lucas, M.P., by his 
 brother, Edward Lucas, 2 vols., 2d edition, London, 1887; II, 
 pp. 139-441. For the immediate facts about Callan, see II, pp. 
 216-221; the quotation is from p. 219. 
 
10 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 misery of the county rendered the misery of any par- 
 ticular district utterly hopeless and irremediable." 
 
 Callan is in the ancient diocese of Ossory. As is 
 often the case in Ireland, the whole town was included 
 in a single parish, served at that time by a parish priest 
 and three curates. There was also a small Augustinian 
 Priory in the town, with a few priests to offer some 
 additional religious services to the townspeople. The 
 town was Catholic in its faith and practice, within the 
 limitations of the human frailty of its people and of 
 the distinctive Irish temperment. 
 
 Thus, for example, in the early nineteenth century, 
 Callan had got the name of being a contentious 
 place, with its full measure of the Irish love of a fight, 
 afflicted, as Lucas says, with fierce disputes between the 
 parish priest and his curates, and between the secular 
 clergy and the Augustinians. But the Irish faith is 
 sturdy enough, aided by Irish humor, to stand such 
 bickerings; and the coming of a new parish priest, the 
 Reverend John Mullins, about 1834, brought peace. 
 
 Father Mullins was stricken with paralysis in the 
 early years of the Famine, and most of the work of the 
 parish was done by his three curates, two of whom died 
 heroically in their ministrations to their fever-stricken 
 parishioners. The remaining curate, Father Keeffe, 
 carried on, with a new assistant, Father O'Shea; and 
 both curates, because they thrust themselves energetic- 
 ally into the efforts to improve the economic condition 
 
BACKGROUNDS 1 1 
 
 of their people, incurred the hostility of the gov- 
 ernment and became involved in a distressing con- 
 flict with the redoubtable Dr. Paul Cullen, the Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin. 1 But the Cudahy family had left 
 Callan before these later contentions reached their 
 height. 
 
 Under the soft Irish skies, life was hard enough in 
 Callan. Of amusements and entertainment, as we 
 know such things, the people had very little: although 
 it is true that they had no such craving for public 
 amusements as the world knows today; their simple 
 games and social converse were all they looked for. 
 They had poor equipment of schools, and not much 
 leisure for the sort of education that schools afford. 
 The town's poverty of resources fettered them, bound 
 to a close round of poorly paid labor. The great rift 
 in their heavy sky was their religion, from which they 
 drew the courage that endured until the Famine drove 
 them forth to the grave or the wide seas. But until 
 that dread time there was still laughter in Callan, and 
 the voices of children at play, and the whispers of 
 courting youth, and a snatch of Irish song, and a barn- 
 dance now and then. They bore their hardships gaily, 
 and they were not afraid to die. 
 
 Before the Famine stalked through Callan, it is not 
 
 1 The second volume of The Life of Frederick Lucas is 
 filled with the echoes of this conflict. Lucas took the side 
 of Fathers Keeffe and O'Shea, whom Dr. Cullen had sus- 
 pended, and carried the whole problem to Rome. 
 
12 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 hard to visualize life in the quiet little town. The 
 handful of gentry, and their fringe of the professional 
 class, kept aloof with the reserve of a class-conscious 
 people. The larger minority of the middle class, re- 
 tired farmers, fairly prosperous merchants and middle- 
 men, lived in homely comfort, not very sprightly, but 
 serene and dignified. The decided majority, the lesser 
 merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen, manual laborers, had 
 harsh and narrow lives, economically most insecure, 
 brightened only by their native wit and their enduring 
 religious faith. Indeed, all life below that of the gen- 
 try was cramped and close, and the wretched conditions 
 of tenantship pressed most heavily upon the poor. 
 
 The town was the center of commerce for the farm- 
 ing district round about. It had its market-days, with 
 their hubbub of pleasant activity: one of the major en- 
 tertainments of the time. It had its shops and stores, 
 its butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, its 
 smiths and carpenters and cobblers. The swift King's 
 River turned some mill-wheels, chiefly for grist mills. 
 The clay of the river valley was suitable for pottery. 
 
 V 
 
 The poor do not keep careful written records. Such 
 records, when they are private enterprises, are a sort of 
 luxury, for which time and money are needed. But 
 rich and poor must from time to time find their actions 
 
BACKGROUNDS 1 3 
 
 recorded in legal documents. In some of those legal 
 and official records of the Diocese of Ossory, and the 
 tax and tithe books of Callan, there are entries of 
 Cudahys going back to 1674. There is an ancient 
 castle near Callan called Ballycuddihy: "Bally" or 
 Baile in Irish meaning town or townland, or the vaguer 
 demesne. 1 There is a Cuddihy coat of arms. 
 
 But these facts have been ascertained from sources 
 almost certainly unknown to the Cudahy family that 
 was caught by the Famine in Callan. In the first half 
 of the nineteenth century, Patrick Cudahy had no own- 
 ership in the old castle of Ballycuddihy; he had no 
 wealth or title; nor did he give much thought to trac- 
 ing his remote ancestry through the Registry of Wills 
 of Ossory and the diocesan marriage records. 
 
 He had, indeed, less chance than had the ordinary 
 Irish boy to learn something about his long-dead for- 
 bears, because he was cut off from one usual channel 
 of knowledge. In even the most unlettered of Irish 
 families oral tradition was strong. The retentive mem- 
 ories of the people kept names and dates and places 
 and events, and brought them out in talk by the winter 
 fireside or in longer social gatherings at weddings and 
 wakes. Perhaps the oral traditions were all the more 
 vivid and complete just because the common people 
 
 1 Ballycuddihy may never have been very large. In a 
 legal document of 4th June, 1623, it is described as eight 
 acres. Healy, Hist. & Antiq. of Kilkenny, I, p. 415. 
 
14 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 dealt little with written records. It is worth ' recalling 
 how the great ballads, back even to the Iliad, had lived 
 on by word of mouth. But Patrick, as a growing boy, 
 missed the benefit of hearing the family story told and 
 retold. He was left an orphan when he was only ten 
 years old. 
 
 His father and mother, Patrick Cuddihy and Ann 
 Bassett, had married at Callan in 1799; that much is 
 clear from the marriage records of Ossory. Patrick, 
 their son, of course knew more details about their life 
 and death. But the break-up of the family in the later 
 migrations left that knowledge to die with him. All 
 that his children, a hundred years later, could recall 
 was the fact that he was orphaned so early and that he 
 was brought up by the Franciscan Friars. 
 
 They were Capuchin Friars Minor, a reform of the 
 Franciscan Order begun in 1525 and established in 
 Ireland since 1615. The famous Father Theobald 
 Mathew, the Irish apostle of temperance, who was 
 born in 1790 and died in 1856, was a Capuchin. Their 
 Convent of St. Francis had been built in Kilkenny some 
 time around 1732; but the famine of the next decade 
 had almost destroyed the Capuchin Order in Ireland, 
 and the house in Kilkenny was closed. The Convent 
 was reopened in 1771, and for some time had a no- 
 vitiate attached to it. 
 
 These Capuchins of Kilkenny received the boy 
 Patrick as a possible future postulant and novice of the 
 
BACKGROUNDS 15 
 
 Order. He got some schooling with them, and paid 
 his way by his part-time work in their garden. Just 
 how long he stayed with the Capuchins we do not 
 know. But when he was grown enough to know his 
 own mind and to fend for himself, and realized that he 
 had no vocation to be a Friar, he came back to Callan. 
 
 After that, Patrick earned his livelihood, first as a 
 small tenant farmer, later in the business of a potter, 
 in which he worked for John Shaw, who owned the 
 pottery in Callan. In time he came to be a junior part- 
 ner of John Shaw. Their pottery was not one of the 
 renowned or artistic potteries of Ireland that make fine 
 porcelain like the Belleek ware. It was a humbler es- 
 tablishment, which turned out earthen crocks for dairy 
 work and plain flower-pots for the hothouses of the 
 well-to-do and the little forcing beds of lesser gardens. 
 
 John Shaw had a comely daughter, Elizabeth, a little 
 younger than Patrick Cudahy. They had known each 
 other for a year or so, and they were fond of each 
 other. But men and women did not marry young in 
 Ireland then: nor, for that matter, do they now. The 
 hard economic conditions of their lives forced them to 
 put off marriage until they had, slowly and laboriously, 
 built up at least the minimum of financial security that 
 prudence demanded for the start of a new family. 
 
 Of the courtship of Patrick and Elizabeth we have, 
 at this long distance of time, no details. No doubt 
 it followed the conventional ways of their time: the 
 
16 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 bashful approaches, the "walking out", the gradual 
 growth of affection and intimacy, the determination of 
 the young people to take the serious step of marriage; 
 then the formal request by Patrick made to Elizabeth's 
 father and mother, the careful consideration of dowry 
 and financial arrangements, with all the cold accuracy 
 of a business proposal. 
 
 There was a canny and calculating element in Irish 
 courtships which rather shocks a romantic age, and 
 which is nothing less than absurd to a people that takes 
 marriage and divorce as lightly as do the Americans. 
 But there had to be canny prudence amongst the Irish 
 whose lives were so narrow-margined; and there was 
 bound to be solemnity and much forethought in the 
 courtship of men and women who appreciated the 
 hardships as well as the delights of marriage, and who 
 were reverently loyal to the ideal embodied in "until 
 death do us part." Their courtship did not ignore the 
 passion and elan of young love; it only tempered pas- 
 sion with prudence. Affectionate and impulsive as 
 they were, they had sense enough to know that mar- 
 riage is more than an affair of the fiery enthusiasms of 
 a young man and woman. 
 
 At any rate, all the preliminaries duly observed, 
 Patrick Cudahy and Elizabeth Shaw were married in 
 the parish church of Callan, before the parish priest, 
 John Mullins, on January 13th, 1841: the official wit- 
 nesses of the marriage being James Maher and 
 
BACKGROUNDS 17 
 
 Catherine Hogan. Patrick was then thirty-one years old, 
 and Elizabeth twenty-seven. There was no honeymoon 
 journey, both because the young couple could not af- 
 ford it, and because there was no tyranny of custom, 
 or pressure of "keeping up with the Joneses", to make 
 them undertake what they could not afford. There 
 was only the neighborhood celebration, with an ample 
 meal and plenty of punch; and the newly-weds settled 
 down at once to the joys and the burdens of their mar- 
 ried life. 
 
 They rented a cottage on Mill Street in Callan. 
 They had to rent, not buy, because landlords in Ire- 
 land before the Land Act of 1881 were very loath to 
 sell. The landlords' reluctance to sell land was part 
 of the wretched system of rack-renting, one of the fun- 
 damental reasons for the depressing poverty of Ire- 
 land; besides, to hold the land was one way to make 
 secure the English domination of the Irish people. 
 Very few were the freeholds then in the hands of the 
 common people in Ireland. Their neighbors were all 
 tenants: Patrick's cousin, Jeremiah Cuddihy, on Mill 
 Street; his brother, Richard, who later went to Aus- 
 tralia, on the Crossage nearby ; John Cuddihy, on Green 
 Street. 
 
 In the Mill Street house their first child was born 
 to Patrick and Elizabeth, on December 2d, 1841, and 
 was christened Michael. His godparents were the same 
 James Maher and Catherine Hogan who had "stood 
 
18 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 up" with his parents at their marriage. A second child, 
 John, was also born at Mill Street, on November 3d, 
 1843. But when the third child, their only daughter, 
 Catherine, was born on April 10th, 1846, the baptismal 
 record no longer gives Mill Street as the residence of 
 the family, but only the name of the town, Callan. 
 
 In that silent indication we may read the first signs 
 of the Famine. Men who could not buy food certainly 
 could not buy pottery. The frugal living of the 
 Cudahy family was dependent upon their trade with 
 the farming district; and the farming district was be- 
 ginning to be in dire want. It is evident that Patrick 
 and Elizabeth and the children had been forced to give 
 up the house on Mill Street; and most probable that 
 they had taken up their residence with Elizabeth's 
 father, John Shaw. John Shaw was godfather to the 
 baby Catherine. 
 
 The years following the birth of Catherine were 
 years of dread, of increasing destitution throughout 
 the countryside, of fever following upon famine, of a 
 terrible toll of death all round about them. The de- 
 tails of those years of the Famine make heart-rending 
 reading even after all this length of time. Already 
 the great migration had begun that was to cut in half 
 the population of Ireland. Yet for three years more 
 the Cudahy family endured, hoping that this famine, 
 like the many that had come upon Ireland before, 
 would be lifted from them, and that at least the 
 
BACKGROUNDS 19 
 
 humble ways of their old life would once more be 
 opened to them. But the hope dwindled day by day. 
 Callan itself was dwindling, through death and emi- 
 gration. There were 2,000 paupers in the workhouse. 
 The business of the town had nearly ceased. 
 
 It was tragic to think of uprooting themselves from 
 the land they loved, the home of their people for 
 centuries, the dear places filled with all their memo- 
 ries of the living and the dead. A restless, wander- 
 ing people like ourselves, forever on the move, shift- 
 ing our occupations and our residences a score of times 
 in a life-time, finds it hard to understand how closely 
 the Irish people clung, not merely to their native 
 land, but to their district, their town, their neighbor- 
 hood, their bit of rented land, their cottage that was 
 home. Only brutal necessity broke the ties that held 
 them. The Cudahy family felt all this intensely; but 
 by 1848 they knew they had to go. 
 
 Two things only held them back for a time: Eliza- 
 beth was expecting the birth of her fourth child; and 
 they had to raise funds for their voyage to America. 
 The child was born on March 17th, 1849, their third 
 son, and was named Patrick, not so much because it 
 was his father's name as because he had been born on 
 the feast of Ireland's patron Saint. They sold the pot- 
 tery for £500 in cash, much less, no doubt, than it 
 would ordinarily be worth. But if that meant a loss 
 to the Shaws and Cudahys, it meant also the essential 
 
20 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 means of getting away from the death and despair of 
 Callan. They went forth in sorrow; and they went 
 only because to stay was to die. They packed such of 
 their possessions as they could take with them, and set 
 out for Queenstown and the lovely harbor which was 
 the last sight of Ireland for so many driven emigrants. 
 
 VI 
 
 There were no luxury liners leaving Ireland in 1849. 
 Even the crude, small, and slow paddle steamships of 
 the time were few in number. Although ships driven 
 by steam engines had been in use since 1802, it was 
 thought impossible, as late as 1835, to cross the At- 
 lantic in a steamship. Three years later, the attempt 
 was successfully made; and in 1840 the Royal Mail 
 Packet Line, predecessor of the Cunard Line, began 
 the first regular fortnightly sailings, with four paddle 
 steamships, each of about a thousand tons. But in 
 1849, and for some years after, most of the Irish emi- 
 grants left Ireland in sailing vessels, not merely be- 
 cause the vast majority of the emigrants could not af- 
 ford the higher fare for passage on a steamship, but 
 because there were nowhere near enough steamships 
 in the transatlantic service to accommodate the huge 
 number of emigrants. 
 
 A type of ship that carried a considerable part of the 
 migrating Irish people in those years was the "cotton 
 
BACKGROUNDS 21 
 
 ships." These were sailing vessels, usually small and 
 slow (not the splendid "Yankee clippers"), carrying 
 cotton from Charleston and other Southern ports, 
 chiefly to Liverpool for the English factories. On 
 their return voyages they brought some cargo to Boston 
 or New York, before dropping down to a Southern 
 port for more cotton. Their skippers were naturally 
 eager to add to the revenue of the western crossing by 
 carrying passengers; and as they had little attraction 
 for cabin passengers, they filled up their steerage space 
 with emigrants. The fare for emigrants on these sail- 
 ing vessels averaged around £4- 10s; although compe- 
 tition between ships, most of which were privately 
 owned, at one period of the 1848 season brought the 
 fare as low as £2-1 5s for the voyage from Liverpool 
 to New York. 
 
 The conditions of the voyage were very hard. The 
 ships were mostly small and slow: some of them no 
 larger than 150 tons; most of them taking eleven to 
 thirteen weeks for the crossing. The food was often 
 bad and unfit for use, and at its best was coarse and 
 inadequate, being based on a staple of hard tack and 
 salt pork. Rations were issued raw to the emigrants, 
 who had to scrabble as best they could for the poor 
 facilities of the cook-house. Worse still, there was 
 frequently a shortage in the supply of drinking water. 
 Over-crowding added to the misery of the slow voy- 
 age. Shipwrecks were frequent. A report to the 
 
22 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 House of Commons stated that between 1846 and 1851 
 there had been forty-four emigrant ships wrecked, 
 with a loss of 1,043 lives. The causes of disaster were 
 set down as unsound ships, inadequate crews, and im- 
 proper stowing of the cargo. 1 
 
 An English philanthropist, Vere Foster, who had at 
 his own expense sent out as many as 16,000 women to 
 Canada, made a trial voyage in 1850 as a steerage pas- 
 senger on the sailing vessel Washington. His report 
 of the brutal conditions in which the emigrants lived 
 and their savage maltreatment at the hands of the 
 mates stirred a momentary resentment in the House of 
 Commons. Johnson, quoting Foster's letter, insists that 
 it represents "not the life experienced on board an 
 isolated ship managed by an exceptionally brutal mas- 
 ter, but the existence endured by hundreds and thou- 
 sands of people, many of them ill, underfed and 
 wretched . . ." 2 But Government attempts to correct 
 these intolerable conditions were incredibly feeble and 
 fruitless; perhaps, as the emigrants were preponderant- 
 ly Irish, it did not matter so much anyway. 
 
 The little party from Callan, made up of John Shaw 
 and his wife, Patrick and Elizabeth Shaw Cudahy, and 
 
 1 17 th Report of the Colonial Land and Emigration Com- 
 missioners, 1854. 
 
 2 Stanley C. Johnson, A History of Emigration from the 
 United Kingdom to North America, 1763-1912. London, 
 1913; p. 117. Foster's account was printed in a Letter from 
 Lord Hobart to the Colonial Land and Emigration Commis- 
 sioners in the House of Commons Sessional Collection, XL, 
 433 sqq., 1851 (198). 
 
BACKGROUNDS 23 
 
 their four children, the baby, Patrick, only a few 
 months old, survived the rigors of the long voyage, and 
 landed at Boston in late August or early September. 
 The Irish emigrants had begun to choose Boston rather 
 than New York as their destination, for two reasons. 
 The first was that New York had set up restrictions on 
 the landing of immigrants: at first a bond of $300.00 
 for each passenger brought to the port, later a head 
 tax of a dollar, which was promptly increased to two, 
 and then two and a half, dollars. The second reason 
 was that Boston was the port for the growing manu- 
 facturing district of New England, in which there was 
 an eager market for cheap immigrant labor; therefore 
 for the moment the chances of getting prompt employ- 
 ment were better at Boston or nearby than at New 
 York. 
 
 But the Shaws and the Cudahys had no mind to 
 bury themselves in a factory town, the economic grave 
 of so many of the Irish immigrants. They were more 
 fortunate than many another immigrant group, be- 
 cause they had brought with them to the United States 
 enough money to allow them some freedom of choice 
 as to a place in which to settle. What was left of the 
 £500 got from the sale of the pottery was not sufficient 
 capital for a business venture; but it did leave them 
 able to move out at once beyond the crowded tene- 
 ment districts around Boston, already filling up with 
 Irish immigrants. 
 
24 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Moreover, during the three years or more of that 
 harsh time in which the necessity of emigrating was 
 forcing itself more and more strongly upon them, they 
 had studied the situation in the United States intelli- 
 gently. They saw the letters from America that came 
 to Callan; from reading and talk they gathered all the 
 information about that distant land that was available 
 to them. Not the crowded seaboard, but the open 
 lands of the West, beckoned to them. They came with 
 plans in their heads: modest plans, not dreams of El- 
 dorado, even though the story of Jim Marshall's nug- 
 get found in the tail-race of Sutter's Mill, on January 
 19th, 1848, and of the wild rush to the California gold- 
 fields that followed, had already crossed the seas to 
 Europe, and had roused a hunger for gold that lured 
 people even more compellingly than the famine drove 
 them. 
 
 But the California gold-fields were no place for an 
 elderly man like John Shaw, or for a man burdened 
 with the responsibilities of four small children, like 
 Patrick Cudahy. What Patrick planned and hoped for 
 was a little farm of his own, good land, from which 
 a man might, with toil and skill, make a living and a 
 home for his family. In his heart he had that love of 
 the land which is the first and most wholesome of hu- 
 man ambitions, which men have largely lost in our 
 fetid industrial civilization, and by the loss of it have 
 been degraded. 
 
BACKGROUNDS 25 
 
 There was good land to be had where the forests 
 merged into the plains, beyond the Great Lakes, land 
 whose price, they had heard, was within the reach of 
 a poor man. Toward that country, more than a thou- 
 sand miles away, they set their faces. Why they made 
 the definite selection of Milwaukee as their destination 
 in the Western lands is not known to the writer. Per- 
 haps some of the earlier Irish settlers in Milwaukee, 
 before the great influx from Germany, had advertised 
 the town back in Callan. At any rate, with no more 
 delay than was demanded in order to organize them- 
 selves for the journey into the West, they set out from 
 Boston for Milwaukee. 
 
 They went by rail to Albany, over the Boston and 
 Albany Railroad, which had then been in operation for 
 about seven years, the first important through route in 
 the United States. They travelled the three hundred 
 miles in the rough coaches assigned to immigrant 
 groups, carrying their food with them for the journey. 
 There was also rail transportation to be had west of 
 Albany in that autumn of 1849, but it was interrupted, 
 necessitating many changes of cars, and it was more 
 expensive than travel by water. So, by water, along 
 the Erie Canal, the little group of four adults and four 
 children did the next stage of their long road. 
 
 The Erie Canal of those days could be described, 
 for the most part, as a ditch four feet deep and 363 
 miles long. It had been completed in 1825, at what 
 
26 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 then seemed the staggering cost of more than ten mil- 
 lion dollars — small change in the present era of bil- 
 lion-dollar appropriations; but unlike so many of the 
 latter-day government projects, it had promptly paid 
 for itself. 
 
 The canal-barges, towed by horses, were of two 
 kinds: packet boats, carrying cabin passengers and 
 mail ; and cargo boats, carrying immigrants and freight. 
 The packet boats accommodated about thirty passen- 
 gers each, and were crudely comfortable according to 
 the standards of the time, with a dining room, and long 
 separate cabins for men and for women, each lined 
 with tiers of berths along the walls. The fare on them 
 was four cents a mile, with board; three cents a mile, 
 without board. They were drawn by three or even 
 four horses, that went at a trot, with relays of horses 
 and drivers every ten miles. 
 
 The freight barges were drawn by two horses, or 
 even by a single horse, and they moved sedately at a 
 walk. Their passengers paid only a cent and a half a 
 mile, and supplied their own food. There were, by 
 1849, more than 4,000 of these barges plying the 
 Canal, and making it the busiest traffic-way in the 
 United States. On one of the cargo barges our party 
 made the voyage across the state of New York to 
 Buffalo. 
 
 When they reached Buffalo, navigation on the Great 
 Lakes was as its height of the Fall season, bringing 
 
BACKGROUNDS 27 
 
 grain and lumber to the East and carrying back freight 
 and passengers to the newly developing West. Steam- 
 ers of from 400 to 700 tons burden left morning and 
 evening for Detroit, with stops at Erie, Cleveland, and 
 Sandusky, and made the voyage in two days. From 
 Detroit there were three ways of moving on toward 
 the western lands. One might go by railroad to 
 Ypsilanti, thirty-three miles to the west, then by stage 
 coach to St. Joseph, 172 miles away, and finally by 
 steamer the remaining ninety-two miles, across Lake 
 Michigan, to Chicago, and another ninety miles or so, 
 by steamer, or on horseback along the western shore 
 of the Lake, to Milwaukee. A second route was by 
 steamer to Toledo, then by rail to Adrian, by stage to 
 Michigan City, then across to Chicago and Milwaukee. 
 The third way was entirely by water, through the Lake 
 system of Lakes St. Clair, Huron, and Michigan. This 
 last was the slowest and most circuitous of the three 
 routes, but it was the one most chosen by immigrants, 
 and for a group with four small children it was the 
 most comfortable. So, through the fine autumn weath- 
 er, our little group from Callan journeyed the long 
 north and south roundabout through the Great Lakes 
 to Milwaukee. 
 
 The Shaws and Cudahys had travelled all the long 
 way from Callan as economically as they could, stretch- 
 ing out their £500 even at the cost of added hardships. 
 As a result, when they came to Milwaukee, they still 
 
28 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 had nearly half of the original sum left, with which 
 to make their new start in America. But they were to 
 find it a very slender capital in the crude conditions 
 of life they had to face. 
 
 VII 
 
 Milwaukee in 1849 was as raw as a fresh-turned 
 prairie sod. It had been in existence as a town for 
 only a dozen years or so, although a white settler, Solo- 
 mon Juneau, had come to the locality as early as 1818. 
 But by 1840, it could boast of 1,712 inhabitants; and 
 when the Cudahys came, it was probably a little larger 
 than the Callan they had known before the Famine. 
 
 Exact figures about its population were, however, 
 hard to arrive at, because its people were not a fixed 
 and settled people, but a migrating people. Margaret 
 Fuller, on her visit of several weeks to Milwaukee in 
 the summer of 1843, wrote that although the resident 
 population was only about 2,000, the town had re- 
 ceived in one week 3,000 immigrants travelling 
 through from Buffalo into the interior. 
 
 It was a period of immense hustle and bustle. Great 
 events, national and local, were stirring the lives of 
 the people. Consider only the year 1848, the year be- 
 fore the Cudahys came. In that year, gold had been 
 discovered in California in January, Wisconsin had 
 been admitted to statehood on May 29th, and on May 
 
BACKGROUNDS 29 
 
 30th the Mexican War had been officially brought to 
 a close by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave 
 the United States a huge slice of Mexican territory. 
 During the next few years, immigrants were swarming 
 into the western country at the rate of several hundred 
 thousand a year, by lake and river, and in covered 
 wagons across the prairies. 
 
 The Indians were being thrust back steadily (the 
 Potawatomies had surrendered their lands on the site 
 of Milwaukee in 1836), and their former hunting 
 grounds were being opened to white settlers. Land 
 speculation was rife. Projects for roads, canals, rail- 
 roads, townsites, blossomed everywhere. Everything 
 was in a state of flux, population, industry, customs, 
 manners, institutions. In all the West, it was the era 
 of a nation on the move. It was a surge of dominance 
 from the East to the West, with an implied threat to 
 the political and economic security of the South. Al- 
 though few in the North or West seemed to realize the 
 fact, it was the forerunner of the Civil War. 
 
 The first developers of Milwaukee were Yankees 
 from New England and New York: Kilbourn, Lap- 
 ham, Wells, Walker, Prentiss, Finch, Farmin, Fowler; 
 English names all of them. The first German colony, 
 800 men, women, and children, came in 1839, and led 
 the way for enough others to give Milwaukee the com- 
 mon repute of a German town. The Irish began to 
 arrive, in small groups, after the exodus from Ireland 
 
30 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 in the Famine. Later came great numbers of Poles, 
 who today form a fifth of the total population. Mil- 
 waukee promptly became as cosmopolitan as any of the 
 cities of the Northern States. 
 
 The first priest was an Irishman, Patrick Kelly, who 
 built St. Peter's church in 1839. The first bishop was a 
 German Swiss, John Martin Henni, ordained at Cin- 
 cinnati in 1829, and consecrated bishop in 1844, when 
 he was only thirty-nine years old. He brought the 
 Sisters of Charity to open the first hospital in 1846, 
 began his cathedral, St. John's, in 1847, and started 
 the Seminary of St. Francis in 1856. His see was made 
 an archbishopric in 1875, when Milwaukee had grown 
 to a city of 100,000 people. 
 
 Writing to the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna in 
 January, 1851, Bishop Henni gives a vivid account of 
 Milwaukee, then counting a population of more than 
 20,000. Although the city includes hilly land along 
 the Lake, rising to more than eighty feet about the 
 water, he speaks of the town as "marshy", because at 
 that time most of the buildings were down in the val- 
 ley of the Michigan River, which furnished the town 
 its harbor. 
 
 "Most of the buildings," he says, "are wooden hov- 
 els raised on piles two feet from the ground so that 
 hogs may conveniently tramp about underneath. . . 
 Lots, by speculation, have risen to from $200 to 
 $1,000. . . Rents are pretty dear. $1.50 is paid for 
 
BACKGROUNDS 31 
 
 an unfurnished room. Furniture is quite expensive. 
 A table costs from $4 to $5; a bedstead from $6 to 
 $8 and a chair from .50 to $2. Food is cheap, 12 to 
 15 cents per meal; a cup of coffee costs 9 cents and if 
 you prepare it yourself 3 cents." 
 
 He goes into some detail about the manner of build- 
 ing, which was rough and rapid as became a pioneer 
 town, but which decidedly shocked his artistic sense. 
 He discusses taxes, which he thinks are pretty high: 
 and gives some specific instances. Here is how he 
 illustrates the cost of living: 
 
 "... Board in a boarding-house is quoted at $2 - $3 
 per week; tenements in a lodging house $10 - $16 
 monthly; rice 5 cents a pound; coffee 8-12 cents a 
 pound; a loaf of wheaten bread 5 cents; one quart of 
 beer 3 cents; one lemon or orange 5 - 7 cents; beef 6 
 cents per pound; pork 4 cents per pound; veal 3 cents 
 per pound; wheat 40 - 50 cents per bushel; butter, 15 
 cents per pound; a load of kindling wood .75 - $1.50 
 bricks, 4x2, $4 - $7 per 1000; shingles, $2.25 per 1000 
 lime, 43 cents per barrel; cast iron, $4 or $5 per ton 
 bricklayers received $2 a day; hod carriers, $1.00 
 cigar-makers, .75 - $1.00; a machinist, $1.50 - $2.00 
 clerk, $1.00 - $2.00; a cart with team, $2.00." 
 
 The name "Milwaukee" in its Indian origin means 
 "good land"; and there was good land all round about, 
 well suited for varied farming. But of the farmers 
 Bishop Henni realistically writes: 
 
 "The farmer feels happy provided he earns his daily 
 
32 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 bread, possesses some cattle and a hovel. His produce 
 he cannot usually turn into cash, but he disposes of it 
 by barter, which is a very usual thing. In cash trans- 
 actions one generally is given a 33 per cent rebate." 1 
 
 This was not the earthly paradise that many a Euro- 
 pean emigrant had dreamed of. No man who could 
 work need starve, it is true. The earth was good, and 
 in time might produce comfort and even wealth. But 
 it was still a hard, new country, filled with the priva- 
 tions common to all pioneer settlements. Yet it was 
 filled with hope too; and hope spurs a man's energies 
 and takes the edge from his hardships. 
 
 The "good land" was cheap, so far as money ex- 
 change counted; in many sections around the city, a 
 week's wages would buy an acre of it. But the immi- 
 grants needed all their wages for bare living, and few 
 of them could pay even so low a price for enough 
 land to make a farm. Even those who were able to 
 buy the land looked twice at the risks involved; not 
 merely the inevitable risks of every farmer from the 
 uncertainties of weather and rainfall and early frost, 
 but the special risks arising from inadequate means of 
 transporting his crops, and poor markets when he 
 brought them for sale. Besides, the towns seemed 
 clamorous with opportunities. It was in the towns that 
 
 1 In the United States Catholic Historical Society's His- 
 torical Records and Studies, June, 1916. 9:214-217. (Quot- 
 ed by permission.) 
 
BACKGROUNDS 33 
 
 fortunes were made, in land speculations, in trade, and 
 the beginnings of industries. 
 
 Patrick Cudahy had first to provide shelter and food 
 for his family. His tiny capital could not go into land, 
 until he had some security of a home for his wife and 
 children. He simply did not dare to venture out into 
 the raw country far beyond the town. The best he 
 could do was to rent a house cheaply on the edge of 
 the settlement, within reach of work upon the neigh- 
 boring farms. 
 
 In the first breathing spell after the long journey, 
 until he had time to look around and determine what 
 he should attempt as a means of livelihood, Patrick 
 housed his family in a little frame structure at Eighth 
 and Clybourn Streets. His decision was soon made 
 that, with his large responsibilities and his limited re- 
 sources, he could not prudently undertake a farming 
 venture of his own. He must work for wages, in the 
 hope of saving enough to enable him later to make an 
 independent start. He went to work for a farmer 
 named Beecher; and to be near his work, moved his 
 family to a log cabin south of what afterward became 
 West Park, or Washington Park. 
 
 There the family lived until 1856; and there a fourth 
 son was born, William. In the meantime, the older 
 boys, Michael and John, and the daughter Catherine, 
 had been getting such school education as they could. 
 Patrick was still too young to go to school. An 
 
34 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Irishman named Pendergrass or Prendergast conducted 
 one of the common type of ungraded schools of the 
 time, in which twenty or thirty children, ranging in age 
 from seven to twelve or thirteen, were taught their 
 three R's and such small smattering of history and ge- 
 ography as the teacher could provide in odd moments. 
 
 About the time that Patrick Cudahy determined to 
 shift to some better paid work, John Shaw decided to 
 risk a chance farther out in the State, and began a fruit 
 business in a country town up toward Green Bay. The 
 Cudahys moved to a new home, a small cottage at 
 34th Street and Cold Spring Avenue, and Mrs. Shaw 
 came to live with them. The farm of their own seemed 
 as far away as ever. Patrick got work in a brickyard 
 in the village of Wauwatosa, owned by Joseph Carney; 
 and his second son, John, now a growing boy of thir- 
 teen, worked with him. 
 
 Brick-making could not be done in the winter; so 
 Patrick Cudahy bought from a man named Breed a 
 stand of timber nearby, which came to be called 
 "Cudahy's Woods"; and through the winters he and 
 his sons John and Patrick cut cord wood to be sold in 
 the city. The boy Patrick, who was then about seven 
 years old, later in a sketch of his own life wrote of a 
 bear coming into the grounds around their house, and 
 of stray Indians whom his mother fed at the door. 
 They were three miles from the nearest store in Mil- 
 waukee. 
 
BACKGROUNDS 35 
 
 But Michael, the eldest son, nearly fifteen years old 
 when the family moved to Cold Spring Avenue, had 
 already struck out for himself, and had got work in a 
 slaughter-house near Carney's brickyard. It was poor- 
 ly paid work, although the little it added to the fam- 
 ily income was welcome. But for Michael it was a 
 rough beginning that was to carry him far. He had 
 no intention of bogging down in the manual labor 
 which, in that new country, was the lot of most men 
 who could not command at least a modest capital. He 
 was beginning to learn from the bottom the meat busi- 
 ness in which he was later to be a leader. 
 
 Michael read and studied at night, after his day's 
 work; and, with the generosity that always character- 
 ized him, he organized a class at home in the evenings 
 for his younger brothers and a couple of boys of neigh- 
 boring families. In his grave and kindly way, Mich- 
 ael, even before he had attained his majority, really 
 assumed the headship of the family. His father strug- 
 gled manfully in the hard environment of a tenant 
 farmer and casual laborer; but he had not the force to 
 raise himself and his family above that environment. 
 It called for genius to do that; and it was Michael, the 
 first-born, who was to be also the first of his children 
 to show the touch of genius. 
 
 It was in these struggling circumstances, when 
 Michael was eighteen years old, John sixteen, Cather- 
 ine fourteen, Patrick eleven, and William seven, in the 
 
36 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 cottage on Cold Spring Avenue, on February 1st, I860, 
 that Elizabeth Cudahy bore her last child, her fourth 
 son, who was baptized Edward. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 
 
 I 
 
 he memories of childhood and adolescence that 
 
 T 
 
 we carry along into later life are usually hap- 
 hazard and fragmentary, even when they happen to 
 be vivid. They do not offer material for a clear and 
 complete view of those early years. That is the rea- 
 son why even autobiographies are generally unsatis- 
 factory as regards the early formative period of the 
 subject's life. Childhood and boyhood escape chronic- 
 ling, because when they were actual they escaped ob- 
 servation. It is only in the case of certain scientific 
 studies of a child here and there that we get fuller de- 
 tails; and the report of those details is too often shaped 
 by the thesis of the observer. 
 
 Yet those early years are of immense influence upon 
 the later life of every human being. "As the twig is 
 bent. . ." still holds good, no matter how much the 
 current educationists and psychologists quarrel over 
 why it should hold good. Some attempt, therefore, 
 must be made to sketch the events and circumstances of 
 Edward Cudahy's boyhood, even in face of the cer- 
 tainty that the attempt is not likely to be very success- 
 ful. The bare outline of facts can be given simply 
 
38 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 enough ; it is their impact upon the growing boy which 
 is so hard to understand and to express. 
 
 For instance, important events, national and local, 
 which may profoundly change the child's environment 
 and even the whole framework of the civilization into 
 which he is entering, mean little or nothing to him 
 during his childhood. He does not perceive these 
 events, much less understand them. Their effect upon 
 him is indirect, through their immediate effect upon 
 his family, or his neighborhood. 
 
 Thus, Edward Cudahy was born into one of the 
 most critical periods of American history, beginning 
 with the nomination and election of Lincoln as Presi- 
 dent. He was a baby a year old when the Civil War 
 broke out, and a very small boy of five when it ended 
 at Appomatox. What immediate impression could he 
 have had of all that tragic sequence of events? 
 
 In the meantime, great local changes were taking 
 place. Milwaukee was growing out of the town stage 
 and becoming a city. But when Edward was born, and 
 for several years afterwards, his family was living far 
 on the outskirts of Milwaukee. In his babyhood, he 
 did not experience even the vague impact of crowds 
 which is all that a baby is capable of receiving. Wheth- 
 er Milwaukee grew or dwindled meant nothing to him. 
 In fact, even the distant war came nearer to him than 
 the growing city, because as soon as he could toddle 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 39 
 
 about he saw soldiers, long before he saw the city or 
 any considerable number of civilians. 
 
 The cottage in which Edward was born, and in 
 which he lived the first years of his boyhood, was only 
 a few hundred yards from the southwest corner of the 
 old Fair Grounds; and the Fair Grounds, at the mus- 
 tering of Wisconsin troops for the war, had promptly 
 been turned into a military camp. But by the time the 
 little boy was old enough to begin playing at being a 
 soldier, his father moved the family again, this time 
 still farther away from the activities of the city. 
 
 Patrick Cudahy rented thirty acres of land out be- 
 tween the Watertown Plank Road and Spring Street, 
 west of what is now 34th Street, and set out to try his 
 luck at truck gardening. For the moment that prom- 
 ised to be a likely venture. Had it succeeded, his sons 
 might have followed along after their father for many 
 years, and have grown into substantial farmers. But 
 the venture came to an end almost as soon as it had 
 begun. The man who owned the land sold it; and 
 the new owner, because he wanted to use the land him- 
 self, terminated Patrick's tenancy. 
 
 That seems to have put a definite end to Patrick 
 Cudahy' s plans as a farmer. He determined to look to 
 the city itself henceforth for his home and his liveli- 
 hood. In 1863, he bought a plot of ground and a 
 modest house in the city, in a new subdivision known 
 as Palmer's Addition. The streets were not yet 
 
40 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 consistently put through in that section of the city, but 
 the Cudahy home was situated at about what is now 
 31st and Clybourn Streets. Some seven years later, 
 when Edward was ten years old, the family moved to a 
 better house, on 16th Street, near Wells. In the latter 
 home, Edward was to spend the last seven years he 
 lived in Milwaukee. 
 
 II 
 
 The external elements of a boy's environment mean 
 much less to him than the intimate conditions of his 
 family and home. Children generally accept changes 
 of locality, not merely without question, but almost 
 without interest. A few days usually suffice them to 
 make the needed adaptation to a new house, a new 
 neighborhood, a new city. Their more lively interests 
 are centered upon people and incidents much nearer to 
 them. 
 
 Thus, for instance, it was more important in Ed- 
 ward's life that he was the last child in the family, 
 and a comparatively lone child, than that he changed 
 his residence twice during his childhood. His nearest 
 brother, William, was seven years older than he; and 
 seven years is a huge gap to a child. It was only when 
 his family moved into the closer neighborhood of the 
 city that he knew any number of other children. That 
 meant, for one thing, that his family associations were 
 exceptionally close. It might have meant also that, 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 4l 
 
 as the youngest child, he was likely to be spoiled by 
 over-much attention from his elders. But the chances 
 of that spoiling were diminished in a family so busy 
 as his. 
 
 Whilst he was still a baby, his three eldest brothers, 
 Michael, John, and Patrick, had already started to 
 work. Michael had gone to work five years before 
 Edward was born; and John and Patrick had left 
 school for work when each of them reached the age 
 of thirteen. At a time when boys nowadays remain 
 still pretty thoughtless children, spending their days 
 between hated books and enthusiastic play, the Cudahy 
 boys were taking upon themselves their share of the 
 family burdens. 
 
 Unconsciously, that situation does make an impres- 
 sion upon a small boy. He is still at the age in which 
 play takes up much of his waking hours; he actually 
 needs a lot of play. But he can begin to absorb, so to 
 say, a sense of responsibility from the lives of those 
 closely bound to him. The energy, enterprise, devotion 
 to the common good of the family, the sense of family 
 solidarity in the face of harsh circumstances, the quiet 
 determination to work together to conquer adversity, 
 all those qualities that marked his older brothers and 
 his one sister, became to the boy Edward one of the 
 normal ingredients of life. Manifestations of char- 
 acter such as these, seen and experienced day by day, 
 had more effect upon shaping the youngest brother's 
 
42 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 mind and attitude than could have been exerted by 
 all the verbal instructions and exhortations in the 
 world. 
 
 Edward's education, like that of every child, began 
 long before he went to school. His family was his 
 first teacher, and it was an excellent teacher. That he 
 had the stuff and fibre in him to profit by the teaching 
 is shown by his having cultivated all through his youth 
 and manhood the wholesome habits begun as a child 
 in his home. Home is a great teacher only to those 
 who can be taught. Many a boy with as sound a family 
 background as Edward Cudahy's lets himself degener- 
 ate into a selfish lout. 
 
 The men who talk of formal schools as practically 
 the sole means of education are irritating fools and 
 a genuine danger to society. It cannot be called less 
 than folly to blind one's self to the tremendous power, 
 for good or for evil, of that family life which is the 
 first and most abiding of natural influences in edu- 
 cation. Nor is it astonishing that the men who ignore 
 the place of the family in education have not even any 
 concept of the supernatural agencies at work in the 
 education of every child and every man. 
 
 The details of that familial education of Edward 
 Cudahy are hard to recapture; we must be content to 
 grasp its broad outlines. It must be insisted that it 
 was not a harsh education, although it began in harsh 
 economic conditions. The family was a cheerful 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 43 
 
 family, the parents kind and gentle, the children united 
 in mutual affection. All the Cudahy boys had a sense 
 of humor: some of them, John and Edward particu- 
 larly, a very lively and jolly sense of humor. They 
 all had, from childhood onward, an immense capacity 
 for work; but there was not a gradgrind in the lot of 
 them; they could play as well as work. Their home 
 atmosphere was one of sanity and balance. 
 
 With Michael in the lead, the Cudahy boys, except- 
 ing William, who died as a young man, were in 
 time to become wealthy men. It was their wealth 
 which ultimately made them widely known, and gave 
 them the mark of success in the world's estimate. It 
 is sadly true that, had they still possessed all their fine 
 qualities, yet died poor, the world would have ignored 
 them. Hence, in any consideration of the early educa- 
 tion of Edward Cudahy, it is important to ask this 
 question: did the temper of his family training, and 
 the whole complex of those early, earnest struggles 
 against the handicap of poverty, result in a dominating 
 ambition to attain wealth? The answer can be given 
 with assurance, although it is a hard answer to prove 
 in a completely convincing way. The answer is, No: 
 his education was not based primarily upon a hunger 
 for riches, nor did it result primarily in a resolve to 
 attain riches. Perhaps the whole of this little book 
 will be concerned, one way or another, with demon- 
 strating the truth of that answer. 
 
44 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 One purpose evoked in Edward and the other 
 Cudahy boys by their early education unquestionably 
 was to meet resolutely the immediate urgency of 
 getting a livelihood and of making that livelihood as 
 secure as they could. The qualities they brought to 
 the task of carrying out that purpose were the qualities 
 which, in the astounding era of opportunities then 
 flourishing in the United States, were almost certain 
 to lead them to more than a modest financial compe- 
 tence, to considerable wealth. The same qualities, be 
 it noted, may very well fail to bring the same results 
 today, for the obvious reason that our country has 
 passed beyond its richest stage of opportunity. But 
 there is no sign, in their early days or later, that the 
 Cudahys made the sheer pursuit of wealth the ruling 
 purpose of their lives. 
 
 Van Wyck Brooks recalls a New England minister 
 who "prayed every evening that none of his descend- 
 ants might ever be rich." 1 The minister was a wise 
 man, but pitifully lonesome in his wisdom. Most men 
 dread poverty, because they know its hardships and 
 its dangers; they do not know the greater hardships 
 and dangers of wealth. John Wesley, who has been 
 accused of fostering a love of riches, in reality saw 
 clearly one of the dangers of wealth. As Theodore 
 Maynard puts it, "He pointed out that if men became 
 Christians they also became sober and industrious; that 
 
 1 The Flowering of New England, New York, 1937 ; p. 14. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 45 
 
 if they became sober and industrious they would 
 probably become wealthy; and that if they became 
 wealthy they would almost certainly not remain Chris- 
 tians — a dreadful sorites." 1 The logic of that state- 
 ment is full of holes. There are many millions of 
 sober and industrious men who do not become wealthy ; 
 there are at least some wealthy men who remain sincere 
 Christians. But the statement is close enough to fact, 
 and hangs together well enough, to recall the more 
 terrible statement of Our Lord Jesus Christ: "It is 
 easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." 
 But Edward Cudahy and his brothers had a safe- 
 guard against the unbalanced desire for wealth in 
 another element of their education, their religious faith 
 and practices. They accepted, studied, and used prin- 
 ciples that make little of the achieving of wealth or 
 any other measure of success in this world, when that 
 success is set alongside an eternal achievement. Before 
 the little boy Edward could read, his mother taught 
 him to pray. In the poverty of his boyhood and in 
 the wealth of his late years, he had a touchstone of 
 values always at hand: "What shall it profit a man if 
 he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his 
 soul?" That was why he kept always alive his fine 
 sense of values. 
 
 i The World I Saw, Milwaukee, 1938; p. 97. 
 
46 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 III 
 
 What about Edward Cudahy's school education? In 
 the modern world, and especially in the United States, 
 it would sound like a blasphemy to utter the simple 
 truth that schools are at best a convenience, never a 
 necessity, in education. We have got all muddled up 
 on the question of the place of the school in education; 
 but it is a very modern muddling up. In the 1860's, the 
 people of the United States had not yet been universally 
 "sold" on the idea of compulsory and long-continued 
 schooling for every boy and girl; they had not yet 
 acquired that faith in the school which was so largely 
 to take the place of the Christian faith. 
 
 The school then was recognized as a help toward 
 the acquisition of certain skills and mental habits, and 
 of some forms of knowledge. Parents were glad to 
 have that help for their children ; but they by no means 
 looked upon it as an indispensable help, and they had 
 a clearer view of its limitations than we seem com- 
 monly to have today. Preparation for some of the 
 professions, because those professions were so much 
 concerned with book knowledge, called for longer years 
 of school education. Doctors, lawyers, clergymen need- 
 ed the whole of their youth for poring over books. 
 Youths who could look forward to a life of leisure 
 might profit by the richer sources of culture to be 
 found in schools. But for the men who had to hack 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 47 
 
 their livelihood out of farming or industry or trade, 
 the practical belief then was that apprenticeship was 
 more valuable than school, and that the best way to 
 learn was to get out and do. The Utopian dream that 
 every boy and girl was capable of making good use 
 of long years of schooling was being preached; but we 
 had not yet begun to experiment with it. 
 
 Edward Cudahy, like his brothers and sister before 
 him, and like most American children of his time who 
 did not live isolated from school facilities, went to 
 school from his sixth to his thirteenth year. The first 
 school he attended, whilst he was living in Palmer's 
 Addition, was also just about the same sort of school 
 that his brothers had attended: a one-room, ungraded 
 school, with a single teacher, a small enrollment of 
 pupils, a rigorous course of studies. Most educationists 
 of today (not necessarily most teachers) are probably 
 horrified at the very thought of such schools. Many 
 of them are not well enough informed about history 
 to know that, school for school, the old type seems to 
 have done at least as good a job as its elaborately or- 
 ganized successors. 
 
 A certain Mr. Barney Cook was the teacher. He 
 had about thirty children in his school, ranging in age 
 from six or seven years to twelve or thirteen. Although 
 the neighborhood was Catholic, and Mr. Cook hap- 
 pened also to be a Catholic, the school was a public 
 school, supported by taxes. When Edward started to 
 
48 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 school, there were only six Catholic parishes in Mil- 
 waukee, and three of those were foreign language 
 parishes. The Jesuits had recently opened St. Gall's 
 Academy, an advanced grammar school. The Sisters 
 of Charity and the School Sisters of Notre Dame con- 
 ducted schools for girls, and three parish schools to 
 which boys were admitted. But as there was an aver- 
 age of some ninety children for each teacher in those 
 schools, 1 it is evident that the schools functioned under 
 a great handicap of poverty. 
 
 In the 1860's, just as now, teachers were good, bad, 
 and indifferent. The average percentage of each kind 
 probably never varies a great deal from century to 
 century. The youngster in the million-dollar school 
 takes his chance on the quality of his teacher as surely 
 as did the youngster in the old-fashioned one-room 
 school. If anything, the latter had a slight edge on 
 his present great-grand-children: in the days of the 
 one-room school very poor teachers were not so like- 
 ly to survive. Mr. Cook seems to have been a good 
 teacher. 
 
 He taught reading, writing, arithmetic, English 
 grammar, a little history and geography: the solid 
 bread and butter of the fundamental subjects, no 
 gingerbread. Later, as the school got to be a little 
 
 l Sadlier's Catholic Almanac, 1866, New York; pp. 176, 
 184. Four years later, the average was about 120 pupils to 
 each teacher. Almanac, 1870; p. 223. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 49 
 
 larger, he brought in his niece as an assistant teacher 
 to handle the smaller children, still struggling with 
 their alphabet. The technique of the one-room school 
 was inevitably quite different to the methods used in 
 the present complex system of classes. The disad- 
 vantages of the one-room school are obvious. But it 
 had this great advantage, an advantage that we are 
 belatedly trying to recapture in our modern schools, 
 that it set the teacher close to the pupils because it 
 demanded more individual instruction than class in- 
 struction, it gave a chance for that mysterious interplay 
 of personality which is such a large part of successful 
 teaching, and it brought the pupils into such direct 
 contact with the teacher that they could scarcely escape 
 that mental and emotional response which is the es- 
 sential business in getting a child to educate himself. 
 The results in history do not speak ill for the one- 
 room school. Its field was narrow, but its efforts were 
 concentrated. 
 
 But organization and curriculum and method and 
 skill in applying method are only one part of the 
 apparatus of education. They can work wonders with 
 excellent material ; they can produce astonishingly good 
 results at times even in what might seem unpromising 
 material. But all their effectiveness depends ultimately 
 upon the use that the student himself makes of them. 
 We sometimes talk of "self-made men" as if they were 
 the exceptions, instead of the inviolable rule. At its 
 
50 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 most significant, the phrase "self-made man" can refer 
 only to the limited external assistance the man had in 
 his self-education. But every man, whether his out- 
 side help be little or great, is the first and most neces- 
 sary agent in his own education. 
 
 IV 
 
 When, in 1870, Patrick Cudahy moved his family 
 farther east into the city, to the house on Sixteenth 
 Street, he had to look for a new school for Edward, 
 then ten years old. And now there was at hand a 
 Catholic school, managed, and to some extent staffed, 
 by the Jesuits. It was a sort of combination of parish 
 school and embryonic Jesuit college, and it was called 
 St. Gall's Academy, linking the name of St. Gall's 
 parish with the more pretentious title of Academy as 
 indicative of its budding hopes. 
 
 St. Gall's was one of the older churches, built in 
 1849, the year the Cudahy family came to Milwaukee. 
 It had been assigned to the Jesuits in 1855, with the 
 notion that it might be an anchorage for them whilst 
 they planned a future college. A year before St. 
 Gall's church was built, Bishop Henni, when he was 
 travelling in Europe, had been given $16,000 by the 
 Chevalier J. G. de Boeye of Antwerp for the specific 
 purpose of founding a school to be conducted by the 
 Jesuits. Bishop Henni invited the Jesuits to Milwaukee, 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 5 1 
 
 and gave them charge of St. Gall's parish, with a view 
 to carrying out that purpose. 
 
 That resolute and vigorous Jesuit, Stanislaus Lalu- 
 miere, began the school as St. Aloysius Academy in 
 1857, with some fifty pupils in attendance, ranging in 
 age from six to twenty-one. The tuition was twenty 
 dollars a year for the lower classes, thirty dollars a 
 year for those who studied Latin and book-keeping. 
 But the venture had lasted only two years, when the 
 Jesuit teachers were withdrawn by their superior in 
 St. Louis. After the lapse of another two years, Father 
 Lalumiere was allowed to return to the school in 1861 ; 
 but the status of the school was left vague, and the 
 likelihood of its ever becoming a Jesuit college re- 
 mained uncertain. 
 
 In 1864, new hopes were aroused. A brick build- 
 ing was erected, capable of accommodating some 300 
 pupils, and the name of the school was changed from 
 St. Aloysius to St. Gall's Academy. In our modern 
 nomenclature, it would probably be reckoned a junior 
 high school. For the first eight years, that is, until 
 1872, one or two Jesuit scholastics were assigned to 
 teach in the school; but after that time it was con- 
 ducted entirely as a parish school, under lay teachers. 
 Marquette College was never associated with it. In 
 fact, although even the name Marquette had been 
 chosen for the College by Bishop Henni back in 1849, 
 the College was not actually begun until 1881. 
 
52 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Edward Cudahy attended St. Gall's Academy from 
 the autumn of 1870 to the close of the school term in 
 1872. During his first year at the school two Jesuit 
 scholastics, Messrs. James Walshe and Michael Cor- 
 nely, were teaching at St. Gall's Academy. In his 
 second year, only Mr. Comely remained, as Mr. 
 Walshe had gone on to begin his study of theology at 
 Woodstock College. After that summer of 1872, no 
 more Jesuits were sent to teach. But even before 1872, 
 most of the teachers were laymen. 
 
 It was a lay teacher that Edward Cudahy chiefly 
 remembered from his days at St. Gall's. In a frank 
 moment, nearly seventy years after he had left the 
 school, he once briefly characterized this teacher as "a 
 nasty fellow." School-boys, as a group, are appallingly 
 accurate in their judgments about teachers. If this 
 opinion of his teacher is not just a single school-boy's 
 memory of some petty injustice or the like, but stands 
 for the common thought of the group of boys, one 
 may take it as entirely well-informed. (Let it be added, 
 in parenthesis, that Edward Cudahy would have been 
 much distressed that such an opinion should be made 
 public, even after seventy years.) 
 
 But in general, Edward Cudahy, as a mature and 
 successful man, expressed himself as grateful to his 
 boyhood teachers. Sometimes he voiced a regret that 
 his school education had been limited, that he had had 
 to supply by his own later reading and study much of 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 53 
 
 what his children and his children's children could 
 find set before them with no effort on their part. It 
 is the regret of a modest man, humbly ready to 
 acknowledge the advantages of others over himself. 
 We may think it has this much of foundation in reality, 
 that had Edward Cudahy enjoyed richer opportunities 
 of schooling he would have used them well. His 
 character seems to offer an assurance of that good 
 use. But the teasing question arises: would an easy 
 abundance of school facilities have sharpened or have 
 dulled his appreciation of them? Did he, in fact, de- 
 velop his vigor of application and study by the harder 
 efforts he had to make? 
 
 These are questions which no man can answer for 
 himself, and which it would be presumptuous to try 
 to answer for any other individual. Even the pundits 
 are violently divided in the general answers they try 
 to give to such questions ; and whole schools of thought 
 amongst educationists split on the relative advantages 
 of "hard" and "soft" education. But the very possi- 
 bility of such questions stresses once more the fact that 
 we cannot adequately chronicle the intellectual edu- 
 cation of Edward Cudahy. The ultimate result of his 
 education, as can be shown, was excellent; but its pro- 
 cedure, and most of all the early procedure, evades 
 us. 
 
 The same thing must be said, and even more em- 
 phatically, about his religious education. He began 
 
54 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 that religious education when he received the Sacra- 
 ment of Baptism, when he was only a passive recipient 
 of the educating operation of Almighty God. He con- 
 tinued it through the uncomprehending responses of 
 his babyhood to his mother's early lessons in how to 
 pray, through his unreflecting acceptance of the moral 
 code, based upon faith, which he saw daily observed in 
 his family, through his later attendance at Mass, 
 through such fragments of religious instruction as his 
 child's mind could grasp, through the reception of the 
 Sacraments as they came to him along the way of his 
 life. 
 
 The faith given him in Baptism grew without his 
 knowing it, in the spontaneous repetition of many 
 acts of belief and worship. It was part of his make-up, 
 an essential part, unobtrusive, yet resolute and unwav- 
 ering. It underlay, as we may see later, his whole habit 
 of thought, his economic and political views, his social 
 polity, his personal conduct. It was the source of his 
 fortitude in many an adversity. It was the foundation 
 of his charity toward others, an extraordinarily full 
 charity. But neither Edward Cudahy himself nor any 
 one else can analyze out the processes of that steady 
 growth and development which made up his religious 
 education. 
 
 In those years of his early education, people would 
 have thought it queer to consider a boy's increase in 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 55 
 
 size and weight and energy, his muscular development 
 and acquiring of muscular skills, his hygienic habits, 
 and all that went to promote his bodily health and 
 vigor, as a distinct part of his education. We have 
 changed all that. Nowadays, in the rather unwhole- 
 some environment of a crowded and soft civilization, 
 we have become extremely conscious of that third ele- 
 ment of a child's education. We have, beyond a doubt, 
 more knowledge than our grandparents had of bal- 
 anced diet and the need of vitamins and actinic radia- 
 tion and a host of like data: and God knows we need 
 our larger knowledge. We have devitalized our 
 wheat bread; but we keep the dentists busy. The 
 automobile, whatever else it has done for our civiliza- 
 tion, has pretty nearly cost us the use of our legs for 
 walking. We have enormously complicated the 
 business of growing into a husky and healthy human 
 being. 
 
 In Edward's boyhood the formula was simpler: an 
 inherited good constitution, enough simple food, a 
 capacity for laughter, a little play, and plenty of work. 
 Granted that the formula was too simple, that 
 epidemics due to bad food and water and lack of 
 hygienic precautions cut the population to pieces every 
 now and then; still, like some of the other educational 
 formulas of the period, it worked fairly well: what the 
 nation lost in subtlety of care, it gained in hardihood. 
 And if there is any field in which the pragmatic test is 
 
56 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 final, it is the field of education: the test of "Will it 
 work?" 
 
 Edward inherited the sound constitution which he 
 shared with all the other members of his family. The 
 Cudahys were a sturdy people. The poverty of early 
 days never meant a lack of substantial food; their 
 lively spirits and their kindly home fostered good 
 humor, and prompted them to play enough; and they 
 were blessed with the necessity of having to work. In 
 his case the simple formula of physical education ac- 
 cepted in the 60's proved to be adequate. 
 
 Edward Cudahy worshipped with his family at old 
 St. Gall's parish church, which was then at Second and 
 Sycamore Streets. During Edward's first year at St. 
 Gall's Academy, Bishop Henni came to confer the 
 Sacrament of Confirmation on the children of the 
 parish. In this country, Confirmation is usually 
 administered only when children are approaching 
 adolescence, not in infancy, as in some other countries. 
 Therefore, as the children are of an age to benefit by 
 the instruction, they are prepared for the Sacrament 
 during some weeks in advance. Confirmation is a sort 
 of pivotal Sacrament, conferred only once in the 
 recipient's lifetime. There has even been a bad custom, 
 in many places, of allowing the reception of this 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 57 
 
 Sacrament to mark the end of all special religious 
 instruction. Edward went through the concentrated 
 studies of the Confirmation class at St. Gall's. 
 
 It was at that time that he assumed his second name, 
 Aloysius. The name was suggested to him by the 
 Jesuit scholastic, Mr. James Walshe. His mother had 
 wished him to take her family name, Shaw. But 
 Mr. Walshe pointed out that the custom was to assume 
 the name of a saint, and that although the Shaws might 
 be saintly, they were not yet canonized. But why 
 "Aloysius" amongst all the saints? Well, there were 
 several reasons. Aloysius is the patron of youth; he 
 was a Jesuit saint, and Mr. Walshe stuck by his own; 
 and the earlier name of St. Gall's Academy had been 
 St. Aloysius. At any rate, Mr. Walshe succeeded in 
 putting a sort of Jesuit mark on Edward, through his 
 Confirmation name. 
 
 Not long after this, two great changes occurred in 
 the influences which were working with him in his 
 unending task of self-education. He lost one person 
 who had done an immense amount in moulding his 
 whole personality ; and he came still more closely under 
 the guidance of another person who had already been 
 exerting the second most important influence upon his 
 life. Edward Cudahy's mother died in 1871; and he 
 went to work under his brother Michael in 1872. 
 
 His mother had given him his body of her own, had 
 nursed his mind and spirit as well as his flesh, had 
 
58 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 wrapped her love around him, and cradled him in her 
 prayers, had taught him his first steps upon this earth 
 and his first steps on the road to eternity. A boy in 
 his twelfth year is at a good age to break his heart over 
 the loss of his mother. His universe is only beginning 
 to shape itself about him, and it is like jerking the 
 sun out of the sky to take her away from him. 
 
 His father could not take her place: no father ever 
 could. The beloved Michael, perhaps, more nearly 
 filled the gap left in his youngest brother's world: the 
 grave Michael, the kindly, understanding Michael, a 
 fellow to lean upon as well as to look up to. Michael, 
 the meat-packer, wore in his later life something of the 
 aura of a Galahad. He was a handsome man, strong, 
 poised, serene; with an impress of mastery that was 
 never masterfulness; from whom virtue went out in 
 a kind of irresistible gentleness. A great soul shone 
 out of Michael Cudahy. But Michael at thirty-one to 
 Edward at thirteen was nearly as grand a person as 
 that other Michael of the flaming sword. 
 
 Four things happened in quick succession to Edward: 
 he was confirmed as "a soldier of Christ"; his mother 
 died; he left school; and he went to work with 
 Michael. All these were large events in his education, 
 differing enormously in themselves and in their effects 
 upon the boy Edward, but all converging to mark 
 another stage in his development: a new outpouring 
 of the grace of God, the first great tragedy of personal 
 
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 59 
 
 loss, the end of tutelage and formal lessons, and the 
 new bond of fellowship with the brother who had all 
 along been his leader and his ideal. And when those 
 four things happened to him, we may think that 
 Edward's boyhood was done. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 
 
 I 
 
 AT the close of the school term after he had com- 
 pleted his twelfth year, Edward Cudahy went to 
 work. It was the normal thing to do, in that period of 
 our history and in Edward's circumstances. No one 
 then considered it a hardship that a boy of twelve 
 should go to work. It was simply the next step in his 
 education, the entry into that apprenticeship which was 
 to take up where his school education left off. The boy 
 himself had to determine what benefit he was to get 
 out of his apprenticeship, just as nowadays he has to 
 determine what benefit he is to get out of his longer 
 years of schooling. 
 
 In the 1870's, just as now, a boy of twelve starting 
 out to earn his living, had no great plans in his head. 
 Even granted that he had grown out of the early irre- 
 sponsibility of boyhood, and that he was industrious 
 and ambitious, he was still bound to be pushed around 
 by circumstances. He had to blunder along, and take 
 his chances, and win what look like accidental vic- 
 tories, before he could be in a position to do any 
 managing of circumstances. To understand what was 
 happening to such a boy, we have only to know two 
 things: the circumstances in which Providence placed 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 61 
 
 him, and the personal qualities with which he faced 
 those circumstances. 
 
 To a casual observer, the circumstances of that 
 summer of 1872 might have seemed particularly favor- 
 able for a start in the American world of business. 
 The Northern States at least were humming with ac- 
 tivity. It was the last year of Grant's first term as 
 President, when Grant's own ineptitude and the scaly 
 character of some of his political friends were not yet 
 flagrantly manifest. The aftermath of the Franco- 
 Prussian War and a succession of poor harvests in 
 Europe had created a great demand for American ex- 
 ports. The rapid development of our railroads, 
 largely financed by Government funds, a great increase 
 in manufactures throughout the Northern States, the 
 beginnings of oil exploitation, the growth of the steel 
 industry, the spreading use of machinery in farming, 
 these were some of the indications of the industrial 
 revolution which our country was beginning to under- 
 go. Only the South was out of the movement; a fact 
 which many Southerners were blind enough to lament. 
 
 The North and even the West were on their way 
 to being urbanized. Within the lifetime of Edward 
 Cudahy, the population of the United States made as 
 nearly a complete change as was possible: from being 
 two-thirds rural it became two-thirds urban. The 
 swing to the cities was accelerated during the Civil 
 War and in the feverish boom that followed during 
 
62 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 some years after the war. The interests of the cities, 
 of manufactures, commerce, mechanized industries, 
 the new proletariat with a vote, dominated in our 
 political life, and were reflected in such literature as 
 we had. It was not astonishing that politicians, never 
 noted as a group for their intelligence or vision, should 
 have moved by instinct on the trail of wealth, seeking, 
 as always, the quickest way to wealth, not the most 
 secure or the most enduring. But before we blame 
 them, we must consider the fact that the politicians 
 only mirrored our national way of life. 
 
 The agrarian South was writhing under Reconstruc- 
 tion, its "Cotton Kingdom" broken and in confusion. 
 The agrarian West was beginning to make all over 
 again, in wheat, the mistakes of the cotton South: to 
 think of farming too exclusively in terms of the cash 
 crop, to be manufacturers of a staple rather than men 
 living on the land. It is a mistake which men have 
 been making over and over again, all through their 
 history; and the explanation of it can be put in one 
 word, greed. When the Western farmers began to 
 organize their "Granges" in 1867, it was not to safe- 
 guard and develop a way of life, but only to protest 
 against railroad rates which lessened their income from 
 their cash crops. 
 
 Yet the rise of the Granges is eloquent of the strain 
 already beginning to be set up between city and coun- 
 try. At least since the time of the Civil War, the 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 63 
 
 agrarian way of life has been on the defensive in our 
 country. Nor has the urban way of life been one of 
 peace and harmony. It is the mark of another great 
 social strain that the first national labor organization, 
 Uriah Stephens' "Noble Order of the Knights of 
 Labor", should have come into existence in 1869, ttui 
 first year of Grant's administration. 
 
 The problem of negro slavery had been settled, in 
 some fashion, by the Civil War; the problems of in- 
 dustrial slavery were only beginning. Perhaps the 
 oddest thing about that industrial slavery is that, in 
 its beginnings, it was so largely a voluntary slavery. 
 It is not altogether voluntary now, of course; men and 
 women born into a city environment and a developed 
 industrial system can rarely get out of it, even if they 
 wish to do so. But the earlier enormous migration 
 from the farms to the industrial centers was a volun- 
 tary response to the lure of the cities, the beckoning 
 of an apparently gayer life, of more money as wages, 
 and larger opportunities, real or imaginary, for be- 
 coming wealthy; and there are still many millions in 
 the cities who would consider their return to the land 
 as the ultimate catastrophe. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's father, as we have seen, had 
 wavered for some years between country and city. 
 Although all his instincts and traditions urged him 
 toward farming, he had, shortly after Edward's birth, 
 reluctantly given up his hope of making a sound start 
 
64 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 on the land, and had settled definitely in a city. His 
 reason for that decision was the powerful reason that 
 drove so many immigrants away from rural life: plain 
 poverty, the lack of capital needed for a farm. Gen- 
 erally, tenant farming has never offered prospects of 
 more than the most meagre livelihood; and ownership 
 farming called for an investment which Patrick Cudahy 
 could not make. 
 
 The manufacturing industries also demanded a 
 considerable capital investment. But they offered to the 
 man who had not enough capital to enter into manage- 
 ment of an industry at least the possibility that his 
 talent and application might lead him to share both in 
 the management and in the financial returns of some 
 industry. A man might hope to work to the top in 
 a shop or factory; he had no such hope as a laborer on 
 another man's farm. To the man without capital, the 
 city seemed the sole place of opportunity. 
 
 Edward Cudahy, when he went to work at twelve 
 years of age, did not figure out all these relations and 
 prospects; it is possible that he did not think about 
 them at all. But he did enter into them as concrete 
 circumstances. For better or for worse, his lot was 
 cast in the city; his apprenticeship was not to be in 
 the art of farming, but in some form of industry. The 
 particular industry he was to take up was settled for 
 him by another circumstance, the fact that his eldest 
 brother had been forging ahead as a meat packer. 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 65 
 
 Edward got a job, a very ordinary job, as an apprentice 
 in a packing house. His pay was fifty cents a day, 
 three dollars for a week of six ten-hour days. 
 
 II 
 
 The pay was that usually given to apprentice 
 workmen, at a time when section hands on the railroad 
 got only a dollar a day, and a moderately skilled 
 workman in the industries got a dollar and a half a 
 day. Edward's first tasks were such as running an 
 elevator, carrying meat to the smoke house, stencilling 
 labels on boxes. It was not particularly interesting 
 work in itself, and it could easily be nothing more than 
 the stodgy routine of manual labor. 
 
 But there was a chance for a smart boy to see, beyond 
 the routine, a co-ordinated process being carried out, 
 and to observe the way in which the process was 
 organized, and note how well or how ill its various 
 parts fitted together. The factual information which 
 even the dullest workman could not avoid picking up 
 then had a new value, as first-hand knowledge of 
 steps in the wider process. There was plenty of play 
 for business intelligence there: a good school in which 
 the apprentice could exercise his wits. In a short time, 
 Edward began to learn the skilled work of cutting 
 meats; and when he was only fifteen, he was qualified 
 in the specially skilled job of trimming hams. 
 
66 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Not every boy who went to work at a bench in a 
 packing house made shrewd use of the opportunities 
 of his apprenticeship, precisely as not every boy today 
 makes good use of his school opportunities. The 
 majority of workmen remain workmen; some of them 
 will even deny that they ever had opportunities to 
 become anything more in their industry. That Edward 
 Cudahy did learn abundantly through his apprentice- 
 ship has been made clear by his later success; he 
 worked very literally from the bottom to the top of the 
 meat industry. 
 
 What sort of industry was it in those years ? It was 
 founded upon the fact that meat has been all along 
 one of the chief items, perhaps the most important of 
 the items, of American food. Until the comparative- 
 ly recent indoctrination with the need of vegetables in 
 our diet, our people were definitely a meat-eating 
 people. That fact again rests upon the other fact, that 
 our country is capable of furnishing an abundance of 
 meat for our food. Obviously, the business of supply- 
 ing our people with meat, or with any other sort of 
 food, has always been an important business, even to 
 the silly individuals who turn up their noses at it. 
 
 Literature, music, and the other arts, the grave ways 
 of statesmanship, the graces of society, the impressive 
 delvings of scientists, all the activities in which men 
 take pride, would collapse with startling promptness 
 if the supply of food were withdrawn from the 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 67 
 
 practitioners of the arts and sciences. In a meat-eating 
 country, the most dignified and esthetic of men and 
 women depend closely upon the lowly butcher. As a 
 matter of fact, the whole history of any people is, of 
 course, intimately bound up with its food supply: a 
 fact at least to some extent appreciated by our his- 
 torians. It is here suggested that the men who main- 
 tain that food supply are quite as important as the men 
 who write about it or read about it. 
 
 In our country, as in every other, the business of 
 supplying meat to our people reflects the successive 
 changes in our national way of life. At first that 
 necessary service was carried on in the strictly in- 
 dividualistic or familial way natural amongst the 
 pioneering and agrarian population of the Colonies 
 and the early United States. Hunters and trappers 
 brought game from the woods and the prairies; 
 farmers raised and butchered hogs, sheep, and cattle. 
 
 But with the growth of the cities, the supply of meat 
 for food had to be managed in a larger and more 
 concentrated fashion. The supply of livestock had to 
 be organized between the producing farms and ranches 
 and the consuming cities. For the small cities, nearby 
 farms were adequate sources of supply; but as the 
 cities grew larger, the purveyor of meat had to range 
 farther afield for his hogs and cattle. That involved 
 problems of transportation, often over great distances. 
 The time element between producer of meat and 
 
68 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 consumer of meat was increased ; and, for a people who 
 came to insist upon fresh meat rather than salted or 
 smoked meat, that meant new problems of refrigerat- 
 ing meat. 
 
 It would be absurd to pretend that the twelve-year- 
 old chore boy in a Milwaukee packing house could 
 fully understand that the industry in which he was 
 making a modest beginning was just entering upon a 
 new complexity of organization, and was facing a 
 whole series of new problems. But the problems were 
 there, as part of the circumstances that were bound to 
 affect his business career. They were problems that 
 demanded for their solution brains as well as capital, 
 and that offered exceptional business opportunities to 
 the men capable of dealing with the problems. 
 
 Now, in retrospect, all that seems most obvious. 
 Yet even the pundits of the time apparently were not 
 much aware of the rapid expansion of the meat in- 
 dustry, and its growing importance in the general eco- 
 nomic scheme. In 1872, the year in which Edward 
 Cudahy started to work, a fat octavo volume of 1304 
 pages was published, written by a galaxy of "eminent 
 writers upon political and social economy" with Horace 
 Greeley at their head. It was an encyclopedic affair, 
 entitled The Great Industries of the United States, 
 and was published simultaneously in Hartford, Chica- 
 go and Cincinnati. It preserved a most decorous and 
 complete silence about the meat industry. The 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 69 
 
 "eminent writers" manifestly thought of industry 
 chiefly in terms of machinery; and there may have 
 been a little snobbishness back of the fact that the 
 organization of an important part of our food supply 
 escaped their attention. 
 
 If the eminent economists of the time failed to take 
 account of the meat industry, what likelihood was 
 there that the young apprentice in the industry should 
 view it in a large and intelligent way? There were 
 already some thousands of men engaged in the meat 
 industry. The majority of them never attained to any 
 mastery in the business, just plodded along in the slow 
 and limited advancement of permanent workmen. It 
 was not their fault; it was their inescapable limitation. 
 Any broad grasp of their industry was beyond their 
 native capacity. Edward Cudahy had natural ability 
 of an exceptional sort. In any industry, under any 
 normal set of circumstances, he could have made a 
 success of his business career. But he was unquestion- 
 ably helped toward eminence and leadership in the 
 meat industry by his brother Michael, who was super- 
 intendent of the packing house in which Edward 
 started to work. 
 
 The help that Michael gave him was not favoritism, 
 which is more often a hindrance than a help. Many 
 years afterwards, Edward recalled the pride he felt 
 when he was moved up from an apprentice to a jour- 
 neyman worker, and his pay was increased from fifty 
 
70 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 cents a day to a dollar and a quarter. That was in his 
 second year at the work. But he recalled also a cer- 
 tain chagrin over the fact that, even at the new wage, 
 he was being paid less than other workmen whose 
 skill he felt sure was not greater than his own. Michael 
 did not play favorites. 
 
 Michael Cudahy helped his youngest brother in two 
 ways. The first way was through his experience and 
 brilliant success in business; the second way was 
 through his example; and it would be a grave misap- 
 prehension of the two men and of the relations be- 
 tween them to underestimate the force and value of 
 Michael's example. When Edward was an old man, 
 and Michael in his grave for thirty years, the memory 
 of Michael's example was as alive as half a century 
 before, something woven through all the texture of 
 Edward's life. 
 
 The writer recalls that when first he tentatively 
 suggested to Edward Cudahy the idea of putting to- 
 gether this little biographical sketch, he was laughing- 
 ly evaded. He had to meet modesty with guile; but 
 all the guile needed was to turn the conversation to 
 the subject of Michael. Then Edward's eyes glowed 
 with old memories; he talked freely, enthusiastically. 
 
 It becomes really a part of Edward Cudahy's story 
 to summarize here, in very brief compass, the early 
 experience of his brother Michael in his business career. 
 Of the influence of Michael's character upon Edward, 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 71 
 
 much will have to be said as this account moves along. 
 That influence cannot be dissociated from any later 
 stage of Edward Cudahy's life. 
 
 Ill 
 
 At this distance of time, it would seem to have been 
 a matter of chance or accident that Michael Cudahy 
 began his business career in the meat-packing industry. 
 Frederick Layton and John Plankinton, as partners, 
 owned a slaughter-house not far from where Patrick 
 Cudahy and his family were living, in their log cabin 
 south of what is now Washington Park. When 
 Michael, in 1855, was looking for a place of employ- 
 ment, Layton and Plankinton' s were at hand. He 
 worked five years for them; then, in the year in which 
 Edward was born, he changed over to the employ of 
 another packer, an Englishman, Edward Roddis, with 
 whom he remained until Roddis went out of business 
 in 1866. 
 
 In both of these establishments, Michael made 
 steady advance in his knowledge of the packing in- 
 dustry. His wages with both firms also steadily in- 
 creased; and out of his wages he not merely con- 
 tributed to the maintenance and comfort of his family, 
 but managed to save a few hundred dollars. During 
 his six years with Roddis, the Civil War ran its bitter 
 course. Michael was not conscripted for army service; 
 
72 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 and although he debated long about volunteering, he 
 decided that his immediate obligations to his family 
 justified him in waiting until the government should 
 call him up. 
 
 When Roddis gave up his business in 1866, Michael, 
 then in his twenty-fifth year, undertook two important 
 ventures: with the savings from his earnings he began 
 a meat business of his own; and he married Catherine 
 Sullivan, the daughter of John Sullivan, a farmer living 
 near Milwaukee. The marriage venture was a great 
 success; but the business venture, because his capital 
 was too small, did not promise well. Michael sold the 
 business, and went back to work with one of his first 
 employers, Fred Layton, as inspector of meats. At the 
 same time, he became meat inspector for the Milwau- 
 kee Board of Trade. 
 
 In those early years of the meat-packing industry, 
 there was great shifting about of company organiza- 
 tions. The rapid expansion of the industry created 
 new needs of capital investment; perhaps even more 
 importantly, it involved swift changes of policy; and 
 both conditions brought about changes of personnel. 
 It was several decades before the packing companies 
 settled down into their definite forms, with some 
 promise of permanent establishments. 
 
 Thus, for example, Layton and Plankinton dissolved 
 their partnership in 1862, at which time Fred Layton 
 formed the distinct Layton and Company, and John 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 73 
 
 Plankinton took in as his junior partner a young man 
 of thirty, Philip Danforth Armour. Armour, whilst 
 still a partner in Plankinton and Armour, was invest- 
 ing some of his Milwaukee profits, as early as 1867, in 
 Armour and Company of Chicago, which was at first 
 managed by his younger brothers, Herman and Joseph. 
 Plankinton had money invested in various Armour 
 companies, in Chicago and Kansas City, until as late as 
 1884. 
 
 Armour's most brilliant work was as a trader. In 
 1864, foreseeing the approaching end of the Civil War 
 and the consequent drop in the prices of commodities, 
 he made a half-million dollars or more for Plankinton 
 and Armour by selling pork "short" at $40.00 a barrel, 
 and covering his sales at $18.00 a barrel. 1 But he was 
 not at that time a great manager of production. In 
 the year 1868, Plankinton and Armour operated their 
 Milwaukee packing-house at a loss. Then they got 
 Michael Cudahy to leave Layton and Company, and 
 become superintendent of their plant; and Michael 
 during the next year turned the operating deficit into 
 an $80,000 profit. Plankinton and Armour recognized 
 his ability and value to their firm by making him a 
 partner in 1873. 
 
 In the meantime, the Chicago house, known as 
 Armour and Company, was thriving. But Herman 
 
 1 Harper Leech and John Charles Carroll, Armour and 
 His Times, New York, 1938; p. 32. 
 
74 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Armour had left it in 1869, to become head of an 
 affiliation in New York; and Joseph Armour, never a 
 robust man, was in such failing health that in 1874 he 
 had to retire. That meant another shift in manage- 
 ment. Philip Armour agreed to take over the adminis- 
 tration of the Chicago house, on condition that he 
 be allowed to have Michael Cudahy as his production 
 manager. Michael was given an eighth interest in 
 Amour and Company, Plankinton retained another 
 eighth, and the Armours controlled the remaining 
 three fourths. In the autumn of 1874, Michael Cudahy 
 went to Chicago, leaving Milwaukee for good. His 
 brother Patrick succeeded him as superintendent for 
 Plankinton and Armour. His younger brother, 
 William, went with him; but after two years left to 
 go into a venture of buying hogs, in partnership with 
 a man named Oliver. 
 
 Back of that bald summary of facts, in which the 
 fourteen-year-old laborer became superintendent before 
 he had doubled his age, there is a hidden story of 
 vigorous and developing intelligence, of hard work, of 
 a quiet resoluteness, into which we cannot enter here. 
 We have only to note that the man who in that short 
 time came up from the workman's bench to the man- 
 agement of the plant had accumulated on the way a 
 wealth of experience. 
 
 He had learned the production end of the meat- 
 packing business in the thorough way of doing all the 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 75 
 
 details of production. He understood, from first-hand 
 knowledge, the workmen in the plant and the condi- 
 tions under which they worked, because he was himself 
 a workman. He had studied and practised the organi- 
 zation of labor and materials, the fitting of details into 
 the large plan of a process. When Edward came to 
 work under him, Michael had for three years been 
 superintendent of Plankinton and Armour's plant. He 
 was obviously well equipped to counsel and guide his 
 youngest brother. 
 
 IV 
 
 For a little more than two years, Edward Cudahy 
 worked in the Milwaukee packing house directly under 
 Michael ; and after Michael left, he remained there for 
 another two years before rejoining him in Chicago, 
 With his remarkable memory, he recalled, nearly 
 sixty-five years later, his train ride of ninety-odd miles 
 from Milwaukee to Chicago, the longest journey that 
 he, a boy of seventeen, had so far ever made. He 
 remembered, not merely that the day was St. Patrick's 
 Day, 1877, but that it was a Saturday, and that there 
 had been a heavy sleeting rain the night before, a rain 
 which froze as it fell, so that all through the country- 
 side the slow train rolled between the wintry branches 
 of trees shining and glittering in a coat of translucent 
 ice. 
 
 In Chicago, where he was now an employee of 
 
76 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Armour and Company, and to remain in their employ 
 for ten years more, Edward was given a chance to 
 move from the production department of the business 
 to the other side, the marketing, organization of supply, 
 transportation, refrigeration, and the like. He was first 
 promoted to be an office-boy, part of his tasks being 
 to carry messages between the working plant and the 
 offices of accounting and administration. After a year 
 or so of that sort of work, in which he could observe 
 the interrelations of the purchase, manufacture, and 
 sale of meats, he was set to work as a salesman in the 
 retail market. There he could learn what we have 
 come to dignify by the sounding name of buyer 
 psychology, the ways and means of the ultimate con- 
 sumer. From retail sales, he went on to the wholesale 
 market, to dealing with the large meat-shops and the 
 jobbers. 
 
 His experience and skill acquired in each section of 
 the business was a preparation for more comprehensive 
 understanding, and for larger responsibilities. His 
 daily work was a schooling, in which he added to his 
 store of factual knowledge, learned to appreciate the 
 relations between facts, learned the responses of men, 
 himself and others, to a variety of situations, developed 
 patience and good judgment in dealing with others, 
 and the power of prompt and accurate decision, and 
 self-control, and courage and adroitness in pinches: in 
 a word, built up all the skills and virtues of mind and 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 77 
 
 character which he would need as a successful manager 
 in his industry. 
 
 He was following in the steps of Michael ; and most 
 readily he recognized at all times that his advance in 
 business was made easier because Michael had trod the 
 path before him. His promotions were well-earned. 
 His ability was proven by the results he achieved at 
 each stage of his career. But it was Michael's precept 
 and example that constantly helped him to master each 
 new task and to bring into full play his native powers. 
 
 Michael, of course, brought his family with him 
 from Milwaukee and made a home for them in Chi- 
 cago. His first residence was on Wentworth Avenue, 
 near 37th Street. There Edward lived with Michael 
 and his family during the first nine years in Chicago, 
 up to the time of his own marriage. Their father 
 died in Milwaukee, in the home on 16th Street, at the 
 age of seventy-two, shortly after Edward had passed 
 his twenty-second birthday. He had been suffering 
 from asthma; his heart was affected; he died at night 
 in his sleep. But even before his father's death, 
 Edward, because he was eighteen years younger than 
 Michael, stood to his eldest brother almost in the place 
 of a son. 
 
 That close relationship between the two brothers 
 meant more to Edward Cudahy than can be put into 
 words, immeasurably more than deference to Michael's 
 success. Michael embodied ideals. He saw that 
 
78 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Michael's sturdy uprightness was a secret source of his 
 power with men, every whit as much as his fine in- 
 telligence. For instance, Michael never cut corners in 
 business; as a consequence, men trusted him entirely, 
 felt sure of him. Most of them knew little or nothing 
 of his religious convictions, of the steady guidance of 
 supernatural principles in his daily life, of the founda- 
 tions of his business morality; but they noted the re- 
 sults in his fairness, his generous honesty, his hatred of 
 double-dealing. 
 
 The senior partner of the firm, Philip D. Armour, 
 an immensely gifted man, and a generous and honor- 
 able man, had much more of the glamor of publicized 
 success than had Michael Cudahy. He had a large way 
 about him, almost blustering in its heartiness. He 
 might seem a most likely man to impress tremendously 
 an ambitious young fellow working up under him. 
 
 Edward Cudahy was fond of Armour, and grateful 
 for his friendship; but he did not look up to him as 
 he did to Michael. He appreciated Armour's great 
 ability and capacity for organization and shrewdness as 
 a trader; but he was only amused by Armour's pride. 
 One day, at the time when Edward was manager of the 
 beef department of Armour and Company, Armour 
 and he stood looking out of an office window as one 
 of the company wagons passed by in the street. The 
 name "Armour" was painted large on the side of the 
 wagon. 
 
APPRENTICESHIP IN BUSINESS 79 
 
 Armour cried out: "See that name, Ed? That's what 
 sells the beef!" 
 
 When the beef manager recalled the incident, more 
 than fifty-five years later, he added: 
 
 "I couldn't help contrasting Armour's bragging with 
 Michael's balance and sense of humor, which made any 
 such boasting impossible to him." 
 
 Scores of such incidents could be culled from 
 Edward's talk of Michael, as illustrations of how 
 Michael was the measure of excellence during all the 
 years of their close companionship. The apprentice in 
 the meat industry never doubted that he had in Michael 
 Cudahy the best teacher that a man could have. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 WIDENING HORIZONS 
 
 Amongst those rather terrifying people, the 
 educationists, it has long been a handy conven- 
 tion to divide up into sections or stages the linked and 
 unbroken sequence of a human being's development. 
 Even as artificial divisions, these stages cannot be 
 denned with exactitude. Infancy, childhood, boyhood, 
 adolescence, youth, are all flexible denominations, 
 nearly as loose and shifting in their meaning as modern 
 monetary terms. But they still manage to convey an 
 idea and a classification of growth that correspond in 
 some rough way with reality. Indeed, the terms are 
 recognized sharply enough to allow of disputes about 
 the comparative importance of the various stages of 
 education: extremely futile disputes, for the most part. 
 Keeping away from the debating-society contentions, 
 such as whether or not adolescence is a more important 
 educational period than childhood, we can at least 
 consider briefly the adolescent Edward Cudahy, and try 
 to get some notion of how he was developing on his 
 way to full manhood. As that stage in his education 
 occurred at the time when his environment was 
 appreciably changed, we shall have to keep an eye also 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 81 
 
 on the interrelations of the youth and his new condi- 
 tions of life. 
 
 When Edward Cudahy came to Chicago, in that 
 March of 1877, although he was only a few months 
 past his seventeenth birthday, he was nearly six feet 
 tall, muscular, but still with the angular rawness of a 
 growing boy. He was impressive rather than good- 
 looking, filled with energy which he was already learn- 
 ing to restrain and control. His temper and his mind 
 were quick, but both were disciplined. An alert intel- 
 ligence and a capacity for resolute purpose somehow 
 made themselves felt in his strongly modelled face, 
 his steady dark eyes. He had a thick shock of unruly 
 black hair, slightly prominent eyes, and decidedly 
 prominent ears. He had very good muscular coordina- 
 tion, was light on his feet, quick and vigorous in move- 
 ment. 
 
 His hours of work were long, from seven in the 
 morning, or often earlier, until six in the evening. The 
 work was now beginning to be a more varied sort of 
 work, involving wider contacts with people and a 
 chance to observe and study a larger range of business 
 relations. It was work that called for enough physical 
 activity to give abundant outlet to a lively boy's energy, 
 and that kept presenting new types of problems for his 
 mind to grapple with. We shall see some details of 
 that work in the next chapter. Here we have only to 
 note that his mind and body were busy in occupations 
 
82 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 that did not lack interest or even a certain amount of 
 novelty. 
 
 The discipline of nearly five years of steady and 
 monotonous manual labor, added to his sound family 
 training, had already developed in Edward Cudahy 
 habits of industry and the self-control needed for suc- 
 cessful application to work. He had acquired a matur- 
 ity of outlook which we do not commonly find in boys 
 who have had a softer training. Hence, without being 
 at all cramped or repressed, he had not the usual boy's 
 restlessness under the daily burden of work, or that 
 craving for play and entertainment which so often 
 makes all work hateful to a boy. 
 
 In other words, he had already been getting a good 
 education in and through and by work. He had come 
 to know by experience, long before he could formulate 
 the truth, that a man's daily labor may be one of the 
 most influential educative agencies in his life. The 
 necessity to labor, which men have inherited as one of 
 the consequences of original sin, is by no means an 
 unmixed evil ; it can be turned into a most positive and 
 useful force for good. 
 
 But not by work alone does a man live, nor by work 
 alone is a lad in his late teens to be shaped into a 
 rounded and balanced man. That world of work is 
 too narrow for the human spirit, which, because it 
 has been made by God capable of delight even in God 
 Himself, instinctively reaches out for new experiences, 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 83 
 
 new knowledge, new emotional satisfactions. Even the 
 boy's play is part of his groping for the unnamed and, 
 sadly enough, often unknown fulness of the soul's 
 activity. 
 
 Men try to find that larger world through many 
 kinds of effort. To some it seems that books may 
 contain and reveal it, and they become eager readers 
 and students; but these men are always a rather small 
 minority. A still smaller number of men seek that 
 larger life in prayer and worship, the contemplatives 
 and mystics. Other men look to the beauty of this 
 world for their entry into a fuller life; and these men 
 range all the way from great artists to sodden sensual- 
 ists, although most of them are neither, but are only 
 vague dilettanti, capable of no definite excellence and 
 apathetic even in their vices. To others, the satisfac- 
 tions of pride and ambition, in display of wealth or the 
 exercise of power or even the most paltry notoriety of 
 newspaper publicity, seem to be the highest concepts of 
 felicity within the compass of their minds. But, one 
 way or another, all men, even if they do not try to 
 shirk the burden of toil altogether, thrust out beyond 
 the day's work to some vague ideal of wider accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 Michael Cudahy, for instance, was a reader and stu- 
 dent. He found solace in books, after his intense work 
 of the day; he found in books a riper wisdom than the 
 rather hard, money-grubbing world of business had 
 
84 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 ever visioned. He was a genuine reader; and the 
 genuine reader is so rare, in a world flooded with 
 books, that most of Michael's friends looked upon him 
 with an awe that was half reverence and half bewild- 
 ered amazement. 
 
 But Edward, as a young man, did little reading. He 
 was intellectually quick, he picked up languages with 
 rather astonishing ease, he spoke correctly and vividly; 
 but he was not a man of books. The difference be- 
 tween the two brothers here was a difference of tem- 
 perament. Michael was extremely reserved, grave, and 
 serious; not a lover of talk, although he talked well. 
 He was bored by cards and games and much else that 
 passed with others for amusement. Edward was more 
 lively, took more pleasure in the company and conver- 
 sation of others, was ready for a lark or a game when 
 the chance offered. In those qualities, Edward re- 
 sembled more his brother John than he resembled 
 Michael; and John Cudahy was at that time already 
 known as a wit, a dashing speculator in the grain and 
 commodity markets, an exciting and altogether more 
 glamorous person than Michael. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's religious life, like that of his 
 brothers, was earnest and sincere. He was not only 
 faithful in the observance of his religious practices as 
 a Catholic, such as daily prayer, attendance at Mass, the 
 due reception of the Sacraments, but he embodied 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 85 
 
 Catholic principles in his everyday conduct, in his per- 
 sonal and business morality. We shall have occasion 
 later to say something more in detail of this influence 
 of his religion upon his way of life. But he was not, by 
 temperament or by other special gifts of God, num- 
 bered amongst those for whom prayer and worship are 
 a major preoccupation, a conscious and cultivated skill, 
 taking up a considerable part of the time and energy 
 of each day. Such fortunate men are always few in 
 number, the men who begin to enjoy upon earth that 
 which will be their chief activity in heaven. 
 
 Nor was he a poet, painter, or musician. He had 
 no impulse within him to try his hand as a creator in 
 the fine arts or in literature. As a young man of Irish 
 descent, with a tradition not untouched by what we 
 may respectfully call a kind of Catholic puritanism, he 
 had something of an undefined mistrust of the arts 
 that deal with beauty. In time, as his education ad- 
 vanced, he was to find a humble and genuine enjoy- 
 ment of the good things that the arts offer; but that 
 growth came strongly only after new influences had 
 entered his life. 
 
 Yet if a man is neither a prig nor an ascetic saint nor 
 a brutal materialist, if he is neither inhuman nor super- 
 human, he can scarcely avoid some interest in literature 
 and the arts, at least in so far as these catch and hold 
 the pageantry of life. Even a workman can get new 
 understanding of his work, new glimpses of its wider 
 
86 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 relations, by seeing it represented in painting or sculp- 
 ture or drama. And beyond understanding alone, the 
 arts can bring us into emotional touch with the rich 
 beauty of this world, that beauty which may either 
 faintly mirror the eternal Beauty or may obscure it to 
 the point of oblivion. Analysis of technical skill in the 
 arts is the business of the trained expert; but the con- 
 crete power of the arts affects every human being. 
 
 Partly by the accident of circumstances, partly be- 
 cause it suited his temperament and tastes, Edward 
 Cudahy's early approach to great literature and art was 
 through the drama: not a bad approach for the imagin- 
 ation of a hard-working young man engaged in the 
 prosaic meat business. He had no ambition to write 
 or act plays; he was never even guilty of amateur per- 
 formances; but he was enthusiastically interested in 
 seeing and hearing the great plays acted. 
 
 II 
 
 Those who do not know their history may raise eye- 
 brows over any mention of serious and well-acted 
 drama in connection with Chicago of the late 70' s and 
 early 80's. Not only in some parts of Europe, but also, 
 and perhaps more jeeringly, nearer at home in the older 
 cities of our eastern seaboard, Chicago has been the 
 synonym of crudity and boorishness, and has provided 
 the supercilious with a supreme expression of 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 87 
 
 humorous contempt in the epithet, "Chicago pork- 
 packer." Chicago can bear up cheerfully under that con- 
 tempt, and so can most of the pork-packers. As a mat- 
 ter of simple historical fact, the crude, rough, and un- 
 forgivably young Chicago had a much better theatre 
 sixty years ago than is to be found today either in Chi- 
 cago or in older American cities. 
 
 As far back as April, 1853, when the city charter was 
 only twenty years old, and the city population around 
 30,000, Ole Bull had played and Adelina Patti had 
 sung for Chicagoans. The tough citizens had to plod 
 through deep slush and mud to get to the Metropolitan 
 Hall, which Jason Gurley had built two years before, 
 at Randolph and LaSalle Streets, and which seated 
 3,000 people, one-tenth of the total population of the 
 city; but they came eagerly. They had a theatre before 
 they got around to laying a few planks in their low, 
 muddy streets to make "corduroy roads." John B. Rice 
 built his theatre in 1847, on Randolph Street, just east 
 of Dearborn. That was eight years before the city 
 fathers decided that they must raise the level of Chi- 
 cago's streets twelve feet to make traffic reasonably pos- 
 sible, and twelve years before the first mile of horse- 
 drawn railway was laid on State Street. 
 
 The old Rice's theatre was burned down in June, 
 1850; but not until it had been filled many times with 
 enthusiastic audiences to see Edwin Forrest and Junius 
 Brutus Booth in 1848. In that same year 1848, James 
 
88 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 McVicker, whose name was to be linked with the Chi- 
 cago theatre for several generations, made his appear- 
 ance in the city as an actor. In 1857, McVicker built 
 his own theatre on Madison Street, near State, at the 
 huge cost, for those days, of $85,000. When the Great 
 Fire destroyed McVicker' s Theatre fourteen years later, 
 he rebuilt it in 1872 on the same site. It was remodel- 
 led in 1885, and again burned down in August, 1890. 
 
 Just before the Fire, Richard M. Hooley had refash- 
 ioned the ten-year-old Bryan Hall, on Clark Street, into 
 Hooley's Theatre. When it was burned down, he re- 
 built it on Randolph Street. The old Adelphi, later 
 Haverley's Theatre, stood at Dearborn and Monroe 
 Streets from 1874 to 1882, then was moved a short 
 space away on Monroe Street, with Robson and Crane 
 opening the new theatre in a performance of Twelfth 
 Night, on September 12th, 1882. The Central Music 
 Hall, at the corner of State and Randolph Streets, was 
 built in 1874; and the Chicago Opera House, with a 
 capacity of 2,300 people, was built in 1885, at Clark 
 and Washington Streets. There is no need to men- 
 tion the many minor theatres of the city. 
 
 Thus there were theatres ready for young Edward 
 Cudahy when he came to Chicago in 1877. The city 
 had then grown to a population of some 400,000. It 
 had recovered from the Great Fire, and struggled 
 through the panic of 1873, and the "hard times" of 
 1875 and 1876. Business was picking up enough to 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 89 
 
 make the times ripe for the bitter railway strike of 
 1877, in which Albert Richard Parsons, in his boyhood 
 a Confederate soldier and now a radical socialist, led 
 the men in their demand for an eight-hour day — poor 
 Parsons, who was hanged ten years later for his share 
 in the Haymarket Riot of May 4th, 1886. Chicago was 
 still a tough city, struggling violently with its material 
 and social problems; a gross and lusty city; but it had 
 time and taste for the theatre. 
 
 What sort of plays and actors appeared in those 
 early theatres? Both were a mixed lot: cheap farce, 
 vulgar skits, and melodrama side by side with Shake- 
 speare; ranting nobodies rubbing shoulders with men 
 and women of international fame. Joseph Jefferson 
 brought Dion Boucicault's revision of Rip Van Winkle 
 to McVicker's Theatre both before and after the Great 
 Fire. Adelaide Neilson played "Juliet" m Chicago in 
 1872, and "Beatrice" in 1874. Lawrence Barrett 
 brought Hamlet in the 70's, and Richelieu in the 80's. 
 Mary McVicker played "Juliet" to Edwin Booth's 
 "Romeo" in her father's theatre; and there Booth 
 later played in Hamlet, Othello, and Lear. Helena 
 Modjeska played "Olivia" and "Rosalind" in 1883; 
 Ellen Terry played "Portia", "Viola", and "Ophelia" 
 in 1884-1885; and Mary Anderson played "Rosalind" 
 in 1885. Henry Irving, after breaking up some of the 
 old traditions of the stage in England, came to the 
 United States in 1883, and in 1884 and 1885 brought 
 
90 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 to Chicago The Bells, The Merchant of Venice, Ham- 
 let, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twejth Night. 
 
 Poor John McCullough, born in Ireland in 1832, and 
 driven out by the Famine in 1847, learned the art of 
 acting under Edwin Forrest, and was Lawrence Bar- 
 rett's partner, from 1866 to 1870, in the California 
 Theatre, San Francisco. He first came to Chicago in 
 1874, and returned frequently, playing "Othello", 
 "Brutus," "Virginius", "Spartacus", and "Richard III." 
 It was in McVicker's Theatre, on September 29th, 
 1884, that the madness which had been showing itself 
 for a year and a half, caused his violent collapse. 
 
 These are great names in the history of the theatre, 
 great to more than the laudator temporis acti. It is not 
 without significance that the tough Chicagoans flocked 
 to see fine performances, and that even to their un- 
 formed taste the plays of Shakespeare, nobly acted, 
 made a consistent and unfailing appeal. So, nearly 
 three hundred years earlier, the equally tough citizens 
 of London had flocked to the Globe Theatre to see 
 Hamlet, and Othello, and Lear, when the author of the 
 plays was only a local boy with a local reputation. 
 Those early Chicagoans were not high-brows; they 
 were just rough fellows, not yet spoiled by sophistica- 
 tion, by an overdose of poor schools, and by the cul- 
 tivated passivity which marks the age of the "movies"; 
 and hence they had few barriers between them and the 
 rich humanity of Shakespearean drama. 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 91 
 
 That was what drew the young Edward Cudahy to 
 the theatre: Shakespeare's amazing vision of life. To 
 have that set before him, in the acting of great artists, 
 was indeed to widen his horizons. We are also told 
 something definite about the stage of Edward's educa- 
 tion by the fact that he was so drawn. He could have 
 found entertainment aplenty in the Chicago theatres 
 that offered melodrama and farce and burlesque. But, 
 whether or not he realized it, he wanted more than en- 
 tertainment. Every good intelligence is fastidious; it 
 is annoyed by the cheap and second-rate. Every man 
 who has ever made a good job of educating himself 
 is not content with less than the best he can get; and 
 that was what Edward Cudahy wanted. 
 
 Another thing: there is in the enjoyment of great 
 plays greatly acted a larger intellectual element than 
 there is in the enjoyment of music and other fine arts. 
 Emotion is, it is true, the soul of drama as of all the 
 other arts; drama is dead without emotion; but there 
 is also vision, mind, philosophic intelligence, most 
 evident and compelling in great plays. It was char- 
 acteristic of Edward Cudahy' s active mind that he 
 sought for this element of understanding in the midst 
 of the emotional sweep of the theatre. He used often 
 to say that it was the portrayal of living qualities that 
 held his interest in the drama, that he looked upon the 
 plot as a foil for the play of those qualities, that all 
 emotion got its value from the interrelated humanity of 
 
92 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 the action. There are some who will admit that as 
 good criticism. In any case, it reveals the way in which 
 he approached Shakespeare's plays. 
 
 It was an educational experience for Edward Cudahy 
 to steep his mind in the speech and thought of Shake- 
 speare, made alive for him by some of the best actors 
 that the American stage has known. That sort of edu- 
 cational influence is all the more powerful because it is 
 not thought of or recognized at the time as educational ; 
 it has no passive resistance to overcome, as schools 
 have. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In the meantime, new influences arose in the life of 
 Edward Cudahy, which were to have greater and more 
 lasting effect than the theatre upon his education. One 
 of the most profound changes in his social and cultural 
 environment was bound up with circumstances which, 
 at first sight, might seem entirely remote and imper- 
 sonal. It is interesting to note briefly the connection 
 between the two, a connection beginning with the 
 growth of the city. 
 
 By 1880, Chicago had attained a population of half 
 a million, and was still growing steadily, enlarging and 
 consolidating its many business interests, sharpening 
 its contrasts of great wealth and great poverty, as large 
 cities have always done, developing its Gold Coast and 
 its slums, although both were much smaller than its 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 93 
 
 modestly comfortable residence areas. It was putting 
 up large public buildings, which it hoped were hand- 
 some buildings, laying out parks, going in for libraries 
 and museums and more and more schools. It had 651 
 miles of streets, of which considerably less than one- 
 fourth were paved, mostly with cedar blocks. It was 
 even thinking seriously of diverting its sewage from 
 Lake Michigan, out of which it drew its appallingly 
 polluted drinking water. It was a city filled with vital 
 energy, swaggering over its achievements, ambitious 
 for greater achievements, and not incapable of self- 
 criticism in order to further its ambitions. 
 
 Was it part of the swagger or part of the self-critical 
 hope and ambition that made the churches of Chicago 
 rival one another in their elaborate music? No doubt, 
 the operatic vocal and organ performances, which were 
 beginning to be lavish even in the comparatively poor 
 Catholic churches, were inspired by zeal for the glory 
 of God's house. But equally beyond doubt, both pastor 
 and congregation, in many an instance, loved a good 
 show, were proud of their elaborate music, and had a 
 very human hope that their choir could outsing any 
 other choir in the city. 
 
 The church in which Edward Cudahy heard Mass 
 and received the Sacraments was St. James Church. It 
 was one of the older churches of the city, from I860 
 an off shot of St. Bridget's in Bridgeport, and from 1866 
 to 1879 on Prairie Avenue between 26th and 27th 
 
94 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Streets. Then the new church, a handsome, substantial 
 stone structure, was built at Wabash Avenue and 29th 
 Street, a mile or so from Michael Cudahy's home. In 
 that year, 1879, Bishop Thomas Foley died, and in the 
 year following Chicago was made an archdiocese, with 
 Patrick A. Feehan as its first archbishop. 
 
 St. James parish had been growing in population, 
 so that when the Reverend Hugh McGuire became its 
 pastor in 1883, he had to have three assistant priests to 
 aid in caring for the parish. It was also, in those years, 
 one of the wealthier parishes of the city. Naturally, it 
 had to have the best music it could command. Father 
 McGuire, a dynamic person, reached out as far as Mil- 
 waukee for a talented young soprano, Elizabeth 
 Murphy. 
 
 Miss Murphy not only had a good voice, she had 
 also enjoyed excellent training, and had completed a 
 long course of study in Milwaukee by two years at a 
 musical conservatory in Boston. She came from Mil- 
 waukee each Sunday for the High Mass and Vespers, 
 and was paid what was then the munificent salary of 
 $1,500 a year. St. James was very proud of her. 
 
 Edward Cudahy at that time did not know much 
 about music, sacred or profane. He agreed with the 
 congregation of St. James that Elizabeth Murphy was 
 a grand singer; but he had more than the congrega- 
 tion's interest in Miss Murphy as a person. She was 
 neat and compact of figure, with clear-cut, regular 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 95 
 
 features, eyes full of laughter and intelligence, a wealth 
 of wavy blond hair. She was very jolly, a good com- 
 panion, spirited and courageous and kind. Edward 
 thought she was the nicest girl in the world; and he 
 kept on thinking so until she left this world, fifty-four 
 years later. Elizabeth had some similar notions about 
 the strapping young fellow who was coming along so 
 fast with Armour and Company. They were married 
 on Thanksgiving Day, November 27th, 1884, in the 
 cathedral of Milwaukee. 
 
 If Chicago had not been getting richer and more am- 
 bitious, if its ambition had not extended to its church 
 music, if the parish in which Edward Cudahy lived had 
 not joined in that musical ambition, if his parish priest 
 had not brought Elizabeth Murphy from Milwaukee to 
 sing in St. James Church, Edward would not have met, 
 courted, and won Elizabeth; but all these things hap- 
 pened in due course, and so wrought an immense 
 change in the life of Edward Cudahy. 
 
 It is not open to debate that a man's marriage has a 
 lot to do with his education. Nor is the truth of that 
 statement affected by the unpleasant fact that many 
 marriages turn out unhappily. In the United States, if 
 we take the statistics of our divorce courts as a rough 
 basis of judgment, about one marriage in five is a flat 
 failure. Perhaps men and women now expect too 
 much from marriage, because they have been caught 
 by romantic ideals which carry with them a definite 
 
96 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 danger of disillusionment. Whenever romantic ideals, 
 in marriage or in anything else, are actually realized, 
 it is always through steady and persistent efforts that 
 are as heroic as the ideals are high. Too often, how- 
 ever, the people who cherish the ideals are not capable 
 of the sustained efforts demanded by the ideals. Yet 
 even these failures in marriage must have some effect, 
 good or bad, upon the man and woman concerned in 
 them. If the effect is unfortunately bad, if it results 
 in damage to the man or woman, it is still influential 
 in shaping their characters, in educating them. 
 
 The core of a successful marriage, as every one 
 knows, is mutual love. In this country at least, it is 
 safe to say that scarcely any marriages are entered into 
 without some love; the manage de convenance is not 
 common here. The difficulty is to keep that mutual 
 love alive and enduring. Its enemies are not merely 
 selfishness of various sorts, but also fatigue in the face 
 of economic problems, diversity of tastes and social 
 preferences, and the thousand and one impacts of the 
 psychological differences between a man and a woman. 
 So manifold is the difficulty that marital love seems 
 to be like sanctity in this, that it cannot stand still; it 
 must grow or decay. 
 
 We may consider as at least a minor apologetic for 
 the supernatural character and power of Christianity 
 that it can conserve, nourish, and strengthen love be- 
 tween husband and wife; that it can not merely defend 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 97 
 
 the principle of monogamy, but can equip men and 
 women with the virtues needed to make the principle 
 work out in practice. "Charity is patient, is kind . . . 
 hopeth all things, endureth all things," wrote St. Paul; 1 
 and the Church not only teaches that the abiding ele- 
 ment in marriage is charity, and not romantic love, but 
 also offers through its Sacraments the means of preserv- 
 ing and increasing charity. On the other hand, it is 
 because so many of our people have lost the super- 
 natural aids which infuse and increase charity that we 
 have the highest divorce rate in the world. 
 
 Edward and Elizabeth Cudahy were very much in 
 love with each other. They had, moreover, excellent 
 natural qualities with which to begin their married life: 
 good constitutions, good tempers, good intelligence. 
 But so had many thousands of other young men and 
 women whose marriage afterwards went on the rocks. 
 It was more important to Edward and Elizabeth Cu- 
 dahy that they had the principles and the virtues and 
 the supernatural means to enable them to keep on be- 
 ing in love with each other; it was these gifts that 
 were to carry them, "for better, for worse, for richer, 
 for poorer, in sickness and in health," to their golden 
 wedding, with their children and children's children 
 about them, in serene harmony, in mutual helpfulness, 
 and an affection for each other that had grown through 
 the fifty years. 
 
 1 I Corinthians, xiii:4-7. 
 
98 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 But the golden wedding was a long way off in 1884. 
 Elizabeth Cudahy's plans were much closer at hand: 
 to make a home for themselves and the children that 
 God would give them; and, like every good wife, to 
 take over the education of her husband. 
 
 IV 
 
 So far as schooling went, Elizabeth Cudahy had had 
 an ampler education than her husband; and he, with 
 his characteristic modesty, was willing to hold himself 
 as her pupil in the two fields in which she was obvious- 
 ly his superior, music and literature. It is quite pos- 
 sible that in quick intelligence, in swift and accurate 
 grasp of a statement of fact or principle, in the devel- 
 oped power to assemble the elements of a problem and 
 to hold before his mind, clear and unconfused, the 
 complex grounds upon which to form a judgment, Ed- 
 ward was by far the better educated of the two. His 
 education was of the harder, male, bread-and-butter 
 sort; hers was richer in the graces of life. 
 
 If we could get the material for a thorough study 
 of the educational influences exercised upon each other 
 by Edward and Elizabeth Cudahy, we should have an 
 immensely valuable document. But in their case, as 
 in the case of every other husband and wife, such mu- 
 tual influence defies observation and report. It is wov- 
 en through the two lives, so intricately, so ubiquitously, 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 99 
 
 so constantly, in such a multitude of detailed interac- 
 tions, that it cannot be analyzed. It is immeasurably 
 more than mutual instruction, one imparting knowl- 
 edge of fact or truth or method to the other. It is an 
 intercommunication of skills, habits, intellectual vir- 
 tues, tastes and appreciations, in which the emotional, 
 instinctive, and volitional impulses figure as largely as 
 the intellectual. No two persons can get on each 
 other's nerves as badly as can a husband and wife; no 
 two persons can drag each other down so desperately, 
 or lift each other up to such heights, as can a husband 
 and wife. For good or for ill, the school of marriage 
 can be the most intensive school that men know. 
 
 For our purpose here we can only note a few out- 
 standing facts as they affected the education of Edward 
 Cudahy. The first fact is that he learned to appreciate 
 music and to delight in it. He learned in the only 
 way in which it is practicable to learn: by listening to 
 a great deal of good music, under competent guid- 
 ance. Elizabeth, as an intelligent teacher, limited her 
 efforts to what was within the reach of a busy man, 
 who aimed, not at performing, but at understanding 
 and enjoying music. She played and sang for him, 
 gradating her range of music to his developing taste; 
 she analyzed the larger musical works, showed their 
 structure, the threads of motif running through them. 
 He was an apt pupil; he had a good ear, a quick 
 responsive understanding, the imaginative sympathy 
 
100 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 requisite for catching the indefinable emotional content 
 of music. In no great time, when Elizabeth was pre- 
 paring for a concert, she came to trust her husband's 
 critical judgment as most accurate and dependable. His 
 verdict was the final assurance that she was ready for 
 her public performance. 
 
 The second fact about this stage of Edward Cudahy's 
 education is that he learned to read. Elizabeth Cudahy 
 already had a fairly wide acquaintance with books; 
 more importantly, she had acquired the habit of books. 
 Whether or not that is always a good habit depends 
 upon a number of circumstances. But in any case, the 
 habit of turning to books for information, guidance, 
 understanding, and entertainment undoubtedly puts a 
 distinct mark upon its possessor. Edward and Eliza- 
 beth Cudahy read a great deal together: an excellent 
 way to read, since it stimulates discussion, and opens 
 up new reaches of understanding through the interplay 
 of the two minds centered upon the book. Much of 
 their reading they did aloud. Later on, when Eliza- 
 beth's eyesight was affected, Edward regularly read for 
 her. 
 
 Not so long ago, many thousands of people in the 
 United States bought a volume by Mortimer Adler, en- 
 titled How to Read a Book. Most of these purchasers, 
 it is safe to say, were men and women who would have 
 been offended by the statement that they did not know 
 how to read; all of them had spent a number of years 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 101 
 
 in schools, engaged with books; but they must have 
 had some suspicion that there might be more to read- 
 ing a book than had so far come within the range of 
 their experience. Mr. Adler was ready to tell them the 
 plain truth, that they were passive, not active, readers, 
 that a poor system of school-education had left them 
 incompetent in the art of reading. He then rather 
 laboriously pointed out to them some simple rules of 
 method in reading, which they should have learned in 
 the grade schools. 
 
 Edward and Elizabeth Cudahy, like countless others 
 of their generation, had learned to read well when 
 they were children. As they continued their own edu- 
 cation, they steadily increased their ability to read, be- 
 came more and more mentally alive in their reading, 
 eager to come to terms with the author, to grasp his 
 meaning in the large and in detail, to test his state- 
 ments in the light of their own growing store of prin- 
 ciples. The effect of that sort of reading upon their 
 education was cumulative. As the long years of inter- 
 ested activity in books went on, they steadily enriched 
 their minds, and developed their powers of understand- 
 ing, appreciating, and judging. 
 
 Their reading was not consciously a study. They read 
 because they enjoyed reading; and in their choice of 
 books they were guided, not by any scheduled pro- 
 gramme, but by their own tastes and preferences. Those 
 preferences were for works of history, biography, 
 
102 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 belles lettres, religion, and fiction; they did not extend 
 to works of philosophy or science, except of the super- 
 ficial, popular kind. Edward and Elizabeth Cudahy 
 modestly assumed that scientific works were beyond 
 their depth. 
 
 If there was a definite flaw in their choice of reading, 
 it came from the fact that they were inevitably influ- 
 enced by the current fashion in books. They suffered, 
 as millions of others suffer, from the assumption that 
 books fulsomely touted by reviewers, and as a conse- 
 quence widely talked about, were worth reading. That 
 is an affliction hard to escape in this modern world of 
 book propaganda. But to the credit of Edward and 
 Elizabeth Cudahy it must be said that they stood upon 
 their own principles in evaluating what they read. They 
 might be hustled into buying stupid books by the pres- 
 sure of mob-opinion; but they did not surrender their 
 judgment as readers to any mob-opinion; they rejected 
 the trashy books by the test of their own knowledge 
 and intelligence. 
 
 Their library, which in time amounted to several 
 thousand books, was no dead collection. These were 
 books they had read, many of which had entered into 
 their minds as their permanent possession. A cata- 
 logue of their library would be a revelation of their 
 interests and tastes, a reflection of one part of their in- 
 tellectual development. 
 
 These rough jottings can at most only hint at the 
 
WIDENING HORIZONS 103 
 
 processes and results of Edward Cudahy's education 
 during the years of his late youth and early manhood. 
 But they may serve to bring out the fact that he was, 
 in those years, doing much more than making a suc- 
 cess of his business efforts. His eager mind caught at 
 every opportunity to exercise itself, to extend its reach. 
 He had no conscious purpose of self-education, no sel- 
 fish ambition to excel. The men who make a good job 
 of their education are rarely moved by such purposes; 
 they seem to be driven by impulses more purely native 
 to them, more obscure, more nearly instinctive. In a 
 true sense, it was as natural, and perhaps as mysterious, 
 for a man of Edward Cudahy's mental energy to be 
 intellectually and esthetically active as it is for a lazy 
 man to loaf. Besides, it must be remembered, Edward 
 Cudahy had built up through his boyhood those habits 
 of industry, mental as well as physical, which gather 
 momentum with the years, which grow by what they 
 feed upon. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 MASTERY IN BUSINESS 
 
 I 
 
 This book, as has already been indicated, is not 
 primarily a story of business; it is something 
 quite different, a sketch of a man engaged in business. 
 The details of Edward Cudahy's business career have 
 their value here because of the man, not because of the 
 business. Yet even with this distinction carefully kept, 
 it is necessary, for an understanding of Edward Cudahy 
 the businessman, to consider at least briefly the char- 
 acter and circumstances of the meat business in which 
 he was engaged during his long life. 
 
 A great deal has been written about the meat indus- 
 try, either in criticism, or in defense and praise, of the 
 way in which it has been conducted. Yet it is rather 
 astonishing how little general knowledge there is of 
 the essential character of the industry and its place in 
 our national economy. It may be worth while, there- 
 fore, to summarize here a few significant facts about 
 the production, handling, and consumption of meats in 
 the United States. 
 
 The first group of facts indicate the importance of 
 the meat industry. It is, to begin with, one of our 
 largest industries. Its sales, in 1937, a poor year, 
 amounted to nearly three and a third billion dollars, 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 105 
 
 roughly about one-twentieth of the national income. 
 Averaging the last fifteen years or so, its production of 
 meats and lard runs to about fifty million pounds a day. 
 It gives the farmers of the nation one-fourth of their 
 total income, as compared with less than one-fifth for 
 dairy products, less than one-seventh for fruits and 
 vegetables, and only about one-tenth for cotton and 
 cotton-seed. 
 
 Even after the huge expansion of our manufacturing 
 industries, meat packing still holds its lead in value of 
 products. In the past twenty years, it has ranked first 
 or second in output, keeping about even pace with the 
 automobile industry, and ahead of the steel industry. 1 
 It provides employment for about 160,000 persons, 
 with an annual payroll of about $250,000,000; it is the 
 intermediary between six million American livestock 
 farmers and the 200,000 retailers who supply with 
 meat our population of 130,000,000. 
 
 These facts are one measure of the importance of the 
 meat industry. Another measure is the fact that our 
 people consume about 135 pounds of meat products 
 per person each year, which makes these products a 
 large item in our budget for food. In fact, the mere 
 bulk of the sales of meat products is an excellent gauge 
 of the condition of the national pocket-book, an indica- 
 tion of "good times" or "hard times." 
 
 1 Reference Book of the Meat Packing Industry. Chi- 
 cago, 1938; p. 30. 
 
106 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Next consider the essential processes of the industry, 
 which reduce to four: the purchase of animals from 
 the farmers; the dressing and preparation of those ani- 
 mals for food; the transportation of the live animals 
 and the processed products ; and the distribution of the 
 meat products to consumers. As regards the first step, 
 the meat packers cannot control their source of supply. 
 They share the risks and uncertainties of the livestock 
 farmer, the vagaries of flood or drouth, of yield of corn 
 for feed, and latterly of the whims of arm-chair econ- 
 omists in the Government. They must buy animals in 
 a fluctuating market. 
 
 Then too their problems of transportation change 
 with the shifting relations between centers of animal 
 population and centers of human population, with the 
 seasonal strains put upon our traffic-ways, with changes 
 of temperature which affect the refrigeration of meats. 
 There is call for manual skill, and above all for organ- 
 izing skill, in the actual butchering and dressing of 
 animals, in the smoking and seasoning of meats, in the 
 routine disposal of the various types of products, and 
 in their storage, which involves judging of the amounts 
 to stock up in reserve. And finally, there are compli- 
 cated problems in getting the products to the retail 
 dealer, problems of competitive salesmanship, of eco- 
 nomical deliveries, of meeting shifting consumer de- 
 mands. 
 
 Back of these four processes there are, of course, 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 107 
 
 such important details as the financing of the business, 
 and its enormous work of accountancy and credit con- 
 trol. The meat industry involves an extremely rapid 
 turn-over of money, since payments for purchases of 
 livestock are usually made at once ; and that means that 
 the packer must keep on hand a large reserve of cash, 
 often cash borrowed from the banks. At the same 
 time, the packer finds it necessary to help finance the 
 business of the retailers by carrying their accounts for 
 a week or two. 
 
 As a final consideration, we must keep in mind two 
 factors which complicate the essential processes of the 
 industry: first, that it deals with perishable material, 
 which spoils readily, which demands constant skill and 
 care to protect it from infection or corruption; second, 
 that it is a highly competitive business, carried on by 
 more than a thousand packing companies, and by many 
 thousands of farmers and local retailers, who in fact 
 dress about one-fourth of the total meat products used 
 in the United States. 1 
 
 Even such a sketchy and inadequate view of the meat 
 industry as this makes clear that it is unavoidably a 
 speculative industry, in which the risks are great and 
 constant, risks which can be met only by wide 
 
 1 More exact figures, for 1936, of production of dressed 
 meats by farmers and local butchers are these: 17% of the 
 beeves, 26 % of the calves, 10% of the sheep and lambs, and 
 31% of the hogs. 
 
108 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 knowledge of all the elements of the industry, and by 
 unwavering watchfulness and foresight. There have 
 been, as a matter of fact, many thousands of failures 
 in the meat business. Now in the history of industries, 
 speculative enterprises have usually allowed themselves 
 a large margin of profit, in order to balance out their 
 large risks. The astonishing fact, however, about the 
 meat industry is that its ratio of profit is extraordin- 
 arily small. 
 
 For the past fifteen years the average annual profit 
 of the packing companies has been $27,600,000, which 
 works out to about 3% on their capital investment, con- 
 siderably less than one cent on each dollar of sales, or 
 about one-fifth of a cent on each pound of meat sold. 
 That margin of profit is so narrow that a tenth of a 
 cent a pound either way in the sale price of meats may 
 mean the difference between operating at a gain or at 
 a loss. The total average yearly profits of the packers 
 during those fifteen years amounted to about twenty- 
 seven cents for each person in the United States. 
 
 As a result, the spread of costs between the producer, 
 that is, the livestock farmer, and the ultimate consumer, 
 is lower for meat than for any other processed article 
 of food. Thus, for instance, a pound of soda crackers 
 costs more than ten times what the farmer got for a 
 pound of wheat. But a farmer can sell his livestock 
 to a packer, and in the most distant city in the United 
 States can buy back the dressed meat ready for cooking 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 109 
 
 at less than double what he was paid for the animal 
 on the hoof. 
 
 This economy in the handling costs of meat prod- 
 ucts has been credited to three causes: to the simplicity 
 of the processes employed, to the efficient organization 
 of the industry, and to the recovery of some costs 
 through the sale of inedible by-products. 1 If we look 
 hard at this threefold explanation, we see that it really 
 reduces to one: the efficiency and skill of the meat 
 packers, who devise and carry out the processing 
 methods, discover the uses of by-products, and coordin- 
 ate the entire procedure. 
 
 The conclusion cannot be escaped that the meat 
 packing industry, by its high efficiency, has been of ex- 
 cellent service to our people; although the people in 
 general ignore that fact, and are ready to hold the 
 packers responsible for increases in the price of meats, 
 even when these are due to drought or other conditions 
 beyond the packers' control. But the meat industry 
 did not attain to that efficiency in a day. It began 
 fumblingly, with crude equipment, with hit-or-miss 
 methods, with wider margins of profit and appalling 
 losses through spoilage. For years, it served the con- 
 sumers haphazardly, because of poorly organized 
 
 1 For this explanation, and for a few detailed figures 
 about the comparatively small price of meats, see Does Dis- 
 tribution Cost Too Much?, by Stewart, Dewhurst, Field, and 
 members of the Twentieth Century Fund, New York, 1939; 
 pp. 29-32. 
 
110 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 sources of supply, and limited its operations to winter, 
 when the cold weather kept down spoilage. 
 
 Through the increasingly skillful use of refrigera- 
 tion, through refinements of processing, through im- 
 proved organization, improved transportation, careful 
 adjustments of supply and demand, courage in carrying 
 inventories, prudence and foresight in managing their 
 finances, a small number of men slowly and laborious- 
 ly developed the efficiency of the meat industry to the 
 point which it has now reached. Amongst those men, 
 Michael and Edward Cudahy rank high. 
 
 II 
 
 The brief data here given are evidence that the meat 
 industry has come to be a valuable servant of the peo- 
 ple of the United States. But it would be absurd to 
 suggest that the men who brought the industry to its 
 full development were primarily inspired by the idea 
 of creating a public service. Realistic common-sense 
 assures us that the immediate purpose of men engaged 
 in the meat industry, or in any other industry, is to 
 make money. If they do not make enough money to 
 keep their industry in operation, they quite simply cease 
 to have any industry; and if they do not, in addition, 
 make a profit over and above maintenance expenses, 
 they have no human incentive to keep on at the busi- 
 ness. 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 111 
 
 Hence, Edward Cudahy's first and necessary concern 
 as a young man past the apprentice stage in the meat 
 industry was to carry out the operations entrusted to 
 him in a way to show a profit. Since, during the ten 
 years, 1877 to 1887, he was employed by Armour and 
 Company, the profit he made would be theirs ; his share 
 of it would be such salary as he could demand and 
 get in return for, and in comparison with, the profits 
 he made for the firm. 
 
 His earlier tasks for the Company were of such a 
 character that their share in producing a profit was 
 both relatively small and extremely difficult to estimate. 
 What does an office-boy really earn ? How is the value 
 of his work to be assessed in terms of return upon the 
 capital investment of the Company? 
 
 From office-boy, he moved on to be cashier of the 
 retail department of Armour and Company; then to be 
 a salesman in the retail department; then to selling 
 wholesale to jobbers and retail dealers. . In all these 
 tasks, he was contributing in some roundabout way to 
 the earnings of the Company; and he was being com- 
 pensated, at first by a fixed wage, later by a commission 
 on the value of his sales. The second way of payment 
 is a direct relation between the profits of the Company 
 and the earnings of the employee; more correctly, it 
 expresses a relation between the bulk of operations of 
 the Company and the wages of the employee, which 
 
112 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 leaves the problem of turning operations into profits to 
 those responsible for the management of the Company. 
 
 It is true that in these tasks below the level of re- 
 sponsible management, Edward Cudahy was presum- 
 ably acquiring knowledge and skill which he might one 
 day use in management ; although it is equally true that 
 he had the sort of mind which eagerly picks up knowl- 
 edge without any ulterior aim. Thus, for instance, 
 when he was in the retail department, he set himself 
 to learn the languages of the many-tongued people 
 who came to buy meat, and soon could match their 
 relatively limited vocabularies in Polish, Lithuanian, 
 and Bohemian. Later on, when he had men of Slavic 
 speech working under him, his ready smattering of 
 their languages was of practical use again, and helped 
 to form a bond between him and the men. 
 
 Looking at it in that way, one may say that part of 
 his compensation whilst engaged in minor tasks was 
 the opportunity afforded him to build up a store of 
 knowledge and skill which he could later use to the 
 profit, directly, of the Company, and of himself 
 through the Company's sharing with him. This is not 
 a view that universally commends itself to employees. 
 But if it be accepted at all, one must in justice note fur- 
 ther that it was the Company, and not he, who 
 shouldered the risks of the industry whilst he was on 
 his way up to the possible greater profits of manage- 
 ment. 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 113 
 
 Not even Edward Cudahy himself could analyze the 
 educational processes involved in those years of daily 
 work in office routines, at a cashier's desk, back of a 
 meat counter, or securing orders from local meat deal- 
 ers. It is obvious that not every young man who puts 
 in his years at such tasks develops the ability to take 
 over a share in the management of the industry in 
 which he works. What distinguishes between the few 
 who climb above the managed routines into manage- 
 ment, and the many who remain in the routines ? Neith- 
 er the few nor the many know the adequate answer to 
 that question. It certainly is not a question touching 
 opportunities alone. 
 
 In the case of Edward Cudahy, part of the answer 
 is his native gifts, including that mysterious force in a 
 man which impels him to employ his talents to the full ; 
 but another part of the answer must be, again, the in- 
 fluence of his brother Michael's example, and the 
 larger opportunity afforded him by Michael's position. 
 Michael was watching to see how Edward shaped up 
 in the minor tasks allotted to him, what sort of intelli- 
 gent interest he displayed, how energetically and com- 
 petently he handled such problems as came his way. 
 By the time Edward had passed his twentieth birthday, 
 Michael was convinced that he had developed rapidly 
 and vigorously in his business capacity, and was ready 
 for more responsible tasks. Michael made him his 
 assistant superintendent. 
 
114 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 In this new position, Edward Cudahy could observe 
 intimately how Michael coordinated the work of the 
 divisional managers under him, and could share in that 
 coordination. He saw Michael's principles of fair play 
 and decent human consideration toward the rank and 
 file of workingmen, his ability to create a sound morale 
 in the production plants through the assurance given in 
 his own intelligence and skill and qualities of character. 
 But he saw also that the policies of the Company were 
 not entirely in Michael's hands, and that the "front 
 office" not infrequently threw monkey-wrenches into 
 Michael's careful and intelligent plans. 
 
 For instance, there was a good deal of fumbling in- 
 terference with the management of the beef depart- 
 ment. Armour, in so far as he was a real packer at 
 all, and not just a skillful trader, was a pork-packer. 
 The problems of dressing and processing beef baffled 
 him; yet he was not content with leaving them entire- 
 ly to Michael Cudahy. A man named Miles was put in 
 charge of the department; and Edward Cudahy, under 
 Miles, was assigned control of one section of the de- 
 partment, that dealing with the supply of beef to the 
 canning department. Whether or not Miles might 
 have developed the ability to handle his department 
 well, he was in fact hampered by a fussy intervention 
 of Armour between himself and the two Cudahys. As 
 a result, the beef department limped along for some 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 115 
 
 years most unsatisfactorily. We shall see in a moment 
 how the difficulty was solved. 
 
 But whilst conditions in the department were thus 
 unsound, a still more mischievous interference of the 
 higher management threatened to destroy completely 
 any hope of efficiency in conducting the beef business, 
 It came about in this way. The men working in the 
 packing plants at the Stock Yards had won an increase 
 in wages by a strike called in 1879. Two years later, 
 the packing companies, as a united action, cut the 
 wages of skilled workmen from $27.50 a week to $24. 
 The men determined to call another strike in protest. 
 
 Neither Michael nor Edward Cudahy agreed with 
 the policy of Armour and Company in cutting the 
 men's wages. They both thought that any slowing up 
 in the Company's profits was due to deficiencies of 
 management which could and should be remedied from 
 the top, and not through drastic reduction of wages. 
 Both were so well trusted and liked by the men that a 
 group of them came to gi\e private warning of the 
 impending strike the evening before it was to be called. 
 
 The little committee of workingmen came to Mich- 
 ael Cudahy' s home. Edward, sixty years later, recalled 
 what happened. Amongst the group were a few men 
 from the beef department. Edward turned to one of 
 them, a foreman, and asked: 
 
 "Dolan, what are you going to do tomorrow?" 
 
116 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 "Well, Ed," Dolan answered, "I have to go out with 
 the rest when the Union calls the strike." 
 
 "Of course," said Edward, "but there is no strike 
 until it is officially announced. I want you to be at the 
 plant early tomorrow morning and have twenty-four 
 beeves killed and laid out on the cutting floor before 
 6:30. Will you do that?" 
 
 "I will," said Dolan. 
 
 Edward waited in the morning until his working 
 crew had actually gone to work, because he expected 
 that the strike call would not come until after the day's 
 work had well begun. When he got to the packing 
 house, the Union delegates had just left. The men 
 were beginning to drift down from the upper floor, 
 where they had been changing back from their working 
 clothes to their street clothes. He waved them back, 
 saying: 
 
 "Go upstairs a minute, I've got something I want to 
 say to you." 
 
 In the dressing room, many of the men were still 
 getting into their street clothes. But they all stopped 
 to listen. This young assistant superintendent, only 
 twenty-one years old, was a man they knew, not a dis- 
 tant company head. Some of them remembered unob- 
 trusive kindnesses at his hands: being got out of jail 
 when they had been arrested as drunk and disorderly, 
 a friendly gift to help celebrate the christening of a 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 117 
 
 new child, sympathy and aid in time of illness or death 
 in their family. More than that, they all knew he 
 would play fair. His speech to them was short. This 
 was the gist of it: 
 
 "You and I have got a job to do together here. I 
 don't run the Company, and you don't run the Union. 
 But we have each got a loyalty to keep, to the Com- 
 pany, and to the Union. In this case, I think the Com- 
 pany is wrong, and I have said so. But I think you 
 can get your rights by negotiating better than by strik- 
 ing. For my own division, here is what I say to you: 
 as long as I am in charge here, those of you who go 
 back to work now will be paid the $27.50 a week you 
 demand; but any man who quits now will never again 
 work for me. I leave it up to you." 
 
 A burly butcher named Smith, with one arm in his 
 street coat, whipped the coat off and hung it up. 
 
 "Cudahy is right," he shouted. "But we're going 
 back for you, Ed, not for the Company." 
 
 Every man in the division went back to work, with 
 the operation of the plant only momentarily halted. 
 
 Gustavus Swift, Armour's fiercest competitor in the 
 beef department, had his output cut down by the strike 
 from 1,500 beeves a day to seventy-five. He came to 
 see what Armour's was doing, met Edward Cudahy 
 and held him in talk, whilst with his long striding 
 walk he tried to edge farther into the plant and learn 
 
118 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 more of its conditions. The strike soon was called off, 
 and in the way Edward Cudahy had suggested, through 
 peaceful negotiations. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Edward Cudahy' s first really big opportunity to show 
 his executive ability came about through the long- 
 standing troubles in the beef department. Through 
 1881, 1882, and most of 1883, the "front office", thor- 
 oughly dissatisfied with the condition of its beef busi- 
 ness, kept up teasing and ineffectual efforts to remedy 
 the conditions. These little sporadic efforts were fur- 
 ther complicated by large changes in the Company or- 
 ganization. John Clark Black, an able man, retired 
 from his partnership in Armour and Company, in 1882, 
 to start the Continental Bank, which was opened in 
 1883. He was replaced by George H. Webster, who 
 had been a partner with Herman Armour in New 
 York. Webster shifted about in various capacities, 
 finally settling down to administration of the glue 
 works. 
 
 Miles still fussed around rather futilely in the beef 
 department; and in 1882 brought on from Boston a 
 man named T. H. Wheeler, to take over Edward Cu- 
 dahy' s old division of corned beef. Wheeler was sixty 
 years old, had no great knowledge of the beef busi- 
 ness, and was too old to learn it. He was ridiculously 
 mysterious and secretive. He had charge for about a 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 119 
 
 year, 1882-1883, during which he succeeded in alienat- 
 ing the retail trade, and lost a good deal of money for 
 the Company. 
 
 The fiscal year of the packing companies begins on 
 November 1st. As that date was drawing near in 1883, 
 Armour and Webster met with Michael Cudahy at the 
 latter' s home, to discuss what they would do with the 
 beef business. Armour and Webster were inclined to 
 close it up, and sell it outright to Swift. But Michael 
 Cudahy insisted that the poor results of the department 
 were due to nothing more than incompetent manage- 
 ment. He proposed that Edward Cudahy be given a 
 trial in complete control of the department, as a final 
 effort to make it succeed. If that failed, all right, sell 
 it out. 
 
 Edward had for three years been acting as a sort 
 of "trouble-shooter" under Michael. He had some 
 very clear notions of what was amiss in the beef de- 
 partment; but hitherto he could, at most, only offer 
 suggestions to Miles, or Webster, or Wheeler. Now 
 he was to be given a chance to see what he could do in 
 carrying out his own ideas. He was to have only a 
 few weeks in which to make his preparations for the 
 new and large responsibility. On November 1st, 
 1883, he took over the entire department, purchase, 
 processing, sales of meat products, hides, and by- 
 products. His salary was jumped up to the considera- 
 ble figure of $25,000 a year. 
 
120 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 It would be outside of the character of this book to 
 attempt to recount or analyze in detail Edward Cu- 
 dahy's procedure in reorganizing the department now 
 committed to his management. In the lump, that pro- 
 cedure was a matter of picking competent men to head 
 the various divisions of the department, laying out a 
 policy for them to follow, and stimulating and inspir- 
 ing them to carry out the programme he devised. Even 
 a fairly full record of his activities would be only the 
 bare bones of the story: what made it alive was a per- 
 sonal force of understanding and purpose which is 
 more evident in its results than in its processes. One 
 element of his success, the power to evoke loyal co- 
 operation from the men under him, it is almost im- 
 possible to analyze. 
 
 The results, at any rate, were both prompt and defi- 
 nite; they were the kind of results that the Company 
 was interested in: profits. In Edward Cudahy's first 
 month of operations, the beef department showed a 
 profit of $21,000. Armour found it hard to believe. 
 When he saw the indisputable evidence, he was still 
 skeptical of Edward Cudahy's ability to keep up the 
 pace; he suspected the first successful month was a 
 fluke. 
 
 "Will you make as good a profit next month?" he 
 asked Edward, perhaps hoping to catch him boasting 
 or over-confident. He knew that Edward Cudahy was 
 not yet twenty-four years old. But Edward said, No: 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 121 
 
 he expected to do slightly less well next month. The 
 profit for the next month was $19,000. The end of 
 the first fiscal year found the department with total 
 profits amounting to about half a million dollars. By 
 the first absolute test of the industry, Edward Cudahy 
 was established as beyond the journeyman stage in busi- 
 ness. He could answer the Company's all-important 
 question put to its major staff: "Can you make money 
 for the Company?" 
 
 Edward Cudahy was also, of course, by now making 
 money for himself. Up to the time of his marriage, in 
 November, 1884, he had made his home with Michael. 
 Without being niggardly, he had saved what he could 
 of his wages during those seven years. His new increase 
 in salary and his starting a home of his own after his 
 marriage did not lead him away from his prudent 
 economy in expenses. At the back of his head was 
 already the idea of launching out into the meat busi- 
 ness for himself; and he knew that he must accumu- 
 late capital for any such venture. 
 
 Elizabeth Cudahy understood his need to save 
 money, and agreed with him. For their home, they 
 rented a house at 3244 Indiana Avenue, for which 
 they paid the modest rent of sixty-five dollars a month. 
 Mrs. Cudahy did her own housework, with the help 
 of one maid. They were both building for the future. 
 In that house their first two children were born: Ed- 
 ward Aloysius, the first-born, and another son who died 
 
122 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 in infancy. By the time the next great business op- 
 portunity came to Edward Cudahy, he had managed to 
 save up out of his salary $100,000. 
 
 IV 
 
 In May, 1885, Armour and Company moved their 
 offices from the packing plant out at the Union Stock 
 Yards to the Home Insurance Building, on La Salle 
 Street, not far from the new Board of Trade Building, 
 and in the midst of the banking district. It was a time 
 of great labor unrest, high-lighted a year later by the 
 tragic blundering of the police which brought about 
 the Haymarket Riot. But the population of the coun- 
 try was still rapidly expanding; and the meat-packing 
 industry was growing to keep pace with the consumer 
 demand. There were great opportunities as well as 
 great problems in the industry. 
 
 With the removal of the Company's offices, Michael 
 Cudahy, although still a partner in the Company, was 
 left in charge of production at the Stock Yards, and 
 found himself more and more out of touch with the 
 policies shaped at the Company's headquarters. 
 Armour called him "his right hand", praised him 
 heartily and sincerely — and somewhat patronizingly. 
 A long and laudatory account of Philip D. Armour, 
 published after Michael Cudahy had withdrawn from 
 the Company, contains this significant paragraph: 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 123 
 
 "His former partner, Michael Cudahy, deserves, per- 
 haps, more credit for having successfully established 
 the great business of Armour than the head of the firm 
 himself, according to the report of the Chicago Daily 
 News: 'His brain (Michael Cudahy' s) was the super- 
 intending genius of that vast plant which has intro- 
 duced the name of Armour to all lands where Ameri- 
 can pork is known. The Cudahys kept in the back- 
 ground. They had their headquarters in the packing 
 houses . . .' " 1 
 
 Michael Cudahy had no objection to staying in the 
 background, so far as notoriety was concerned. He 
 never in his life courted publicity or indulged in dis- 
 play. But he did not like being left out of consulta- 
 tion on the policies he was expected to carry out, par- 
 ticularly the financial and labor policies of Armour and 
 Company. 
 
 Two friendly biographers of Philip D. Armour have 
 this to say of him: "In the main, Armour bought man 
 hours of labor exactly as he bought shotes and heifers 
 . . . Armour had been hard-boiled in dealing with 
 labor." 2 Michael and Edward Cudahy thought that 
 there were more humane ways of dealing with work- 
 ingmen than Armour's ways. Moreover, although 
 
 1 C. Dean, The World's Fair City and her Enterprising 
 Sons, United Publishing Co., 1892; pp. 330-331. 
 
 2 Harper Leech and John Charles Carroll, Armour and 
 His Times, New York, 1938; pp. 217, 228. All through Chap- 
 ter XIII of their book, headed "The Laborer and His Hire", 
 there are indications of labor policies that irked Michael and 
 Edward Cudahy. 
 
124 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Armour was a brilliant trader and financially in a 
 strong position, the banking people made plain their 
 confidence in the junior partner, Michael Cudahy, and 
 some of them did not hesitate to say that the stability 
 of the Company and its power to borrow money readily 
 were based upon Michael Cudahy more than upon 
 Armour; yet Michael Cudahy had less and less to 
 say in the financial policies of the Company. 
 
 There was no quarrel of any sort between Armour 
 and Michael Cudahy; but there was a certain increas- 
 ing tension on Michael Cudahy' s side. About this 
 time, Charles Armour, a young nephew of P. D. 
 Armour, was sent to learn the beef business under 
 Edward Cudahy. Charles Armour soon proposed that 
 he and Edward Cudahy set up a packing house of their 
 own. Edward, who was not entirely confident of 
 young Armour's ability, objected that they did not 
 command enough capital for such a venture. Charles 
 Armour assured Edward Cudahy that "H. O.", Philip 
 D. Armour's younger brother, Herman Ossian Armour, 
 had expressed his willingness to finance a new company 
 if Charles could get Edward Cudahy to join him. Sepa- 
 ration was in the air. 
 
 In 1886, a new Union, "The United Butchers and 
 Packing House Workers", which was formed under 
 the "Knights of Labor", organized a strike for the 
 eight-hour day. The strike began at Armour's, and 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 125 
 
 spread thence to other packers. The men won that 
 strike, partly because Michael and Edward Cudahy 
 thought that they ought to win it. But because of the 
 swing of public sympathy away from striking Unions, 
 after the Haymarket Riot of May 4th, 1886, Armour 
 and Company felt strong enough to restore the ten- 
 hour working day in December of that year. Neither 
 Michael nor Edward Cudahy was happy over that 
 whole situation. 
 
 About that time, Thomas Lipton, 1 who had a 
 slaughter-house in South Omaha, approached Armour 
 and Company with an offer to sell his plant and busi- 
 ness. Armour was timorous about taking on a new 
 packing house; but Michael and Edward Cudahy went 
 out through Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, 
 explored the possibilities in supply of livestock, rail 
 facilities, and markets for products, and concluded 
 that the plant was well placed, and that the business, 
 
 1 Thomas Johnstone Lipton was an outstanding man in the 
 British business world. He was born at Glasgow, of Irish 
 parents, in 1850; came to the United States as a boy of fif- 
 teen, just at the close of the Civil War; worked as an errand- 
 boy in a grocery store, as a street-car driver in New Orleans, 
 as a travelling salesman for a portrait firm, and on a planta- 
 tion in South Carolina, before going into the meat business 
 in South Omaha. He had not a complete processing plant, 
 but only a killing-house, from which he sold the carcasses 
 to processers. Armour and Company had been buying from 
 500 to 1,500 hogs a day from Lipton. After he sold out, 
 Lipton went back to Glasgow, opened a provision store, 
 branched out into a chain of stores, then into sources of sup- 
 plies for his stores, all the way from a tea plantation in Cey- 
 lon to a pork-packing house in Chicago. He was knighted in 
 1898, made a baronet in 1902, and died in 1931. 
 
126 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 although not then in good shape, had promising 
 possibilities. It was decided to buy out Lipton, and 
 the purchase was made in September, 1887. As evi- 
 dence of the friendly relations between Armour and 
 Michael Cudahy, and of Armour's confidence in 
 Michael Cudahy's judgment, it must be noted that Ar- 
 mour went into the new venture on a partnership basis. 
 But Michael Cudahy insisted on two conditions: that 
 the new firm was to be the Armour-Cudahy Company, 
 and that Edward Cudahy was to be allowed to pur- 
 chase a three-eighths interest in it. 
 
 The Armour-Cudahy Packing Company was incorpo- 
 rated at once, with a capital stock of $750,000, of 
 which Edward Cudahy was to take over three-eighths, 
 of the value of $281,250. He had immediately availa- 
 ble $100,000 or so, and borrowed the remainder. By 
 way of comparison, it may be mentioned that Armour 
 and Company began business with an investment of 
 only $1 60,000. 1 The stock of the new Armour-Cudahy 
 Company was held by the three partners, Armour, and 
 Michael and Edward Cudahy. Edward was to have 
 complete charge of production and sales, the purchase 
 of livestock, processing, marketing. He moved with 
 
 1 Leech and Carroll, Armour and His Times, New York, 
 1938; p. 35. 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 127 
 
 his family to Omaha, and entered on his new task 
 November 1st, 1887. 
 
 At the beginning, the Armour-Cudahy Company 
 processed only pork. Lipton's plant was limited in its 
 equipment practically to producing salt pork. Edward 
 Cudahy had to get ready hurriedly to cure hams and 
 bacon, to make sausages, to process the various by- 
 products. Lipton had sold largely to other packers or 
 to the export bulk trade, chiefly British. Edward 
 Cudahy had to build up a system of distribution to re- 
 tailers. It was a gruelling task for any young man of 
 twenty-seven; and it was made all the harder because 
 his chief experience hitherto in management had been, 
 not in pork, but in the beef department. In this first 
 year of operation, ending November 1st, 1888, he 
 lost $38,000. 
 
 That loss did not discourage any of the three part- 
 ners. It was an inevitable incident of the reorganiza- 
 tion of the business. Their capital was adequate to 
 tide them over this difficult period. In 1888-1889, the 
 Company began to operate at a profit. In 1889, Ed- 
 ward Cudahy began to expand the plant, built a lard 
 refinery, power house and refrigerating plant, a smoke 
 house, sausage factory, oleomargarine and canning de- 
 partments, and the first unit of a beef house. His new 
 structures were large, 700 by 100 feet, three stories 
 high. The Company backed his judgment; but left 
 entire responsibility to him. 
 
128 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 He had found the working conditions at the plant 
 unsatisfactory. His policy was then, as always, to be 
 fair to the men under him; but he expected them to 
 be fair to him. He had brought with him from Chi- 
 cago two good men, a cattle-buyer and a hog-buyer. 
 The men employed at the plant under Lipton he kept 
 on, from the superintendent down. He would have 
 preferred to keep them all indefinitely; he did try to 
 make the best use he could of them ; but he saw before 
 long that he had many incompetents to get rid of. The 
 superintendent was addicted to drink, and condoned 
 drunkenness in his workmen. Each pay-day meant a 
 debauch. The crew that normally killed 2,500 or 3,000 
 hogs a day, killed 1,200 or 1,300 on the day follow- 
 ing pay-day. When the superintendent's attention was 
 called to the falling-off in production, he was inclined 
 to be amazed, and even indignant, and said: 
 
 "Why, what do you expect after a pay-day?" 
 
 It is entirely likely that when Edward Cudahy had 
 to change that way of doing business, he created re- 
 sentment, and may even have been looked upon as a 
 tyrannous taskmaster. As prudently as he could, he 
 weeded out disloyal and incompetent men, and re- 
 placed them with better. 
 
 As is so often the case, no employee worked so hard 
 or for such long hours as the general manager. Edward 
 Cudahy was advancing in that part of his education 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 129 
 
 which brought home most forcibly the truth that the 
 real leader, in industry as in government, must carry 
 the burdens of those whom he leads. Authority exists 
 for the sake of the governed, not of the governors. 
 Edward Cudahy had to be on the job earlier in the 
 morning and later in the evening than his workmen, be- 
 cause it was he who had to keep on providing them 
 with the means of working, to safeguard the conditions 
 of their work, to keep their labor from being wasted 
 and frittered away through the deficiencies of their 
 foremen and managers. That is a part of the education 
 of executives which is not always recognized. 
 
 The books of the Armour-Cudahy Company show 
 only that their general manager was making a profit for 
 the Company. They do not show how he brought order 
 into a chaotic plant, enlarged its production facilities, 
 widened its field of sales, built up the morale which is 
 at the heart of every successful industry. These, and 
 many others, are the unrecorded activities which lie 
 back of all profits honestly made. 
 
 By 1890, The Armour-Cudahy Company was a 
 solidly going concern. At the close of the fiscal year, 
 Michael Cudahy sold his interest in Armour and Com- 
 pany, and in turn bought Armour's interest in the 
 Armour-Cudahy Company, which became, after De- 
 cember 3d, 1890, the Cudahy Packing Company, and 
 continues as such today. Michael Cudahy became 
 
130 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 president of the Company, and Edward vice-president. 
 Michael remained in Chicago, in charge of financial 
 arrangements, and had with him one man who looked 
 after Board of Trade quotations, and the like. But 
 the main offices of the Company continued under Ed- 
 ward Cudahy's charge in Omaha, until they were re- 
 moved to Chicago in 1911, after the death of Michael. 
 The break with Armour, although financially com- 
 plete, was not an unfriendly separation. Armour pro- 
 tested in newspaper interviews his esteem and regard 
 for his former partner. A private letter of his to Pat- 
 rick Cudahy in Milwaukee, dated November 15th, 
 1890, repeats his sentiments so earnestly that it is worth 
 quoting here. 
 
 "My dear Pat:- 
 
 I thank you sincerely for your letter. It ought 
 to be written on parchment. I assure you there is 
 nothing that touches me so keenly as to feel that I 
 have the good will of the boys that have come along 
 up under me. I have no doubt you read my inter- 
 view Thursday, and I want to say to you personally 
 that I meant every word of it. There is nothing I 
 can do that I would not be glad to do for the Cudahy 
 boys, and I want them to always feel that they can 
 find in me a harbor of refuge, and I want them to 
 pull my latchstring should they ever be in trouble. 
 
 I feel a very deep regret to have Mike leave me, 
 but everything considered I have no doubt it is for 
 the best. But we have such good regard for each 
 
MASTERY IN BUSINESS 131 
 
 other that we will always be only too glad to help 
 each other if either of us should require it. Ed is 
 one of the brightest, keenest young men that I ever 
 knew, and he is sure to make his mark in the world ; 
 in fact the Cudahy family are a remarkable family, 
 and the world is a great deal better for their living 
 in it. I say this conscientiously, and I don't know 
 of a nicer thing to be able to say than this. 
 
 Wishing you everything that is good, 
 I am, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Philip D. Armour." 
 
 Edward Cudahy was then nearing completion of his 
 thirty-first year. Under, and with, his brother Michael, 
 he had come up from a green apprentice boy to be the 
 managing director of a packing company that employed 
 1,500 men and had an annual sales of $13,471,000. As 
 such things go in the United States, that was not yet 
 a "big business"; but it was the largest at that time 
 in the district that it served. If Edward Cudahy had 
 had leisure for self-gratulation, he might have found a 
 personal savor in Miles Standish's comment on the 
 youthful Julius Caesar: 
 
 "Better be first, he said, in a little Iberian village, 
 
 Than be second in Rome, and I think he was right 
 
 when he said it." 
 
 But Michael's and his business enterprise was destined 
 
 to move far from the "Iberian village" of South 
 
132 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Omaha. It was to grow twenty-fold in the next fifty 
 years. It was to branch out from the single packing 
 house in South Omaha to a succession of processing 
 and manufacturing plants which would extend from 
 Massachusetts to California, and from Minnesota to 
 Georgia. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 
 
 The development of The Cudahy Packing Com- 
 pany was to be the major concern and activity 
 of Michael Cudahy for the twenty years of life that 
 remained to him; it was to occupy Edward Cudahy for 
 fifty years. Its importance in the life of Edward Cu- 
 dahy justifies devoting this chapter to some consider- 
 ations of what that work of development was and how 
 it affected his education. As a sort of appendix to the 
 account of the Company, we shall summarize the inter- 
 relations of the Cudahy family in the meat-packing 
 industry. 
 
 Edward Cudahy lived for more than twenty-three 
 years in Omaha, from his twenty-seventh to his fifty- 
 first year of age. Omaha was "home" to his children; 
 his son Edward had gone there as a baby; his four 
 daughters were born there. In the first few years of 
 that long period, his life might seem to have settled 
 down into a definite routine of family interests and the 
 management of the packing plant in South Omaha. He 
 went back and forth between his home and the pack- 
 ing plant, at first, on the little branch railroad, "the 
 dummy", on which many of his employees travelled; 
 later, he drove to work in a light buggy. Neither he 
 
134 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 nor his wife was obsessed by any social or political am- 
 bitions. They lived modestly, in a pleasant home, very 
 close to their children, industrious, religious, peaceful, 
 and contented. 
 
 The Cudahy Packing Company, as it had begun in 
 1890, was a relatively small affair; but properly man- 
 aged, as Michael and Edward Cudahy were abundantly 
 capable of managing it, it could furnish them both 
 with a comfortable livelihood. True enough, it would 
 not make them men of great wealth. But were they 
 really eager to become very wealthy men? That is a 
 question of purposes; and purposes are not always 
 easily read from the facts. 
 
 Looking at the situation from the outside, it might 
 appear that Michael and Edward Cudahy had a free 
 choice before them: to maintain their comfortable 
 small business, placidly, without other ambition; or to 
 venture upon risky, nerve-wracking expansion, which 
 might eventually make their small business a very large 
 business, and make them rich men. 
 
 The trouble with looking upon any industrial con- 
 cern in that detached way, from the outside, is that one 
 is not seeing the actual situation. The man engaged 
 in business is not a detached observer, expounding 
 philosophic theories; he is down in the cockpit of a 
 fiercely competitive society, surrounded by forces, in- 
 dividual and collective, that threaten his continued ex- 
 istence as a businessman. To him, the situation is 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 135 
 
 much more complex and difficult than it appears to the 
 arm-chair philosopher. His decisions must be made 
 in a hurry, and made under pressure. His freedom of 
 choice is by no means so absolute as the theoretical ob- 
 server may imagine. It is not always sheer greed or 
 ambition which drives the head of a business into ex- 
 pansion; sometimes it is a queer sort of compulsion. 
 It now became part of the education of Michael and 
 Edward Cudahy that, in their own business, they should 
 come to understand, measure, and meet that industrial 
 compulsion. 
 
 In a sense, the modern industrial urge toward ex- 
 pansion parallels, in its smaller way, the urge that 
 drives nations to expand. The parallel between busi- 
 ness and statesmanship was not so evident a few gen- 
 erations ago. Edmund Burke, for instance, seemed to 
 be speaking profoundly, when he wrote: "I have 
 known merchants with the sentiments and abilities of 
 great statesmen, and I have seen persons in the situa- 
 tion of statesmen, with the character and conception 
 of pedlars." The pedlar-statesmen have since multi- 
 plied so numerously that it is hard to distinguish now 
 between merchandising and statesmanship; and with 
 the growth of totalitarianism, both avowed and dis- 
 guised, the commercialization of the state has made 
 Burke's sonorous statement almost meaningless. 
 
 In the nation, as in the individual industries, that 
 urge toward expansion has its roots deep in the very 
 
136 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 nature of our materialistic civilization, a civilization 
 which has set technological development higher in es- 
 teem than human development, and has intensified and 
 speeded up all the material activities of life, often to 
 the complete neglect of its spiritual activities. A man 
 may hate that urge or compulsion, yet not be able to 
 escape it except by a withdrawal from all wordly con- 
 cerns. Certainly, if any man elects to stay in business, 
 he must face the situation created for him by his en- 
 vironment of conflict, and accommodate himself to it 
 as best he can. 
 
 In order to understand the character of the industrial 
 compulsion that Michael and Edward Cudahy had to 
 face, we must examine it more closely for a moment. 
 It can be analyzed as of two sorts. The first sort 
 arose from the common confusion of thought in the 
 modern world which equates "bigger" with "better." 
 That kind of thinking has become part of the Ameri- 
 can credo, as it affects, not merely our industries, but 
 our colleges and universities, our government bureaus 
 and their interference with private concerns, our circu- 
 lation of books and periodicals, our mass-amusements, 
 and a multitude of details that enter into our way of 
 living. As a people, we immeasurably admire bigness ; 
 and at least by implication we have a considerable 
 scorn for littleness. Even our slum-dwellers are proud 
 of the huge cities in which their slums exist, and ridi- 
 cule the "hick towns." The result is a vague social 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 137 
 
 compulsion upon a man in control of an industrial or- 
 ganization to make his business "bigger and better." 
 The head of a small business needs a good sense of 
 humor to keep himself from becoming pathetically 
 apologetic. 
 
 This first, social, compulsion is not simply greed of 
 money, even though it may blend with greed. It is the 
 acclaim and the desire of achievement, measured in the 
 only terms that our materialist culture can understand: 
 eminence and dominance in material control and pow- 
 er. The increased wealth such achievement brings has 
 its own attraction, but rather as an almost incidental 
 result, one of the tokens of having "made good", the 
 hall-mark of worldly success. 
 
 The second sort is a more tangible compulsion upon 
 businessmen, arising out of the conditions of modern 
 industry. The head of a business concern often finds 
 that his choice is really not a choice between keeping 
 his business as it is and making it bigger, but between 
 expanding his business and being squeezed out of busi- 
 ness altogether. His dilemma is created in part by the 
 sharp competition which is a normal element of every 
 businessman's circumstances, in part by certain inherent 
 risks in the business enterprise itself. One way or 
 another, expansion may be a form of self-defence im- 
 posed upon an industry by conditions which the in- 
 dustry cannot control. 
 
138 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 How much Michael and Edward Cudahy were in- 
 fluenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the first sort 
 of compulsion, the universal American fallacy that 
 measures achievement in industry chiefly by material 
 size, is a question which perhaps even they themselves 
 could not answer satisfactorily. That fallacy sur- 
 rounded them, as inescapable as the atmosphere. They 
 read it, heard it, everywhere; they saw it acted upon, 
 sometimes even by men who should have known better, 
 whose religious profession should have enlightened 
 them; they felt its sting in the correlative assumption 
 that a business which did not grow proved the incom- 
 petence of its managers. It was a challenge heard in 
 almost every word of praise or blame. Only a can- 
 onizable saint could have shaken off completely the 
 grip of that influence. 
 
 But to the second sort of compulsion Michael and 
 Edward Cudahy definitely had to bow. Where it was 
 a case of expand or go under, the industrial choice was 
 imperative. There remained the difficult problems of 
 judgment: where, and when, and how much, and above 
 all, by what means they were to expand their business. 
 The qualities that could successfully deal with those 
 problems were the developed intelligence and virtues 
 they had built up by their previous education, the body 
 of convictions they had established as their guides to 
 thought and action. 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 139 
 
 How did that education stand up in these new cir- 
 cumstances? How honorably, how fairly, with what 
 prudence and self-control as well as courage and intel- 
 ligence, did Michael and Edward Cudahy move on the 
 long, hard road they travelled, whilst they developed 
 The Cudahy Packing Company from a single plant in 
 South Omaha to a national corporation, with fifteen 
 large centers of production and eighty branches? With 
 what good repute as well as vigor did they bring their 
 Company into the ranks of "big business"? 
 
 II 
 
 To summarize the story of the development of The 
 Cudahy Packing Company by saying simply that it be- 
 came a "big business", is to touch upon a thorny sub- 
 ject. Amongst the thousand or so of meat-packing 
 companies, it was to be hailed as one of "the big four." 
 That very fact raises hostility in the minds of many. 
 The name of "big business" has come to be offensive 
 amongst us, something that makes millions of our 
 people bristle up. In their minds, "big business" is a 
 synonym for brutal aggrandisement; it carries with it 
 the notion of pillage, of ruthless oppression of com- 
 petitors, especially of the "little fellows", of exploita- 
 tion, of battening upon the poor and weak and de- 
 fenceless. 
 
140 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 The genesis of that hatred of "big business" is ob- 
 scure and uncertain. One source of it unquestionably 
 is envy, the envy of those who have not toward those 
 who have; yet that explanation will scarcely be accept- 
 ed, even as a partial explanation, if only for the rea- 
 son that the have-nots outnumber the haves by ten to 
 one. Another source of hatred toward "big business" 
 is nobler and more decently human, although it too is 
 muddled up by loose thinking, and suffers inevitably 
 from what Albert Jay Nock somewhere calls "that most 
 dangerous combination: the combination of first-rate 
 sympathies with third-rate intelligences." 
 
 What has happened is this: some sound economic 
 and political theories, eternally right as theories, have 
 clashed with widespread human stupidities and incom- 
 petencies, to produce popular fallacies that have an 
 enormous emotional appeal, yet have no practical ap- 
 plication. That is an abstract way of putting it. In 
 the concrete, the situation may be analyzed in this way: 
 
 1. Our people have inherited from a simpler and, 
 perhaps, a more Christian, society the conviction that 
 we should be a healthier nation, economically, and 
 as a result, socially and politically, if the means of 
 production were more evenly distributed amongst 
 us. 
 
 2. These same people, by the many millions, ran 
 away from the ultimate source of production, the 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY l4l 
 
 land, and congested themselves into great cities and 
 industrial centers, where their very numbers cre- 
 ated economic conditions that demanded mass- 
 production. 
 
 3. They welcomed with enthusiasm the material 
 benefits of mass-production, chiefly in the form of 
 what are essentially luxuries, rapidity of move- 
 ment and communication: the automobile, the tele- 
 phone, the radio, motion pictures. 
 
 4. Mass-production simply cannot be organized at 
 all except in industrial concerns of considerable size. 
 To want to have the benefits of mass-production 
 without its concomitant "big business", is to want 
 to eat your cake and have it. 
 
 There remains only a fury of betrayal, without the 
 intelligent recognition that it is a self -betrayal. We 
 hate economic inequality, yet we create economic in- 
 equality by our own stupid conduct. We curse the 
 greed of "the robber barons", yet do not see that it is 
 dwarfed by our own multitudinous greeds. In one 
 breath, we glory in our "big business" because we are 
 silly enough to be proud of it as an achievement, and 
 to measure our advance in civilization by the number 
 of automobiles we have as a nation, and we revile our 
 "big business" because it tends to destroy our economic 
 liberty. 
 
 By every test above the level of animal life, a free 
 
142 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 but poor people are better off than a rich but enslaved 
 people, and immeasurably better off than our millions 
 dependent upon government doles, who have sold their 
 liberty and not even got the price they hoped for. Yet 
 if any government proposed the essential conditions 
 necessary for a return to economic freedom and some 
 sort of equality, the vast majority of our people would 
 sneer at the proposal as a return to "horse-and-buggy 
 days." And if any government tried to enforce the 
 necessary conditions of economic freedom, it would 
 probably be met with a revolution. Even the Distribu- 
 tists can only hope for some nebulous, long-range, edu- 
 cational process as the means of restoring the economic 
 condition of a freer, but poorer, age. 
 
 It is easy to apply all this to the meat industry. Less 
 than two generations ago, it was, throughout our coun- 
 try, a small and simple business to supply our people 
 with meat. So long as the people lived on farms, or 
 in villages and towns immediately in contact with the 
 farms, the farmer himself, or a local butcher, was all 
 the medium needed between animal supply and ulti- 
 mate consumer. Just as soon as we congregated into 
 urban masses, more and more remote from the live- 
 stock farms, we forced the business of furnishing us 
 with meat to become complex and big. 
 
 The local butcher in the big cities could not organ- 
 ize his source of animal supply from the distant farms, 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 143 
 
 could not handle the problems of transportation, in- 
 spection, and preservation of livestock and processed 
 products. All that had to be managed on a quantity 
 basis; and quantity means big business. Big business 
 means a larger investment and concentration of capital. 
 The larger investment of capital means an added need 
 of safeguarding what becomes a sort of public service, 
 a vital necessity to keep on feeding the growing popu- 
 lation of the cities. 
 
 Greed and ambition may enter in to complicate this 
 pressure of economic conditions, and may add im- 
 mensely to the honest packer's problem of safeguard- 
 ing his investment, his continued existence in business; 
 but that sad fact of human nature should not blind us 
 to the power exerted by the essential conditions which 
 the feeding of urban masses creates. 
 
 Moreover, competition amongst packers, as has al- 
 ready been pointed out, has made their margin of profit 
 small. There is no honest way of enlarging the total 
 profits, so as to cushion the industry against economic 
 shocks, except by increasing the volume of business, 
 that is, by adding many small profits to make one large 
 profit. A drought in his area of livestock supply, a 
 workers' strike or a buyers' strike, any factor that up- 
 sets his small margin of profit, simply wipes out the 
 small packer, puts him out of business entirely. The 
 packer who operates in a number of areas, draws from 
 
144 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 a variety of livestock farms, and sells to a variety of 
 markets, can stave off disaster by balancing a healthy 
 spot in his industry against a bad spot. Size, within 
 manageable limits, gives him a measure of security. 
 
 The exact confines of honest competition in the 
 packing industry, as in other industries, are not always 
 easily determined; and so far as immediate success is 
 concerned, the sharper has an advantage over the com- 
 pletely honest packer. It was consoling to Michael and 
 Edward Cudahy that they were never even accused of 
 dishonorable dealings in business. But they often 
 needed a stronger bulwark than that consolation as a 
 means of self-defence in their necessary contacts with 
 other forms of business enterprise. 
 
 Take, for instance, the one item of refrigerating 
 cars. In the early days of the refrigerator cars, the 
 packers had to build the cars themselves because the 
 railroads, conservative in their attitude toward equip- 
 ment, would not risk building the newfangled contrap- 
 tions. Later, The Cudahy Packing Company, like a 
 number of other packers, preferred to keep on building 
 its own cars, not merely as a sound investment, but in 
 order to escape various sorts of pressures from the 
 railway companies, in the problem of supply of cars 
 when needed, of special charges for the use and main- 
 tenance of the cars, of favoritism as a means of secur- 
 ing the haulage, and the like. 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 145 
 
 In something of the same way, the Company found 
 it advisable, after a time, to operate its own salt works, 
 both to be sure of the needed supply and to avoid pay- 
 ing excessive prices for salt. Thus also, some firms 
 which bought from the Company raw materials of by- 
 products created conditions which made it self-defence 
 for the Company to process those raw materials itself. 
 
 Finally, the simply fact must be remembered that 
 The Cudahy Packing Company did not inaugurate the 
 policy or practice of expansion into "big business." 
 The Company came into existence when the packing 
 industry had already settled down into its structure of 
 large and small companies, and its endless struggles 
 of the small companies to grow into big companies. 
 It had to face, in however friendly and honorable a 
 spirit, the competition of existing large corporations, 
 in an economic system so huge, intricate, and compel- 
 ling, that the Company had no choice but to operate 
 on the terms set up by the system. 
 
 With these considerations before us, it is possible 
 now to recount in brief detail, some of the steps which 
 mark "when, where, and how" The Cudahy Packing 
 Company carried out what Michael and Edward Cu- 
 dahy believed to be the necessary process of expanding 
 its operations and its plants, in order to establish and 
 secure itself in the packing industry. 
 
146 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 III 
 
 It is possible to set down one general formula for 
 the entire development of The Cudahy Packing Com- 
 pany. Here is the formula: the Company operated its 
 existing plant or plants intelligently and honestly, by 
 hard work made a fair profit on its operations, and set 
 aside from the profit all that it reasonably could; then 
 the Company reinvested its surplus profit by purchasing 
 or building other plants which were either so located 
 that they could assure a varied source of supply as well 
 as new markets, or were needed to protect the Com- 
 pany's operations from unfair pressures. Even a cur- 
 sory review of the facts of the Company's development 
 will serve to show the accuracy of that formula. 
 
 The first step was to put the South Omaha packing 
 house into efficient working condition. To do that in- 
 volved the risk of borrowing money, in order to add 
 new buildings and equipment. But the risk proved 
 to be justified; by 1891 the South Omaha plant was 
 functioning vigorously and profitably. There had been 
 drouth and failures of crops during those very years of 
 the consolidation of the South Omaha plant, which 
 had put an additional strain on the Company in its 
 supply of livestock from the Nebraska side. That was 
 a warning to get ready to draw upon other areas of 
 livestock farming. The opportunities presented them- 
 selves just about at that time. 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 147 
 
 A firm named Hass, Baruch & Company had a small 
 packing house in Los Angeles, California. They had 
 started it in the days of the first land boom, when 
 Los Angeles grew from a little town of 11,311 people 
 in 1880 to over 50,000 ten years later; but now they 
 were shaky about the future, and wanted to sell. Mich- 
 ael and Edward Cudahy, although they could not fore- 
 see the amazing growth of Los Angeles, believed that 
 they could make a go of the plant, especially if they 
 adapted it from a pork house to a beef house, since it 
 drew from a large grazing country. They bought the 
 packing house in the Spring of 1892, remodelled it, im- 
 proved its organization of supply and distribution, and 
 within a few years found that they needed to double 
 its capacity. 
 
 In the meantime, the Union Stock Yards Company 
 of Sioux City, Iowa, had been dickering to get rid of a 
 packing house, for some time not in operation, which 
 it had taken over as a failure from The Hawkinson 
 Packing Company. Sioux City tapped a rapidly de- 
 veloping livestock farming country, Northern Iowa, 
 the Dakotas, Southern Minnesota. The Cudahys went 
 up and looked over the situation, backed their own 
 judgment that the packing house was well located, 
 bought it, and turned it (just as they had done with 
 their two other houses) from a small pork-packing 
 house into a plant fully equipped for the whole round 
 
148 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 of meat production. Under their competent manage- 
 ment, it soon became the equal of the Omaha and Los 
 Angeles houses. 
 
 Then came "hard times" in earnest throughout the 
 whole country, and the panic of 1893, in which all 
 industries were hard hit. As a consequence, there was 
 an almost universal reduction of wages. The working- 
 men naturally resented that; and as soon as there were 
 indications of a pick-up in business, the unions de- 
 manded a return to the old wages, and used strikes to 
 enforce their demands. The year 1894 saw more 
 union men on strike than even 1886, their numbers 
 amounting, throughout the United States, to nearly 
 750,000. 
 
 During those hard years, Michael and Edward Cu- 
 dahy needed all their skill and energy to hold secure 
 their three packing houses. But they had planned so 
 well, and managed so prudently, that their business 
 weathered the storm in good shape. By 1899, they 
 were able to throw up another bastion of defence by 
 building a packing house in Kansas City, Kansas, to 
 draw a supply of livestock not merely from Kansas, 
 Missouri, and Southwestern Iowa, but from the great 
 Southwest. The plant, fully equipped, and built entire- 
 ly under the supervision of the Cudahys, began opera- 
 tions on June 7th, 1900. The location was so well 
 chosen and the house so efficiently managed that, even 
 in spite of the great flood of 1903, during which the 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 149 
 
 Kaw River flowed above the third floor of several of 
 the buildings, the Kansas City house stood up under 
 its losses and increased its capacity for both produc- 
 tion and distribution. 
 
 In November, 1906, Michael and Edward Cudahy 
 bought from their brother, John Cudahy, a packing 
 house in Wichita, Kansas. It had been built in 1888 
 by the Francis Whittaker & Sons Packing Company, 
 of East St. Louis, Illinois, and sold by that firm in Oc- 
 tober, 1900, to The Louisville Packing Company, of 
 Louisville, Kentucky. John Cudahy bought The Louis- 
 ville Packing Company, with its Wichita dependency, 
 a few months later. Sales and transfers of this sort 
 have been characteristic of the meat-packing industry 
 and bear testimony to its risky character. It is worth 
 noting that four of the five houses of The Cudahy 
 Packing Company had been bought from men who 
 could not make a success of them; and that Michael 
 and Edward Cudahy succeeded in the very circum- 
 stances in which others had failed. 
 
 The last step in the development of The Cudahy 
 Packing Company under the presidency of Michael 
 Cudahy was begun in 1909, the year before Michael's 
 death. It was the purchase of a tract of land in East 
 Chicago, Indiana, where there were excellent shipping 
 facilities by both rail and water. There the Company 
 later built its own car-shops, capable of turning out five 
 hundred new refrigerator cars a year, and of repairing 
 
150 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 as many more. The car-shops gave it elbow room in 
 its vital commitments with the railroads. There also 
 it built plants to process by-products: a glue factory, a 
 glycerine plant, a wool pullery, and the main plant for 
 making an important product of the Company, Old 
 Dutch Cleanser. But this development was carried 
 out, after the death of Michael Cudahy, by Edward 
 Cudahy. 
 
 Michael Cudahy had reached his seventieth year be- 
 fore the weight of his incessant toil began noticeably to 
 show its effects upon him. Through the greater part 
 of the year 1910, he was ailing. In October, he went, 
 by his doctor's orders, to Virginia Hot Springs. Six 
 weeks later, he returned to Chicago, worse. In late 
 November, he suffered an attack of appendicitis, was 
 hurried to Mercy Hospital, and operated on by Dr. 
 John B. Murphy. But he was too much weakened to 
 recover; he had come to the end of his long road home. 
 On November 27th, with his wife and children around 
 him, in the faith in which he had loyally lived, in 
 humble hope, and fortified by the last Sacraments, he 
 died as he had lived, nobly. 
 
 The newspapers of Chicago had to note his death, 
 if only for the brute fact that he died a wealthy man. 
 But there is in their accounts of him a vague effort to 
 assess his achievement in other terms than the purely 
 material. An article in The Record-Herald on Novem- 
 ber 29th, observed that he had "set an example of 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 151 
 
 success won without double dealing or unfair advan- 
 tage over any man ..." and that "the success which he 
 had accomplished as an employee he bettered as an 
 employer, and with the acquirement of power and 
 position he never forgot those who worked as he once 
 had — for a wage." The Chicago Evening Post caught 
 at a similar idea in its statement: "His success was a 
 real one — a success in which the desire to do right was 
 always a guiding desire. . ." 
 
 These are generalities of praise: justice, charity, con- 
 scientiousness. Perhaps in Michael Cudahy's case, they 
 sounded more genuine than such newspaper praise 
 often sounds; but they did not even hint at the sources 
 from which he drew the virtues they fumblingly ad- 
 mired. It might have been too much to expect them 
 to say that Michael Cudahy was a worthy businessman 
 because he was a consistent Catholic. 
 
 IV 
 
 With the death of his brother Michael, Edward 
 Cudahy became president of The Cudahy Packing Com- 
 pany. In twenty years, Michael and he had added four 
 plants to the original packing house in South Omaha. 
 In the next twenty-six years, Edward Cudahy was to 
 increase that number by nine more, added in accord- 
 ance with the policy that had guided the Company in 
 its earlier expansion. 
 
152 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Edward Cudahy's first task was to move the head- 
 quarters of the Company from South Omaha to Chi- 
 cago. By very skillful planning, he had the equipment 
 of the main office transferred to Chicago beforehand, 
 leaving a temporary equipment in South Omaha. 
 Nearly three hundred employees and their families 
 were to change their residence on account of the move. 
 The Company made arrangements to help them dis- 
 pose of their old homes and secure new homes in Chi- 
 cago. Special trains were chartered, on which, at the 
 close of the business day of June 2d, 1911, all these 
 people, together with the current records of business, 
 were carried during the night to Chicago. The Chi- 
 cago offices opened the next morning in full working 
 order, only a few hours later than the usual opening 
 time. 
 
 Two years later, the Company built at Leewood, near 
 Memphis, Tennessee, a plant for refining cotton-seed 
 oil. Cotton-seed oil was being produced as a com- 
 petitor with lard: to protect its southern flank, and to 
 help create purchasing power in a new area that could 
 become a market for its meat products, the Company 
 had to go into the production of cotton-seed oil. It 
 built the plant where the supply of cotton-seed was 
 abundant. 
 
 The next packing house bought by the Company was 
 in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 191 6. The story is by now 
 a familiar one in this record: The Inter-Mountain 
 
THE CUD AH Y PACKING COMPANY 153 
 
 Packing and Provision Company had built the plant, a 
 small one, some years earlier, had lost money in operat- 
 ing it, and had closed it; the mortgagers in Salt Lake 
 City wanted to get rid of it; The Cudahy Packing Com- 
 pany bought it, remodelled and enlarged it, and opened 
 it for production in March, 1917. 
 
 In that year, 1917, Edward Cudahy' s only surviving 
 son, Edward Aloysius Jr., entered the United States 
 Army as a volunteer, when our country became a 
 belligerent in World War Number One. When he 
 resigned his commission in 1919, the Company was 
 ready for its first large move Eastward; it bought the 
 two packing houses of The Nagle Packing Company, 
 one at Detroit, Michigan, the other at Jersey City, New 
 Jersey. The Detroit house made a specialty of mut- 
 ton, lamb, and veal. 
 
 Six years later, Edward Cudahy Jr., then forty years 
 old, was made president of the Company, and his 
 father became Chairman of the Board of Directors. In 
 that same year, 1925, the Company moved farther 
 north into another area of livestock supply; it built a 
 packing house in St. Paul, Minnesota. By 1930, South- 
 ern California had developed both supply of animals 
 and markets for meat products beyond what the Los 
 Angeles plant could carry; so the Company built a 
 packing house in San Diego. The western fringe of 
 the area cared for by Omaha and Kansas City was 
 
154 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 served by a new packing house in Denver, in 1933. 
 Finally, the South was entered in 1936, with a most 
 modern type of plant at Albany, Georgia; a window- 
 less building of insulux glass masonry, air-conditioned 
 throughout. 
 
 Add to these major producing plants the many prod- 
 uce houses, where the Company handles eggs, poul- 
 try, butter, and cheese, the seven additional Old Dutch 
 Cleanser factories, here and abroad, as far as Australia 
 and New Zealand, the sales distributing branches in 
 more than eighty cities in the United States, the car and 
 truck routes serving thousands of small towns through- 
 out the country, and the Company's considerable export 
 trade, and we get some rough notion of how extensive 
 and complex an organization the Company has be- 
 come. 
 
 As a sort of footnote to this brief sketch of the 
 business career of Michael and Edward Cudahy, a few 
 words about the inter-relations of the Cudahy family 
 in business will serve to wind up the present chapter. 
 The one girl of the family, Catherine Cudahy, stood, 
 of course, entirely outside of the business affairs of 
 her brothers. After the death of their mother, in 1871, 
 Catherine made a home for her father and faithfully 
 cared for him until his death, eleven years later. Then 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 155 
 
 she became a nun, Sister Stanislaus, in the Convent of 
 the Good Shepherd in Milwaukee, where her holy life 
 on earth was closed in 1892. 
 
 One brother, William, just senior to Edward, died 
 two years earlier than Catherine, at the age of thirty- 
 seven. He was a man of robust physique, but of a 
 nervous and impatient temperament. With a restless 
 eagerness, he had set out for himself in the meat busi- 
 ness, with little capital, and had not lived to make any 
 great success of his efforts. 
 
 All five Cudahy brothers were strongly bound to- 
 gether by mutual respect and affection, under the spon- 
 taneous leadership of Michael, who took his place at 
 their head as much by the nobility of his character as 
 by his seniority in age and his exceptional ability. But, 
 as we have seen, in business relations Edward was the 
 closest to Michael. The two remaining brothers, John 
 and Patrick, were to establish The Cudahy Brothers 
 Packing Company, an entirely distinct organization 
 from The Cudahy Packing Company. Both were ex- 
 tremely able and lovable men, but widely differing in 
 type: John, rollicking and venturesome; Patrick, con- 
 servative. 
 
 John Cudahy, two years younger than Michael, had 
 an irrepressible dash about him, and in business was 
 primarily a speculator, who enjoyed poking fun at the 
 plodding routines of his other brothers. He had begun 
 
156 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 work as a boy, with Michael, in the packing house, first 
 of Roddis, then of John Plankinton. During the five 
 years, 1865 to 1871, he managed and owned a tree- 
 nursery, in which he made money. When he sold that 
 business, he went back into the packing industry, for 
 three years with Layton and Company, and for another 
 two years with Van Kirk and McGeough. 
 
 When Michael Cudahy left Plankinton and Armour, 
 to go with Armour to Chicago, John Cudahy bought 
 his interest in the older firm, but sold it again in a few 
 months, and went to Chicago, where he became a part- 
 ner of E. D. Chapin in the packing house of Chapin 
 and Company. Two years later, in 1877, the firm be- 
 came Chapin and Cudahy, and in 1880 he bought out 
 Chapin and changed the name to The John Cudahy 
 Packing Company. 
 
 But John Cudahy was always a trader rather than 
 a packer. He made and lost fortunes. In 1888, he was 
 able to furnish his brother Patrick with $400,000 
 toward buying out the old Plankinton Company in Mil- 
 waukee. By 1892, he had made around $4,000,000, 
 chiefly in market deals. A year later, he was broke: 
 he had gone into a "corner" on lard with a man named 
 Fairbanks, was badly caught, lost all his ready assets, 
 and was $750,000 in debt. He refused to plead bank- 
 ruptcy as a legal escape from his obligations. His 
 three brothers endorsed his notes for what he owed, 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 157 
 
 plus six percent interest. Within a year, by more suc- 
 cessful trading, he was able to pay off every dollar of 
 his indebtedness: and through it all, he never lost his 
 rollicking good humor. 
 
 When Michael and Edward Cudahy bought from 
 John his Louisville Packing Company and its Wichita 
 house, in 1906, it was really to protect themselves by 
 getting John out of the packing business. They both 
 loved him and delighted in him; but he kept them in 
 a fairly constant state of alarm. Yet with all his ups 
 and downs in business, when he died, April 23d, 1915, 
 he was worth about a million and a half. 
 
 Patrick Cudahy, the third son of the family, seven 
 years younger than Michael, and eleven years older 
 than Edward, followed the example of his two older 
 brothers, at first, by getting work in a packing house. 
 Then for three or four years he worked as a stone- 
 cutter, in Lemont, Illinois, and other places. In 1873, 
 back in Milwaukee, he became superintendent of a 
 small packing house run by Lyman and Wooley. 
 When Michael Cudahy left Plankinton and Armour 
 in 1874, Patrick took his place as superintendent. He 
 was given a sixteenth interest in the firm in 1880, and 
 became the junior partner in 1883. 
 
 Two years later, Plankinton and Armour dissolved 
 their partnership, and in the reorganized John Plankin- 
 ton and Company Patrick Cudahy held a quarter share. 
 
158 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 In 1887, Plankinton's son William, much against his 
 father's judgment, determined to take over the manage- 
 ment of Plankinton and Company. That forced Pat- 
 rick Cudahy to sell his one-fourth interest in the Com- 
 pany. Then an odd thing happened, which Patrick 
 Cudahy has recounted in his autobiography, 1 and which 
 excellently illustrates the kindly relations between him 
 and his brother Michael, and his deference toward 
 Michael. 
 
 John Plankinton, although no longer Armour's part- 
 ner, kept in close touch with him, and knew that 
 Armour and Company were going to buy the Lipton 
 house in South Omaha. As a balance to his reluctant 
 ousting of Patrick Cudahy from his own Company, 
 Plankinton suggested him to Armour as a partner and 
 manager in the new South Omaha house. Armour, 
 who could be very high-handed in such matters, ac- 
 cepted the suggestion, and telegraphed Patrick Cudahy 
 to go out to Omaha and talk over the matter with 
 Michael. But Michael, gravely kind as always, made 
 it clear that Edward was to be the managing partner; 
 and Michael's word, for all his affection and courtesy, 
 was law. 
 
 Patrick had saved out of his earnings $200,000, and 
 would have been delighted to invest it in the new 
 
 1 Patrick Cudahy, His Life. Burdick & Allen, Milwaukee, 
 1912; pp. 107-109. 
 
THE CUDAHY PACKING COMPANY 159 
 
 concern with Michael. He thought he had concealed 
 his disappointment; but Michael, shrewdly aware of it, 
 felt that he should try to make up for it. Michael had 
 already fixed his eye on Sioux City as a likely place for 
 a competent packer; and he quietly had a representative 
 of a land company in Sioux City sound out Patrick 
 about his making a venture there. The land company 
 offered Patrick fifteen acres of land, buildings for the 
 packing plant, and a bonus of $100,000, if he would 
 contract to run the packing house for five years. Patrick 
 actually signed a contract with the land company. But 
 he soon found out that the company was violating 
 some most important terms of the contract, and hence 
 he refused to go on with it. It was in Michael's office 
 in Chicago that the contract was definitely cancelled. 
 
 Whilst these negotiations were going on, John 
 Plankinton was getting thoroughly alarmed at his 
 son's management of the business in Milwaukee. He 
 proposed that Patrick Cudahy buy out the company; 
 but Patrick had not enough money to do that by him- 
 self. Then John Cudahy added $400,000 to Patrick's 
 $200,000, and in 1888 they carried the deal through. 
 There were, however, some strings on the purchase: 
 unsatisfactory terms in operation for five years. As 
 the five-year period was nearing its end, Patrick and 
 John Cudahy determined to sell the plant back to Wil- 
 liam Plankinton (his father had died in 1891), and 
 
160 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 build a plant of their own on land which they had 
 bought, two miles south of Milwaukee. There they 
 began in 1893, and later largely developed, The Cu- 
 dahy Brothers Packing Company, which became the 
 nucleus of the town named, in Patrick's honor, Cudahy. 
 Patrick Cudahy died in Milwaukee, July 25th, 1919- 
 
PATRICK 
 
 1849-1919 
 
 WILLIAM 
 
 1853-1890 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 PRINCIPLES AT WORK 
 
 I 
 
 The record of Edward Cudahy's business career 
 summarily set down in several chapters of this 
 book is a record largely of external fact. But we real- 
 ly do not know much about any man when we know 
 only the external facts of his career. It is true that 
 we are ordinarily forced to go on the assumption that 
 a man's conduct pretty well reveals the man himself: 
 and that is a good assumption, if we include in his 
 conduct its inner sources as well as its visible deeds. 
 One reason for that qualification is that the external 
 facts are not wholly his. Some elements of his con- 
 duct spring from the pressure of circumstances, and 
 may represent no more than compromises between his 
 own purposes and the compulsions exerted upon him 
 by the actions of other men, individually and in groups. 
 We must, therefore, as best we can, venture upon 
 the delicate task of going back of the external facts 
 of Edward Cudahy's career to the principles upon 
 which he based his conduct. In that attempt, we must 
 recognize at the outset that any such investigation will 
 necessarily fail to be entirely adequate in its results. 
 Only the Judge of the living and the dead can know 
 
162 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 the full interweaving of any man's mind and will and 
 circumstance and action. 
 
 The first difficulty in searching for principles of 
 conduct comes from the fact that the truths that men 
 live by are many, and of many orders. They have to 
 be many truths, because our limited minds can take 
 hold upon truth only piecemeal, broken up to fit our 
 tiny grasp. They have to be of many orders, because 
 our lives involve many relations with others. This 
 very multiplicity gives us a fine chance to be bewildered 
 in our efforts both to understand the truths and to see 
 their application to the daily uses of life. 
 
 That is bad enough. Add to that handicap this 
 other: that we poor human beings scarcely ever ap- 
 proach the truths we live by clearly and cleanly even 
 within the limits of our intelligence. As our daily 
 lives prove, we come upon these truths in a murk and 
 fog of emotions, fears, hopes, resentments, appetites. 
 "We see now as in a glass darkly." We are a people 
 of confusion. The result is, to use that excellent figure 
 of speech, the Irish bull, that many of the truths we 
 live by are not truths at all, but fallacies that we make 
 up for ourselves or hastily borrow from others. 
 
 It is a rash man, therefore, who persuades himself 
 that he is quite certain about all the springs and 
 sources of his own conduct, and a terribly rash man 
 who claims the same certainty for any other man's con- 
 duct. The last great prayer of the dying Christ for 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 163 
 
 men, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do", was uttered for His executioners; but all we 
 who blunder along the confused ways of life may hope 
 that He included us also in that prayer. 
 
 Were all the sources of Edward Cudahy's actions 
 throughout his career high and noble and unselfish? 
 Was there no personal ambition driving him to his 
 endless labor? Did resentment toward an unfair com- 
 petitor never enter into his calculated defences against 
 the man and make them at least partially retaliatory? 
 Had he no impatience with the clumsy greed and in- 
 competence and unreliability that he certainly met with 
 in many men who worked with him ? Questions of that 
 sort answer themselves. To claim that all his con- 
 duct was flawless in its sources would be a silly piece 
 of priggishness. Any such claim would also shock 
 and outrage Edward Cudahy's own intelligence and 
 honesty, would leave him between laughter and anger. 
 
 Was Edward Cudahy, again, a doctrinaire sort of 
 man who devoted much time and energy to careful 
 formulation of his principles of conduct, who mapped 
 and charted his daily actions in a measured agreement 
 with either abstract rules of ethics, economics, religious 
 duty, or with planned schemes of self-aggrandizement ? 
 There have been many such men, although they are 
 always a small minority of mankind, who moved 
 through life with infinite caution and calculation. 
 Some of them have been noble men, even saints, and 
 
164 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 some have been clever politicians, and some have been 
 canny rascals. In technique, Talleyrand and Calvin 
 Coolidge and Saint John Berchmans might seem to 
 have much in common. 
 
 But neither by temperament nor by cultivated habit 
 did Edward Cudahy belong to that class of men. His 
 reflections and plannings were quick and intuitive, 
 rather than labored and analytically reasoned out. He 
 sized up business situations with some of the same in- 
 explicable sureness and swiftness with which a brilliant 
 physician diagnoses a patient. There is immense in- 
 telligence and a wealth of accumulated knowledge 
 back of the firm quick decision in both cases; but the 
 stored knowledge is fused with the immediate percep- 
 tions in a mental action so agile and speedy that it 
 astounds the casual onlooker: to him the process may 
 even look like a lucky guess. 
 
 The analogy between business diagnosis and 
 medical diagnosis may be pressed pretty closely on the 
 intellectual side ; but there is likely to be a larger moral 
 content in the business decision. For one thing, greed 
 stands forever at the elbow of the man whose blunt 
 test of success must be to make money: and that is the 
 first (unfortunately, also sometimes the last) test of 
 success in business. 
 
 What could protect a vivid, energetic, quick-thinking 
 businessman like Edward Cudahy against low business 
 practices in a world where selfish practices abounded ? 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 165 
 
 The answer can be given with assurance: only the 
 habits of thought and conduct that he had built up 
 through his previous education, only the large, basic 
 principles of conduct that had become a part of him, 
 his unwavering convictions. It may help us in our 
 study of Edward Cudahy, if we consider that this 
 equipment reduces, in a practical way, to two educa- 
 tional achievements: an informed conscience, and a 
 habit of being ruled by conscience. 
 
 II 
 
 Conscience and conscientiousness can be very vague 
 notions. Men have always paid some tribute of rever- 
 ence to both; but not always the tribute of trying to 
 understand them. Nor is this the place to go into 
 much discussion of their meaning. One point only 
 must be stressed here: that conscience, the practical 
 judgment of the intellect upon right and wrong in 
 conduct, can never stand firmly on social conventions 
 alone, or on humanitarianism or folk-lore aphorisms, 
 no matter how high-sounding; its foundation is the ul- 
 timate norm of goodness, God Himself. 
 
 There is a pagan conscience, based on the natural 
 law, noble, as that of Plato or Aristotle or Marcus 
 Aurelius, coldly correct in its appreciation of rights and 
 duties; and that too holds God as its ultimate norm. 
 But it lacks the warmth, the fulness of charity, of a 
 
166 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 conscience established on the teachings of Jesus Christ. 
 In like manner, the pagan conscientiousness keeps to 
 lower, harsher levels than the Christian conduct which 
 tempers justice with mercy, and enriches duty with 
 generosity. 
 
 Now the educated conscience of Edward Cudahy was 
 Christian and Catholic. The virtues it had prompted 
 in him were more than the cold correctness of abstract 
 reasoning, a rigorous and severely limited conformity 
 with justice. His morality was more than ethical; at 
 root it was a religious morality, its precepts expressed 
 not only in the Ten Commandments, but in the im- 
 plications of the "Our Father", and in the Christian 
 law of charity. Back of his concepts of right and 
 wrong were the supernatural habits of faith and hope 
 and love, infused in Baptism, and his life-long aware- 
 ness of the ideals and the example of Jesus Christ. His 
 recognition of his neighbors' claims upon him linked 
 with his worship of God. 
 
 Unfortunately, we do not often think of the love of 
 God as having much scope for expression in the mun- 
 dane affairs of a business career. We study the mani- 
 festations of our poor human devotion to our Creator 
 and Lord most readily in the rarer atmosphere of the 
 church and the cloister. Our edifying biographies have 
 about them the air of the sacristy. Perhaps in all that 
 we have made too sharp a dissociation between the 
 service of God and the dull round of daily human 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 167 
 
 tasks; and if we have, we are greatly the losers for 
 doing so. 
 
 The profoundest truths that men have to live by 
 touch upon our relations with God; even the love of 
 our neighbor has validity only as bound up with our 
 love of God. But it is easy for us to be confusedly led 
 into thinking of the love of God only in its formal 
 expressions. It is so obvious that we can and should 
 show our love of God by direct worship of Him, by 
 prayer and meditation and the use of the Sacraments, 
 by writing and speaking of God, that sometimes, for 
 practical purposes, we seem to think that these are al- 
 most the only forms that love of God can take. 
 
 It is that fact which gives ground to the complaint 
 that many Catholics keep their religious practices and 
 their business practices in separate compartments, and 
 that the other six days of the week belie their Sunday 
 professions. But it is also a great source of the note 
 of sanctity in the Catholic Church that many more mil- 
 lions of Catholics express their beliefs and their wor- 
 ship more fully in their daily lives than in their 
 formal thinking or speaking or praying 
 
 The old saying, labor are est or are, "work is prayer", 
 can, no doubt, have sometimes been the rationalization 
 of some monk's or nun's dislike for prayer and prefer- 
 ence for external occupations ; but it can also be the key 
 to many a life of hidden, humble, and whole-hearted 
 service of God in the midst of very hum-drum human 
 
168 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 toil. We may well, on the other hand, be afraid of 
 prayer that does not flower into action, of a worship of 
 God that does not inform the worshipper's conscience. 
 
 Formal prayer and worship had their regular place 
 in the daily routines of Edward Cudahy. Daily prayer, 
 in secret, was the habit he had built up from his baby- 
 hood, at his mother's knee; and he never faltered in it. 
 With simplicity and humble faith, he followed the 
 ritual of the Mass on Sundays and holy days, reading 
 the prayers in an English missal, and mentally joining 
 in the mystical renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary. He 
 frequented the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy 
 Eucharist, faithfully, regularly, devoutly. He heard 
 and read instructions in the teachings of Jesus Christ. 
 It was from these sources that he drew his principles 
 and directives of conduct. They were part of his 
 habitual view of all things. Not by an effort of re- 
 flection, but with the spontaneity of habit, his judg- 
 ments and decisions and actions in the details of his 
 daily life were colored by the rich background of Ca- 
 tholic truth. 
 
 That was the way he had been brought up, that was 
 the core of his education. The long years only deep- 
 ened and intensified principles that had begun to be 
 operative in his life from its earliest consciousness. He 
 had developed a sort of instinctive recognition of in- 
 justice and unkindness and falsehood, and an instinc- 
 tive shrinking from them. 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 169 
 
 It is quite likely that Edward Cudahy rarely formu- 
 lated these principles of conduct, even to himself. It 
 is the bookish sort of man, or the professionally relig- 
 ious, who does much of that. But Catholic principles 
 cropped up in Edward Cudahy' s conversation, on all 
 sorts of topics, with a naturalness, almost an obvious- 
 ness, that showed how thoroughly they had entered in- 
 to his whole way of thinking. They were the under- 
 lying tests of value in his talk of business relations, 
 social conditions, political affairs, as well as in his es- 
 timates of personal conduct. One cannot really sepa- 
 rate them, for instance, from his economic views, his 
 attitude toward the relations of employer and employee 
 or toward business competitors. 
 
 Not that he labelled his principles as Catholic, or 
 aggressively offered them as such. He was, of course, 
 a very open and frank Catholic, entirely fearless in his 
 profession of belief even in the years of the silly Ameri- 
 can Protective Association, when bigotry had power 
 enough in Omaha to boycott his business. But it is 
 conceivable that many men who met him in the way of 
 business, and who recognized and respected his integ- 
 rity, never even suspected the Catholic source of what 
 they admired in him. His Catholic inheritance was as 
 unobtrusive as it was all-pervading. 
 
 Edward Cudahy' s actions followed his thinking. 
 That is a daring thing to say of any man. Impulse and 
 whim and the thrust of appetite and emotion shape 
 
170 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 an enormous amount of the conduct of most of us. 
 Nor were these forces lacking in their influence upon 
 Edward Cudahy's conduct. But what distinguished 
 him strongly amongst men was just that in him these 
 forces were so greatly restrained and controlled by his 
 intelligence. Within the limits of human frailty, his 
 private and public conduct demonstrated the working 
 out in action of his Catholic beliefs and convictions. 
 We can study that working out, at least in illustrations. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In a business career such as Edward Cudahy's, the 
 largest single field of operation for his principles of 
 conduct is in the relation between employer and em- 
 ployee. It is a relation never entirely simple or easy to 
 assess; but in the modern industrial system of large- 
 scale employment, the relation has become extremely 
 complex and difficult. As soon as men had in large 
 number abandoned or lost a widely distributed own- 
 ership of the means of production, and had entered 
 upon the mass-production which necessitated "big 
 business", they made the relation between employer 
 and employee both appallingly extensive and as in- 
 tricate as it is extensive. 
 
 When one man employs one other man or a few 
 other men, on a farm, or in a small manufacturing or 
 commercial business, employer and employee are close 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 171 
 
 to one another, have a fair chance to know and evalu- 
 ate one another. They still have the hard stuff of 
 human nature to contend with: laziness, and suspicion, 
 and greed, and envy, and general incompetence. But 
 the human deficiencies of employer and employee can 
 at least be dealt with immediately and directly. 
 
 But when one man employs scores or hundreds or 
 thousands of other men, he does not know them all, 
 nor do they know him. He must set up an apparatus 
 of authority less human than the small employer's, 
 more machine-like in its functioning. Petty frictions 
 are repressed by a business "system", not eased up by 
 mutual give-and-take. Misunderstandings enlarge mi- 
 nor grievances into major causes of hostility; compara- 
 tively trifling complaints grow into casus belli. No 
 wonder that the chief of our industrial problems is the 
 labor problem. We made it that in the years when we 
 separated labor from the ownership of materials in our 
 modern economic structure. 
 
 For fifteen years Edward Cudahy was an employee, 
 and for over fifty years was an employer. When his 
 employment was plain manual labor, it was a simple 
 application of the principle of honesty which made 
 him do a good day's work for his day's wage. When 
 his employment put him as an intermediary between 
 his employer and other employees, simple honesty be- 
 gan to be on occasion anything but simple. As an as- 
 sistant superintendent under his brother Michael, he 
 
172 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 had to carry out policies set up remotely from the 
 large number of workingmen to whom the policies ap- 
 plied, policies devised with an eye to a complex, com- 
 petitive business which the general run of workingmen 
 could not envisage, much less understand. 
 
 To be a mechanical purveyor of company orders to 
 the men under him might, indeed, be a simple way of 
 applying the principle of honesty, of loyalty to his 
 salt; but it might be devastatingly inhuman, and might 
 actually make him an instrument of injustice to the 
 men. An instance has already been touched upon, in 
 the strike at Armour's in 1881, in which Edward 
 Cudahy thought that the men were right and the Com- 
 pany wrong, and decided that he had to stand by the 
 men at the risk of losing his own position. One won- 
 ders: did Armour recognize that action as honest? 
 Perhaps he did, since the strike was settled in the other 
 divisions of the plant by negotiation, and the cut in the 
 men's wages was rescinded. But it is easy to see how 
 Armour might have considered Edward Cudahy's ac- 
 tion a disloyalty, a grandstand play for the sympathy 
 of the men at the expense of the Company. 
 
 When Edward Cudahy became, in his turn, an em- 
 ployer of other men, there is no question but that he 
 had to look at the relation of employer and employee 
 from another angle. Did that mean an abandonment 
 of principles that he had put to work when he was an 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 173 
 
 employee himself? The hard-drinking superintendent 
 whom he discharged at South Omaha probably was 
 quite convinced that his new employer was a heartless 
 tyrant. It is not difficult to imagine him glowingly 
 eloquent against Edward Cudahy as one who ground 
 the faces of the poor. But the truth of the matter is 
 not so simple as any clear black-and-white arrangement 
 of saint and sinner on either side of the employer- 
 employee relation. A good deal of writing in the 
 dubious science of sociology is mischievous because of 
 its doctrinaire simplification of labor problems, and its 
 tendency to set up a sentimental dichotomy of noble- 
 hearted toilers and rapacious employers. 
 
 In theory, the interests of employer and employee 
 spontaneously work together; in practice, human na- 
 ture being what it is, they do nothing of the sort. It 
 takes a lot of tough effort to make them work together. 
 On the brute material basis, it is true, employer and 
 employee can be considered as component parts of a 
 production machine, each needing the other, the 
 efficiency of one adding to the efficiency of the other. 
 But to look upon them in that way is to ignore the fact 
 that they are human beings, more likely to be moved 
 by a jumble of emotions and passions than by logical 
 reasoning on cold economic laws. 
 
 It is the most natural thing in the world for the 
 employee to estimate his worth to the employer very 
 
174 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 highly, to suspect that the employer does not esteem 
 him at his full value or pay him as much as he deserves 
 or accord him proper consideration in speech and man- 
 ner. His very position as an employee, dependent up- 
 on another man for even the opportunity to work for 
 a living, is humanly galling, is a standing grievance 
 that demands an immense amount of patience even to 
 endure it. Our human instinct for freedom and inde- 
 pendence is what really clashes, first of all, in the rela- 
 tion between employer and employee. The basic com- 
 plaint of the employee is simply that he is an employee. 
 
 In so far as that natural resentment of the working- 
 man against his dependent position issues in personal 
 animosity toward his employer, it is an injustice to the 
 employer which may easily evoke a counter-resentment. 
 Outside, therefore, of the complicated question of a 
 fair wage, there exists a danger of emotional tension 
 between employer and employee which beclouds and 
 confuses their negotiations over the more material 
 questions of wages and conditions of employment. It 
 is not too much to say that slackness, dawdling, 
 even sabotage, in industrial plants have their origin 
 deeper down in human nature than any conflicting de- 
 sires of employer and employee for a larger share in 
 the profits of the plants. 
 
 Both in speech and in action, Edward Cudahy 
 showed that he was aware of this human element in 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 175 
 
 the relations between himself and the men who worked 
 for him. He met it with something beyond justice, 
 with understanding and Christian charity. That did 
 not mean primarily gifts of money to his workmen 
 above and beyond their wages, although he was most 
 ready with such gifts when they were needed because 
 of illness or misfortune amongst the men. As a matter 
 of fact, many employees resent gifts from an employer, 
 as a further mark of their dependency; and an em- 
 ployer needs to be sure of a man's good will before he 
 can risk a gift. 
 
 The charity Edward Cudahy offered his men was a 
 kindliness of view, an appreciation of their feelings as 
 dependents upon an employer, and a tolerance for the 
 sluggish resentment that their position bred. It meant 
 in him that very Christian thing, a sense of humor, 
 which creates patience even beneath the surface im- 
 patiences, because it is built upon a humble and prac- 
 tical recognition of the source of the other fellow's 
 grievances, original sin, in one's self as well as in the 
 other fellow. 
 
 It is to this constant attitude of both Michael and 
 Edward Cudahy that we must look for the explanation 
 of a most important fact: that no strike of their work- 
 men ever originated in a Cudahy packing plant. Three 
 times, in 1894, 1905, and 1921, The Cudahy Packing 
 Company was involved in strikes; but in each instance 
 
176 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 the strike was called in other packing plants and 
 reached The Cudahy Packing Company only as a tac- 
 tical extension. In 1905, for instance, when every 
 packing house in Omaha was tied up by a strike of the 
 men for higher wages, The Cudahy Packing Company 
 was actually paying a higher wage than the strikers de- 
 manded; but the Cudahy workmen had to join in the 
 strike as a "sympathetic" support of the men in other 
 plants. In 1938, the Cudahy packing house in Los 
 Angeles was for a time boycotted because of a juris- 
 dictional row with a union, in which the Cudahys were 
 forbidden to take any action by the terms of the Wag- 
 ner Act. 
 
 A veteran employee of The Cudahy Packing Com- 
 pany, John M. O'Rourke, recalls a significant incident 
 that occurred when he was working for a rival packing 
 company in South Omaha, before he joined up with 
 the Cudahy company. This rival packing company had 
 its plant at no great distance down the hill from the 
 Cudahy plant. One day, Jerry Smithwick, O'Rourke's 
 immediate superior as office manager, and later one of 
 the company's higher executives, pointed out of the 
 window of the office, and said: "Do you see that path- 
 way up the hill? That's been worn there by men 
 leaving here to go to work for Cudahy's." At that 
 time, it must be noted, both plants paid about the same 
 scale of wages; but one had more humane working 
 conditions than the other. 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 177 
 
 IV 
 
 Yet there remains the vexed question of wages, the 
 one solid and substantial compensation of the work- 
 man for his dependence upon an employer. In what 
 way did Edward Cudahy face that question? What 
 principles stood back of his approach to the problem 
 of what wages to pay his employees? Any one who 
 thinks that the question of a proper wage is an easy 
 one to answer condemns himself out of hand as in- 
 competent even to discuss the question. Economists, 
 labor leaders, sociologists, politicians (and even states- 
 men), philosophers, statisticians, and various kinds of 
 clergymen including popes, to say nothing of employ- 
 ers and employees themselves, have talked, written, 
 agitated, and negotiated about the wage problem at 
 least ever since the industrial revolution took place; 
 and it still remains a problem with no general solution. 
 
 The fact is that every wage agreement ever drawn 
 up, from the simplest man-to-man contract between a 
 single employee and his employer up to the elaborate 
 union-enforced or state-enforced contract between large 
 groups of employees and employers, has been a com- 
 promise between what the employees thought they 
 were entitled to and what the employers thought they 
 should get. Even when both employer and employee 
 agree upon such general theories as that of the "liv- 
 ing wage", or the theory of direct profit-sharing, they 
 
178 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 hold divergent views as to what actually is a "living 
 wage" or what share of the profits of an enterprise is 
 equitably due to the men who furnish not merely the 
 capital invested in the enterprise, but its skilled organ- 
 ization and its executive direction, and who assume the 
 burden of responsibility for the success or failure of 
 the enterprise, and what share should go to the men 
 who carry out the details of operation made possible 
 by invested capital and executive planning and manage- 
 ment. 
 
 There are millions of employees who sincerely be- 
 lieve that a 'living wage" should include the means 
 to purchase any comfort or luxury that their employers 
 may have. That is very rarely a rational belief. It is 
 most often just wishful thinking, even when it is not 
 plain envy. It is not usually accompanied by either the 
 desire or the capacity to enquire whether or not the 
 business enterprise can possibly produce profits enough 
 to cover all that these employees would include in a 
 "living wage." Many discontented employees would 
 be bored by facts and figures in the case; they stick to 
 one fact only, that they want higher wages. 
 
 As to profit-sharing, every wage, even the most in- 
 adequate and unjust, is a share in the profits of the 
 business. The eternally debatable question is the rela- 
 tive size of the various shares of profit that go to labor 
 and to capital and management. There has never 
 been, and never will be, complete agreement about an 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 179 
 
 answer to that question. It is what the mathematicians 
 call an indeterminate equation; and its material diffi- 
 culties are further cluttered up by the spiritual fact of 
 envy. 
 
 Edward Cudahy intelligently recognized the essen- 
 tial character of compromise in wage agreements. His 
 actual practice in making the compromise had to be 
 guided very largely by conditions which he could by no 
 means completely control. Some of these conditions 
 were external to his own packing houses, and some 
 existed within his plants. 
 
 For instance, the standard wages paid by competing 
 companies set up a condition which he could ignore for 
 any length of time only at the cost of destroying his 
 own business, and with it the employment of his men. 
 It was not a matter of agreement amongst the packing 
 companies, or of anything like a conspiracy to keep 
 down wages; it was simply the natural result of com- 
 petition in the sale of products. Obviously, if any 
 packing company, by increasing wages above the com- 
 mon level, added to its cost of production, it could not 
 meet the selling price of its competitors. You may 
 call that a bad effect of competition; but it is an effect 
 bound up with the nature of competition. 
 
 Another external condition was the fluctuation in the 
 cost of living of his employees, in different localities, 
 and at different times. Even the most cocksure 
 
180 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 economists cannot adequately explain the complex pro- 
 cess by which standards of living and costs of living 
 rise and fall. The businessman does not attempt any 
 explanation. He only notes the facts and tries to face 
 them. A wage of $1.50 a day in 1880 had a purchas- 
 ing power, in terms of standard of living and cost of 
 living, that is not matched by $5.00 a day in 1940. The 
 businessman must somehow gear his wage to the 
 changing condition. 
 
 Besides these external conditions, the wage com- 
 promise was controlled by conditions within Edward 
 Cudahy's own packing houses. Such, for example, 
 were the different levels of skill and competence 
 amongst his employees. Some men actually earned 
 more than others, measured by production, or carried 
 larger responsibilities than others, and therefore were 
 entitled to higher wages. But this necessary discrim- 
 ination in wages stirs up envy and jealousy, and no 
 matter how fairly it is carried out, it becomes a source 
 of grievance to many employees. 
 
 Finally, the wage compromise was affected by an- 
 other internal condition, the fluctuating earnings of the 
 Company. Since The Cudahy Packing Company could 
 not pass on to its employees the losses it might sustain 
 in a bad year, the wage compromise had to be based 
 upon the average earnings of the Company over a 
 period of years. It was the task, not of the workingmen, 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 181 
 
 but of the management to see to it that the Company 
 earned enough to keep up its scale of wages. 
 
 What was personal to Edward Cudahy in his wage 
 decisions was, again, his kindly understanding of the 
 human desires of his employees, his decent sympathy 
 with their desire, even when his intelligence saw clear- 
 ly that those desires were not practically realizable. 
 More than once he said: "Why shouldn't every man 
 who works for me want to have an automobile, just 
 because he knows that I have one? That's human 
 nature." And he rejoiced that, in spite of bad disloca- 
 tions of employment, there was a general increase in 
 the purchasing power of employees which enabled 
 them to have better housing, better food, more com- 
 forts and luxuries than he had had as a young man, 
 or than his parents had had. 
 
 Nor did his good-will stop at sympathy alone. When, 
 on the heels of a government scheme of destroying 
 livestock, an ironic drought killed off much of what 
 the government scheme had left, and brought the meat 
 industry into a phase of the economic depression that 
 nearly wrecked the industry, he kept up his payrolls, 
 in number of employees and in wage-scales, to the 
 limit of losses that The Cudahy Packing Company 
 could endure. In 1937 and 1938, the Company had 
 losses of nearly five million dollars. Only then did he 
 reluctantly sanction a retrenchment in employment that 
 became a necessity to save the Company from collapse 
 
182 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 and to maintain work for even the lessened number of 
 employees. 
 
 The generous principles that operated then on a 
 large scale worked out also in thousands of individual 
 relations with his employees. Edward Cudahy was no 
 self-deceiving sentimentalist. He knew men, others as 
 well as himself. He knew that the financial difficul- 
 ties of some of his employees did not result from in- 
 adequate wages, but came from bad management or 
 drunkenness or other faults of their own. His charity 
 was clear-eyed, free from illusion, kindly in spite of 
 the stupidities he observed. He helped where there 
 was need, no matter from what blunderings the need 
 arose. He kept men on at work who were hard to 
 keep because of their incompetence. He rehired men 
 who had left him in a lurch. He forgave much, in part 
 because he was wise enough not to expect too much 
 from other men, in part because he held to the Catholic 
 conviction that we who ask pardon of God must par- 
 don our fellow-men. 
 
 His stories about the vagaries of some of his work- 
 men were genial, told with humor and a good-natured 
 amusement. A colored man named Sam, who had 
 been working only a month in the South Omaha plant, 
 failed to show up for work after his first pay-day. In 
 those days telephones were comparative rarities outside 
 of business houses. Hence Edward Cudahy was a little 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 183 
 
 astonished when Sam, a few days after pay-day, called 
 him on the telephone. 
 
 "Mr. Cudahy, kin I come back to work?" 
 
 "What happened to you, Sam?" 
 
 "Well, suh, I got drunk." 
 
 "Where are you calling from now?" 
 
 "I'm calling from my own house. Before I started 
 out to git drunk, I paid the telephone company to put 
 a telephone right in my own house. I kin call up any- 
 body now, just like white folks." 
 
 "All right, Sam, come on back to work in the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 "There is no sense," Edward Cudahy added, "in lec- 
 turing the Sams of the world. Maybe his telephone 
 was a richer investment to Sam than food or clothes 
 or a better house." 
 
 Edward Cudahy's generous treatment of employees 
 was sometimes abused; but he did not let the fact em- 
 bitter him or dull the edge of his tolerance and kind- 
 liness toward the men. There was the steadiness of 
 principle about his attitude toward his employees. The 
 result was, not perfect contentment throughout the 
 Cudahy plants, a contentment to be found only in cows 
 and Utopias, but a wholesome atmosphere of mutual 
 patience and good humor, which is about as much as 
 one can expect from men under the burdens of toil and 
 cravings and heartache that make up a good part of 
 our human lot. 
 
184 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 It is most unlikely that Edward Cudahy spent much 
 time in theorizing about the problem of wages or other 
 problems in the complex employer-employee relation. 
 He modestly left the theories to the social philosophers 
 and economists who consider themselves competent to 
 deal with such things. Businessmen as a rule are not 
 theorists. Their task is to face actual situations, chang- 
 ing facts, as they find them, and try to manage with 
 them as best they can. 
 
 In fact, Edward Cudahy had some of the business- 
 man's vague distrust of theories. It seemed to him, 
 in the first place, that economic theorists tried to plan 
 too far ahead, with the result that about the time that 
 they had their theories nicely worked out, the whole 
 situation had changed so much that their theories 
 failed to make sense, or at least to square with the 
 facts. Again, it seemed to him that the theorists 
 thought too much in terms of the material elements 
 of industry and commerce and agriculture, and that 
 their theories took bad falls in every contact with the 
 violent shifts and changes of the human elements in 
 business, the restless hungers and ambitions and aspira- 
 tions of men. Human dissatisfactions, the unrecognized 
 strivings for our lost paradise, smash up economic 
 theories. 
 
 What he held to were not theories, but principles, 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 185 
 
 which are very different things. His principles differed 
 from theories in this, that they were generalizations 
 drawn from practical experience, a compound of fixed 
 truth with widely varying applications of the truth. The 
 applications varied because the circumstances in which 
 he worked, the combination of human factors and ma- 
 terial factors, kept changing. Some theorists might call 
 him, and every businessman like him, only an oppor- 
 tunist. But the theorists would be wrong: he was a 
 realist. 
 
 He was a realist in adapting his views and conduct 
 to a fluid world, a world that men were forever chang- 
 ing one way or another, for better or for worse. Jus- 
 tice, honesty, truthfulness, charity are unchanging as 
 abstract entities; but they may take a startling variety 
 of forms in the practical results they lead to. 
 
 Thus, Edward Cudahy, applying his principle of 
 equity to such factually diverse situations as the meat 
 industry fifty years ago and the meat industry today, 
 could consistently arrive at two quite different conclu- 
 sions. Fifty years ago, the packing industry, in spite 
 of the use of refrigeration, begun by Michael Cudahy 
 and others, was still a seasonal industry; it was an un- 
 certain industry, because of the rapidly shifting rela- 
 tions between centers of animal supply and centers of 
 population; it had not yet settled down to stability in 
 its methods and markets. Hence, capital and manage- 
 ment in the packing industry could, in strict justice, 
 
186 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 demand a larger share of the profits of the industry as 
 a sheer necessity for survival and secure establishment. 
 
 In the course of time, the skill of management in the 
 industry has levelled off the seasonal humps. In the 
 packing houses themselves, that result was achieved 
 rather early, through control of temperature and 
 through improved processes. But it took longer to 
 educate the livestock farmers out of their old habit of 
 breeding animals for a fixed marketing period in the 
 year. It is only in the last eighteen or twenty years, 
 that the farmer has caught up with the advance of 
 the packing industry, through his slow discovery, for 
 instance, that March hogs sell at as good a price as De- 
 cember hogs. Now there is only about ten percent 
 difference in livestock production the year round. 
 
 When these and other developments brought about 
 a greater stability and security in what is always a 
 somewhat chancy industry, Edward Cudahy could 
 rightly announce to his board of directors: "The day 
 of big dividends has gone, because the inherent need 
 for big dividends has gone. The workmen now should 
 get a larger share of the profits, even though it is the 
 managers, not the workmen, who have solved the 
 problems of the packing industry." That is not theory; 
 that is unchanging principle applied to changing situa- 
 tions. 
 
 But a most significant fact in the career of Edward 
 Cudahy is this: that he did not delay the application 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 187 
 
 of generous principles until the skill of management 
 had considerably lessened the risks of his business en- 
 terprise. From the early days of The Cudahy Packing 
 Company, he saw to it that every additional profit of 
 the Company was shared with his employees. He could 
 not do that sharing by means of a flat increase in the 
 wages of every employee. He knew that the good 
 years might be followed by bad years, that he could not 
 be certain of affording the increased wages in every 
 year, and that no wage increase could be diminished 
 again, even in bad years for his company, without the 
 men's considering the lessened wage an injustice to 
 them. A great many employees do not take into ac- 
 count any problems of their employers; they are some- 
 times ready to suspect that the problems are invented 
 just as a ground for defrauding them ; their major con- 
 cern is to get the highest wages they can. The only 
 practical way of sharing the added profits of good years 
 was by giving bonuses. 
 
 William H. English, who worked with Edward 
 Cudahy for forty-eight years, recalls that in the early 
 years of the Company, the men called these bonuses 
 ''tips." They watched eagerly, after the Company's 
 books were balanced at the close of the fiscal year, No- 
 vember 1st, to see what the "tips" would be. Their 
 interest in whether or not the Company had a particu- 
 larly successful year naturally was measured by the 
 material return to themselves. Sometimes, Mr. English 
 
188 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 said, he was annoyed by the way in which the men 
 took the bonuses for granted, with never a thought of 
 the managing skill that made them possible. But Ed- 
 ward Cudahy was not annoyed: he understood. He 
 was not granting bonuses to win appreciation for his 
 business ability, or gratitude from his employees. He 
 was doing it to fulfill what he considered a duty of 
 mingled justice and charity; and he was realist enough 
 not to expect much human applause for doing his 
 duty. 
 
 Another illustration of Edward Cudahy's principles 
 in business may fit in here. When The Cudahy Pack- 
 ing Company was still a young organization, the rule 
 was established that promotion to higher positions in 
 the packing plants or in the office of the Company 
 would always be made from the ranks of the Com- 
 pany's own employees. No outsider would ever be 
 advanced over the heads of old employees. That was 
 at times a hard rule to keep, when, as happened more 
 than once, high officials of rival companies, men of 
 known ability, wanted to transfer to the Cudahy Com- 
 pany. It was sometimes with humorous groaning that 
 Edward Cudahy kept in their positions in the Com- 
 pany men whom he would gladly have replaced by such 
 applicants from outside. But the rule was based on the 
 principle of loyalty to his employees; and in the long 
 run the Company also derived benefit from the sound 
 morale it helped to establish. 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 189 
 
 VI 
 
 In trying to observe Edward Cudahy's principles at 
 work in his conduct of business affairs, we have to 
 keep in mind something more than the variety of ex- 
 ternal circumstances in which the principles were ap- 
 plied: we have to consider the temperament and style 
 of the man who applied them. Here generalities are 
 dangerous. A summary statement of personal traits 
 rarely means much. But to note certain broad differ- 
 ences of temperament may serve as an approach to 
 some specific illustrations of the way in which Edward 
 Cudahy dealt with his employees as man to man. 
 
 For instance, we must not forget the obvious fact 
 that a slow, placid, phlegmatic man, and a quick, 
 irascible man, may each accept and use the "golden 
 rule" taught by Jesus Christ; but that their very differ- 
 ences of temperament will make "doing to others as 
 you would have others do to you" appear like two 
 quite contrasting performances. In the same way, the 
 principle of tolerance or patience in each of these men 
 will work out with a great deal of superficial difference, 
 yet can be as readily recognized in the naturally sharp- 
 tempered man as in the phlegmatic man. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's patience with others was a hard- 
 won patience; but it was profound, abiding, steadily 
 in use. It was contrary to his whole make-up to make 
 a parade of patience, as it was to curry favor with his 
 
190 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 employees, to assume the calculated airs of the jolly- 
 good-fellow; yet he was able to hold the confidence, 
 even the affectionate regard, of every decent man who 
 worked for him. There was a ringing genuineness 
 about him. His fundamental tolerance, kindness, and 
 great modesty of mind needed no trappings of display. 
 They shone through even a certain brusqueness of man- 
 ner. The men who worked with him were as assured 
 of those qualities in him as they were of his entire 
 mastery of the business details about which they had 
 to meet him. 
 
 Again, to say, in the common cliche, that Edward 
 Cudahy treated his employees as fellow human beings 
 is very vague; and it might even imply some touch of 
 the sentimental humanitarianism which has so largely 
 come to take the place of Christian charity. He had 
 none of that patronizing sort of sentiment. Instead, 
 every man who worked for him was made to feel that 
 he stood on his own, that he was respected as an in- 
 dividual, and that part of the respect shown him was 
 the assumption that he could act with intelligence and 
 integrity. Possibly nothing else can help more to take 
 the curse off the dependency of the employee than 
 honestly dealing with him as a responsible person. 
 
 One description of that attitude of Edward Cudahy 
 was the statement of William English: "He was the 
 best listener I ever knew. He never interrupted you. 
 He never suggested that he already knew what you 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 191 
 
 had to say. He took in everything carefully, weighed 
 it with his quick mind, and stored it away." 
 
 Good listeners are everywhere scarce in this self- 
 opinionated world; perhaps they are particularly scarce 
 amongst employers. The men who worked under Ed- 
 ward Cudahy knew that their statements of fact and 
 opinion got a hearing with him on the unspoken as- 
 sumption that they were worth listening to. That 
 very fact was a prop to the men's self-respect, as well 
 as a challenge to make their reports deserving of re- 
 spect. 
 
 One might be tempted to think of that deferential 
 attitude toward his employees as the mark of an un- 
 certain or diffident or insecure man. But Edward 
 Cudahy was nothing like that. As Mr. English put 
 it, in connection with his admiration for his employer's 
 modest deference: "You couldn't fool him. He knew 
 every detail of the meat business so well that no slip- 
 shod talk got by him. He not merely wanted honesty 
 from his men; he knew when he was getting it." 
 
 In the very difficult year of 1894, he one day asked 
 Clark Johnson, then a young man of twenty-one, 
 "What do you think of Blum?" Blum, a Jew, was 
 sales manager of the pork division. Johnson vaguely 
 answered in some general words of praise for Blum. 
 Edward Cudahy said: "I think he tells me only the 
 good news, not the bad." 
 
 As he went through one or other of the Company's 
 
192 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 plants, he talked with the managers and foremen. Un- 
 certainty on their part, gaps or inaccuracies in their 
 knowledge of what was going on in their departments, 
 he spotted instantly and pointed out bluntly. He be- 
 lieved that condoning of sloppy or incompetent work 
 was no part of charity ; that it was, instead, a real injury 
 to the men inclined to such slackness. Any attempt 
 to get away with sham or blurring was met by a humor- 
 ous contempt that could be sharp enough. 
 
 Frank Kennedy, in his day known as "Spike" Ken- 
 nedy, used to tell, with chuckling appreciation, of an 
 incident that occurred when he was assistant superin- 
 tendent at South Omaha. Edward Cudahy found him 
 vague and uncertain in one of his oral reports on some 
 of the plant's operations, and said: 
 
 "You don't seem to have the facts about the situ- 
 ation." 
 
 Kennedy, trying to draw a protective veil of dignity 
 over his evident shortcomings, replied: 
 
 "Very well, Mr. Cudahy, I shall try to ascertain 
 them." 
 
 Edward Cudahy looked up sharply at the slightly 
 pompous phrase, and said: "Ascertain, hell! You just 
 go and find out." 
 
 But it is significant that the one who related the in- 
 cident, and made it widely known, was Frank Kennedy, 
 not Edward Cudahy. 
 
 The older men in the Cudahy Company, who had 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 193 
 
 worked under both Michael and Edward Cudahy, noted 
 that Michael Cudahy was more suave and diplomatic 
 than Edward; yet they seemed to prefer Edward's 
 brevity and bluntness to Michael's more gracious man- 
 ner. Maybe meat packers are suspicious of delicacy, 
 and more at home with curt directness; maybe most 
 men are. 
 
 Edward Cudahy was noted amongst the men for 
 never wasting words. His mind moved quickly; and 
 he postulated some like quickness of mind in others 
 by limiting his directions to the bare essentials. His 
 employees knew that he took for granted that they 
 would be mentally alert, and not, to use his phrase, 
 "lazy in the head." 
 
 Clark Johnson, at the time assistant manager of the 
 pork department, in the headquarters' office in Chicago, 
 was sent some sample of "picnic hams" from the Bos- 
 ton branch of the Company, with the complaint that 
 they were badly trimmed. Edward Cudahy, passing 
 hurriedly through Johnson's office, saw the hams on 
 top of some filing cabinets. 
 
 "What are those?" he asked, scarcely pausing in his 
 stride. 
 
 Clark Johnson explained; then suggested that he 
 thought of sending the unsatisfactory hams by express 
 to Michael Murphy, the manager of the Omaha plant. 
 Half of Edward Cudahy's reply was just a look; the 
 other half was: 
 
194 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 "Murphy has hams like those." 
 
 And the letter that went from Edward Cudahy to 
 Omaha, a letter which Clark Johnson saw, said only 
 this: 
 
 "Dear Murphy: 
 
 You are not trimming your picnics right. 
 
 Edward Cudahy." 
 
 All that is a very masculine application of "Do unto 
 others as you would have others do unto you"; and 
 both Johnson and Murphy had brains enough to under- 
 stand it as such. 
 
 The men who worked under Edward Cudahy were 
 almost in awe of his uncanny swift accuracy with 
 figures. He put together detailed items whilst the men 
 were talking to him, made rapid mental calculations, 
 and announced results and conclusions with rather a 
 breath-taking speed. As a rule, when the men had 
 laboriously worked the thing out with pencil and paper, 
 they found he was correct. But if he should miss a 
 point or make a minor error, he was equally quick to 
 recognize and acknowledge the fact. "You're right; 
 I was wrong", was a statement they had all heard. 
 But when he was right, he had no comment to offer. 
 His job was to try to be right; it would be absurd to 
 crow when he succeeded. 
 
 There was no clash between his being exact and ex- 
 acting and his being modest and patient. For Edward 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 195 
 
 Cudahy, to be exacting was part of his honesty toward 
 himself, his business responsibilities, and his men; and 
 his impatience with bluff and incompetence was re- 
 strained both by a habit of self-control and by a de- 
 veloped sense of justice. The men knew that he was 
 fair to them, and never vindictive. As a matter of 
 fact, men do not esteem, they do not even like, a slack 
 manager. The loose rein means stumbles for every- 
 body. Here and there, an unbalanced or vicious em- 
 ployee resented Edward Cudahy' s honesty, no matter 
 how much it was tempered by generosity. We shall 
 later have occasion to illustrate this in one notable 
 instance. But the overwhelming majority of his em- 
 ployees who came in contact with him decidedly rel- 
 ished the combination of simplicity, directness, and en- 
 ergizing ability, with the essential self-restraint, courte- 
 sy, and generosity that they recognized in him. His 
 qualities created loyalty as well as confidence in the 
 men who worked for him ; and to do that is to solve the 
 hardest of the labor problems which an employer 
 meets. 
 
 If this sketchy and admittedly inadequate account 
 of how Edward Cudahy put his principles to practical 
 use in his business has dwelt upon the relations of em- 
 ployer and employee, it is because those relations were 
 the chief field in which his principles could operate. 
 But the same honesty and straightforwardness showed 
 
196 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 themselves in all his business dealings, although natu- 
 rally not with the intimacy and in the frequency of 
 opportunity with which they made themselves felt 
 within the confines of his own organization. 
 
 His dealings with his competitors were as fair as 
 they were shrewd. The competition in the meat indus- 
 try is always stiff, and at times fierce. Edward Cudahy 
 had constantly to be on the watch against the tactics, 
 usually legitimate, of rival organizations, and fore- 
 handed to meet their incursions into his fields of animal 
 supply or his markets. Occasionally he was irritated 
 by unscrupulous practices of competitors. There were 
 situations which tried his temper. But in the hard give- 
 and-take of competitive business, no irritation ever 
 pushed him across the borders of fair play. One testi- 
 mony to that fact is the esteem in which even his com- 
 petitors held him. 
 
 Rival packers do not love each other; but they 
 have at least varying degrees of respect for each other. 
 Shortly after the United States Steel Corporation was 
 formed by the merger of ten steel companies in 1901, 
 the three big Chicago packers, Armour, Swift, and 
 Morris, began plans for a similar consolidation in the 
 packing industry, and even made a start toward carry- 
 ing out their plans by organizing the National Pack- 
 ing Company. 1 The scheme fell through. But whilst 
 
 1 Leech and Carroll, Armour and His Times. New York, 
 1938; chapter xi, especially pp. 205-206. 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 197 
 
 it was still in the stage of hopefulness, the man who 
 seemed most likely to be chosen to head the ultimate 
 combination was Edward A. Cudahy. He had fought 
 hard, but he had fought fair. They trusted him. 
 
 But what about his attitude toward the larger re- 
 lations of his business with society? In what way did 
 his principles of conduct in business promote the 
 general social good ? These questions have not a great 
 deal of sense in them, and can easily imply some silly 
 assumptions. But they belong to a type of questions 
 so common in this befuddled age that we must briefly 
 consider them. We have become almost angrily in- 
 sistent upon the social significance of individual con- 
 duct, without always stopping to see what social sig- 
 nificance a particular action can have. But before look- 
 ing at the questions, it will be well to glance over the 
 general situation which has given rise to the vogue of 
 such questions. 
 
 The situation is this. The men of this generation 
 and the generation or two just preceding this, both in 
 Europe and in America, have muddled their economic 
 affairs about as badly as any large group of men in 
 history have ever done. By unbalancing the ratios 
 of rural and urban life, by preferring immediate ma- 
 terial gains to economic and social independence, by 
 measuring the benefits of civilization in luxuries rather 
 than in essentials, by the voluntary slavery of an ex- 
 aggerated industrialism, and by an almost unbroken 
 
198 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 succession of wars for commercial purposes, they have 
 created such social problems as starvation due to over- 
 production, a hunger for automobiles and radios prac- 
 tically equal to their hunger for food, periodic dislo- 
 cations of employment, and a general restless discon- 
 tent that at times reaches the height of passionate un- 
 happiness and blind revolt. 
 
 They made all these bad blunders during the very 
 years in which they were more and more abandoning 
 their tattered fragments of Christian belief and hope, 
 once sources of a courage and patience that made this 
 unsatisfactory world at least endurable whilst men 
 worked their painful way through it to a hoped-for 
 eternity of happiness. They put all their faith and 
 hope in happiness in this present world. They persu- 
 aded themselves that by effort and by education they 
 could re-create their lost paradise here: in fact, a para- 
 dise plus an automobile and a radio. When these 
 hopes broke in their hands, they turned to a universal 
 mood of impatient and rather savage criticism. 
 
 "The world is all wrong!" cry men who have done 
 their best to make the world all wrong. Reformers 
 grow like mushrooms. We must reform business, re- 
 form government, reform education, reform religion, 
 reform ethical concepts, reform everything — except 
 ourselves. Our wrongs are always the work of the 
 other fellow. We are suffering from unemployment? 
 Well, "big business", which we ourselves created by 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 199 
 
 our demand for mass-production, is to blame. Every 
 man who succeeds in the business conditions which we, 
 as an undisciplined mass, have brought into existence, 
 is "an enemy of the people", "a malefactor of great 
 wealth." 
 
 It is in some such temper as this that many of our 
 sociologists would ask: "What did Edward Cudahy do 
 to abolish the evils of society, to redress the inequali- 
 ties, even the privations, which his fellowmen suffer?" 
 One answer, to be more fully developed later, is that 
 he gave liberally to the needy, in money, in time and 
 labor, in counsel. But if the question means, as it un- 
 doubtedly does in the minds of many, "What did Ed- 
 ward Cudahy advance and support in the way of eco- 
 nomic and social theory?" the answer must be: he had 
 sense enough and realism enough not to try to do any- 
 thing. 
 
 It is not the task of men in business to formulate or 
 promote social theories. That does not mean that they 
 are callously irresponsible, or heedless of the material 
 and spiritual misery of the world. They have responsi- 
 bility toward their fellow-men, they are their brothers' 
 keepers, precisely in the measure in which they have 
 power to help others. But that power is practically 
 limited to fair and decent dealing with men in the con- 
 crete: to establishing and improving the opportunities 
 for employment within the economic and social 
 frame work that men have set up, to paying a wage 
 
200 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 commensurate with the financial possibilities of the 
 actual situation in their businesses. Unquestionably 
 there are businessmen who do not live up to these limi- 
 ted possibilities; and for such men there is no honest 
 defence. But to ask businessmen to correct the large 
 evils of a society which they cannot control is more 
 than unjust, it is ridiculous. 
 
 Now and then, it is true, some businessman suc- 
 cumbs to the itch for reforming the world, and, usually 
 with the aid of a "ghost writer", steps out of his 
 business into the murky regions of sociology or po- 
 litical economy. That is, of course, his own affair; 
 but his new efforts must be judged as the work, not of 
 a businessman, but of a sociologist or political econo- 
 mist. 
 
 Edward Cudahy had views, as all of us have, on our 
 social and economic problems. He discussed such 
 things, as we all do, in conversation; but he had the 
 modest good sense to keep from airing his views in 
 public. He had no desire to pose as an economic or 
 social theorist. He was not a writer, but a doer; and 
 he had no vanity urging him to hire a writer to push 
 his opinions upon other men. 
 
 For instance, although he was the head of a packing 
 company that ultimately employed about 15,000 men, 
 and did an annual business in excess of two hundred 
 million dollars, he not merely held no brief for "big 
 business", but he distrusted and feared it. What he 
 
PRINCIPLES AT WORK 201 
 
 feared in it was the dangerous power that it created, 
 and the lust for power that it inspired. In his own 
 conduct, he walked as warily in that fear as he did in 
 the fear of excessive drink. Indeed, he made the com- 
 parison that love of power was a more destructive in- 
 toxicant than whiskey. 
 
 He declared, more than once, with the utmost sin- 
 cerity, that he had never aimed at size in his own busi- 
 ness but that growth in size had been forced upon 
 him as a condition of securing and improving the 
 quality of his business. He will not be believed by 
 those who think with their emotions rather than with 
 their minds, and who are so angry over material in- 
 equalities that they ignore the causes of inequalities. 
 And since these wishful thinkers are not open to con- 
 viction, he sensibly made no effort to convince them. 
 
 Edward Cudahy intelligently and whole-heartedly 
 accepted the teachings laid down in the encyclicals of 
 recent popes, especially of Leo XIII and Pius XI, on 
 the economic and social rights of the masses of man- 
 kind. He would have rejoiced to see every man at- 
 tain to the same success in business that he himself had 
 achieved. But he knew, as Leo XIII and Pius XI also 
 knew, that neither had Almighty God given to every 
 man the native abilities, nor had every man developed 
 the physical and mental and moral virtues, which 
 would enable him to achieve material and financial 
 success; and he knew also that for lack of native gifts 
 
202 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 and the laborious achievements of self-discipline, vast 
 numbers of men had set up, and were continuing to 
 set up, conditions adverse to their ever succeeding in 
 this life. 
 
 Social theory, he maintained, depends for its prac- 
 tical validity, not merely on the universal principles it 
 contains, but on the actual material in which it must 
 work, on the here-and-now human conditions in which 
 the principles must be applied. The best that he could 
 do, the best that any man could do, was to practise 
 justice and charity and patience in his immediate en- 
 vironment. He could not change the environment of 
 others in any large way. His contributions to the gen- 
 eral good had to be limited to such betterment of the 
 lot of mankind as he could reach with the means at 
 his disposal. 
 
 He looked upon his position at the head of a pack- 
 ing company as a social responsibility to the commun- 
 ity only in so far as he could help individuals in the 
 community, by keeping men at work, by paying them 
 decent wages, and by helping them beyond their wages 
 when there was need. He could not establish complete 
 social justice. No man, no government, no religious 
 organization, has ever succeeded in doing that. What 
 Edward Cudahy could do, he did do; and God Him- 
 self asks no more than that of any man. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE USES OF WEALTH 
 
 I 
 
 Every man's education is a continuous process, 
 forward or backward. It can be slowed down 
 only by a decay of his vital forces, by the slowing down 
 of his life itself; it can be stopped only by insanity or 
 death. Edward Cudahy was gifted with exceptional 
 vitality and energy, which maintained its vigor even 
 into extreme old age; he had the physical and mental 
 equipment to keep up the pace of his early education 
 as an unflagging process; and he took very few steps 
 backward. 
 
 Even in a more extended study than this, it would 
 be impossible to explore fully all the details of the edu- 
 cational process that went on throughout his life. We 
 must necessarily be selective. In making a choice still 
 more limited by the simple plan of the present brief 
 sketch, there are two phases of his education which, 
 in the writer's judgment, cannot be left out of the ac- 
 count: his educational responses to adversity and to 
 success. These are two challenges to what he had 
 achieved in his earlier efforts at education, tests of the 
 solidity of past accomplishments. They are also two 
 important types of opportunity for continuing his 
 
204 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 progress in education. It is a commonplace observa- 
 tion, one that Edward Cudahy often quoted, that most 
 men stand adversity better than prosperity. Let us take 
 a look, first, at how he stood prosperity. 
 
 Success, prosperity, in the minds of most men means 
 wealth. There are, of course, other forms of success 
 in this life besides wealth, and some of them much 
 more enduring: eminence in knowledge or skill or 
 power, or even virtue. The world accepts as success- 
 ful men those who attain high political office, famous 
 literary or scientific men, accomplished men in 
 the professions, engineers, actors, physicians, clergy- 
 men. There was a considerable time in our recent 
 history when eminent bootleggers were accounted suc- 
 cessful men. For a limited number of people, saints 
 are successes; although, naturally, on a popular vote 
 they would be outranked by movie stars. 
 
 Fame alone, or failing that, notoriety, is one hall- 
 mark of success; wealth is another. The combination 
 of the two is perfect. But of the two human tests of 
 success, at the present time the more generally valid 
 is wealth. If you have wealth, you can at least pur- 
 chase fame. In the commonest belief, if you have 
 wealth, you can purchase anything. 
 
 Edward Cudahy never attained to fame, nor even to 
 notoriety. He quietly kept out of the limelight, even 
 in the little world of his own packing company. There 
 was an honorary organization amongst the employees 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 205 
 
 of The Cudahy Packing Company known as the Order 
 of the Blue Vase, which presented various awards for 
 distinction and held an annual dinner-meeting with the 
 usual speeches and felicitations. But it was a rare 
 thing for the organizing committee to succeed in get- 
 ting Edward Cudahy to be present at these affairs. 
 
 The nearest approach Edward Cudahy ever had to 
 public recognition was his being made a Master Knight 
 of the Knights of Malta. That was in January, 1930. 
 But close friends of his discovered that he was a Knight 
 of Malta only years later. In January, 1939, he was 
 elected to the Board of Founders of the American 
 Chapter of the Knights of Malta. The new distinction 
 was allowed to escape the notice of his friends just as 
 unconcernedly as the first. It was quite accidentally 
 that the writer, nearly two years after the event, dis- 
 covered it through a casual conversation with Edward 
 Cudahy' s secretary. 
 
 Realists are usually not much attracted by publicity 
 or decorations or applause. They know what a sham 
 most of it is, and how pitifully fragile the best of it 
 is. In his judgments about fame, as in all his other 
 judgments, Edward Cudahy was a realist. Besides, he 
 was familiar with the most ironic passage in all his- 
 tory: the contrast between Palm Sunday and the Fri- 
 day of Calvary. "You couldn't fool him!" William 
 English said of his business acumen: you couldn't fool 
 him on fame either. 
 
206 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 But he did achieve wealth. In the course of his long 
 life, he became a multi-millionaire. He began to make 
 money when he was a very young man. A young man 
 of twenty-three, nearly sixty years ago, with a yearly 
 salary of $25,000, was reckoned by thousands of peo- 
 ple as a wealthy man. After four years at that salary, 
 he not merely put all his savings, plus a large loan, 
 into the Armour-Cudahy Packing Company, he also 
 took a drop in salary from $25,000 a year to $10,000 
 a year. But to the people of South Omaha he was still 
 a wealthy man. When his first year of operations in 
 South Omaha wound up with a loss of $38,000, the 
 common estimate of the workingmen in his packing 
 house would unhesitatingly insist that he was still a 
 wealthy man. Then, as the years went by, and Michael 
 Cudahy and he strengthened their position in the pack- 
 ing industry, he added pretty steadily to his wealth. 
 He had bad years, some heavy losses, but on the whole 
 he continued to make money. 
 
 What did Edward Cudahy do with his wealth? In 
 what way did his growing possessions affect him? 
 What educational results came from his conduct in 
 prosperity? Before we try to answer such questions, 
 we must first look at a few facts about what his wealth 
 was. 
 
 The first fact is that he never had much money. 
 After he had begun his own business management with 
 his brother Michael, his wealth existed in the form of 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 207 
 
 bricks and mortar, livestock on its way to becoming 
 meat products, and meat products on their way to the 
 consumer, equipment in his production plants, refrig- 
 erator railway cars, and other vehicles for transporting 
 the products. The Cudahy Packing Company had to 
 keep a large balance of cash on hand for the purchase 
 of livestock and produce; but that was Company cash, 
 in constant circulation in the operations of the Com- 
 pany, as much a part of the machinery of production 
 as any equipment in the packing plants. 
 
 The second fact is that, for many years, his owner- 
 ship of this wealth was very precarious. A succession 
 of poor years, the result of drouth affecting his supply 
 of livestock, or of disastrous floods such as the Kansas 
 City plant endured in its early days, could wipe out his 
 business, as it had wrecked the business of so many 
 other packers, and turn his plants and equipment over 
 to his creditors. 
 
 Hence, we must first get rid of the rather common 
 notion that men like Edward Cudahy, who actively 
 control the investment and management of business 
 enterprises, are the untroubled possessors of great 
 wealth in a fluid form, subject to their disposal prac- 
 tically at their own whim. Men who inherit wealth 
 earned by their forefathers, men who become wealthy 
 through discovery or through speculations, may be 
 playboys with their wealth ; but not, as a rule, men who 
 own their wealth as managing directors of a business. 
 
208 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 It would be more correct to say that such men are 
 bound down by their possessions, burdened with more 
 cares than their employees, more acquainted with re- 
 sponsibility than with liberty of action. In his later 
 years, Edward Cudahy could have turned some of his 
 business properties into money. But he had an intelli- 
 gent contempt for money that was not working to 
 some purpose. 
 
 His wealth was his investment in The Cudahy Pack- 
 ing Company; and 15,000 other men were using that 
 wealth, just as he was, to work out their livelihood. 
 He saw clearly, and never let himself forget, that he 
 was the guardian and manager of his wealth, not for 
 himself alone, but for all the men who, in our unhappy 
 age of mass-production, depended upon the use of his 
 wealth for their employment. That was the chief rea- 
 son why he had no thought of selling off any of his 
 properties for ready money. 
 
 II 
 
 As a matter of fact, Edward Cudahy had no hunger 
 for money as such, and no eagerness to spend money on 
 himself. One indication of that is the fact that, through 
 the long years of his business career, the share of the 
 wealth produced by The Cudahy Packing Company 
 which Edward Cudahy withdrew for his own use was 
 actually less than the share drawn out by some of his 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 209 
 
 employees. Most of the money he made went back 
 into the Company. What he kept out of his earnings 
 sufficed only for the livelihood of himself and his fam- 
 ily and for the demands made upon him by charity. 
 
 He had never developed an appetite for luxury, and 
 both he and Elizabeth Cudahy abhorred ostentation. 
 They had lived in a rented house in Chicago ; when they 
 came to Omaha, they rented a still more modest house 
 on Douglas Street, and lived there until they had 
 weathered the dangerous years of the Armour-Cudahy 
 Packing Company. When Michael and Edward 
 Cudahy had more securely formed their own company, 
 Edward rented a better house, one belonging to John 
 L. Miles, on 26th Street and St. Mary's Avenue. He 
 had lived ten or twelve years in Omaha before he ven- 
 tured to buy a house of his own, on 37th Street and 
 Dewey, which was to be his home until he moved back 
 to Chicago in 1911. By that time, with his position 
 established and his children growing to manhood and 
 womanhood, he was ready to build a house for him- 
 self and his family, a simple, solid, and ample house, 
 to last him the rest of his lifetime. 
 
 It was so in other things as well. For instance, al- 
 though he had a horse and buggy when he lived on 
 26th Street, he and his family walked the half mile 
 or so to St. Peter's Church on Sundays, with Mrs. 
 Cudahy's rubbers being pulled off in the sticky mud. 
 Why clutter up the road in front of the church, when 
 
210 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 the church was within walking distance of their home, 
 and when most of the rest of the congregation had to 
 walk because they had no vehicle to carry them ? 
 
 There was no miserliness in all this. All that was 
 sensibly needed for his family Edward Cudahy provid- 
 ed generously ; but he had a habit of modesty and mod- 
 eration. The summers in Omaha are appallingly hot. 
 He could afford to send his wife and children away 
 from the sweltering city; so he bought a house on 
 Mackinac Island for summer use, as early as 1895. He 
 had a faithful man, Andrew Gray, who for many years 
 drove his family in a carriage, as well as looked after 
 the lawns about the house. When automobiles came 
 into use, he had an automobile. But both he and Eli- 
 zabeth Cudahy were content to keep the same automo- 
 bile for seven or eight years, with no thought or worry 
 about changes in the style of cars. 
 
 His chief relaxations were still the theatre, music, 
 and reading. When he had the leisure for it, he liked 
 to drive in a buggy or sleigh, or to play a round of golf, 
 which was then just beginning its popularity in the 
 United States. Later in life, he found time occasion- 
 ally for a game of bridge, and became an extremely 
 skillful player, a fact in which he took an innocent de- 
 light. 
 
 His supervision of the growing interests of The 
 Cudahy Packing Company involved a considerable 
 amount of travelling, the hurried, intensively occupied 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 211 
 
 travel of inspection and business guidance. Of leisure- 
 ly travel, for rest and cultural observation, he had much 
 less. The first time he went abroad was in 1894, and 
 the opportunity to go came as the result of an accident. 
 
 On the 8th of March, 1894, there was a fairly heavy 
 fall of snow in Omaha. Although it was a Thursday, 
 a working day, Edward Cudahy came home early from 
 South Omaha, hitched a horse to a light sleigh, and 
 took his three children out to enjoy the last sleigh-ride 
 of the winter. The horse was lively even after a drive 
 of an hour or so; and when Edward Cudahy had 
 brought the children home, he thought he would take 
 a quick drive by himself. He had gone only a short 
 distance when the sleigh struck a concealed hole in the 
 poorly paved street, buckled and broke, and pitched 
 him out in such a way as to break his right thigh-bone. 
 
 By the time he could move around again at all, the 
 strike of that year, perhaps the most remarkable year 
 for strikes in the history of labor unions in the United 
 States, had extended itself "sympathetically" to The 
 Cudahy Packing Company. The causes of the strike 
 were remote, and beyond any possible control by Ed- 
 ward Cudahy. They linked up in some roundabout 
 way with the strike of the United Mine Workers, be- 
 gun in Ohio on April 21st, with the Pullman strike 
 which began on May 11th, and with the great railway 
 strike which began on June 26th. There was nothing 
 for Edward Cudahy to do save to wait until the storm 
 
212 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 had passed. In the circumstances, he and Elizabeth 
 Cudahy thought they might as well take a vacation. 
 With Edward hobbling on crutches, they took train to 
 New York, and boarded a steamer for Europe. 
 
 On two other occasions, Edward and Elizabeth 
 Cudahy travelled in Europe; the last time in 1913, to 
 pick up their two youngest girls, who were having a 
 finishing year at school in Paris, and with them and the 
 daughter just older, to journey slowly through Italy. 
 They travelled as they lived at home, modestly and 
 intelligently. Edward Cudahy' s memories of European 
 cities were largely of long walks with Elizabeth 
 through storied streets that brought to life their many 
 years of reading. 
 
 Most of his vacations, however, were spent in his 
 own country, either resting at quiet Mackinac or in 
 brief travels through the West and Southwest. He 
 enjoyed travel, especially in the company of his family; 
 he had the quick power of observation that garners 
 much from travel, and enough background of histor- 
 ical reading to appreciate the meaning of what he 
 observed; but he had not much time to spare for its 
 enjoyment. 
 
 These little details get their meaning as illustrative 
 of an important truth: that Edward Cudahy's education 
 in the use of wealth had in it a large element of learn- 
 ing to do without wealth. His attitude toward his 
 possessions became increasingly impersonal. No doubt, 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 213 
 
 there was a satisfying sense of achievement in his early 
 success in business, and in the knowledge that his suc- 
 cess was demonstrated by his growing wealth. But his 
 hard-headed common sense, plus his Catholic sense of 
 values, kept him from ever being dazzled by wealth. 
 In a material way, he was intelligently aware that 
 money will buy only a limited number of things that 
 a man can really use; what else it buys must be for 
 vanity and display. And nothing, he knew, that money 
 can buy is capable of satisfying the full hunger of the 
 human heart, made for the enjoyment of God Himself. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's talk and action made it clear that 
 his wealth never dominated him. He sat lightly to his 
 possessions. In St. Paul's phrase, he "used this world 
 as if he used it not." He held, not as a speculative 
 theory, but as a working principle, the truth that wealth 
 is one of the occasional gifts of God's providence, not 
 an end in itself, but a means to the great end for which 
 God created him. His whole Catholic training, begun 
 in his days of poverty and carried out through his 
 years of increasing wealth, flowered in a serene spirit 
 of detachment. 
 
 It was that spirit of detachment, as we shall see, 
 which made it possible for him to endure calmly great 
 financial losses. It was the same spirit which made him 
 ready to give away more of his earnings than he kept 
 for himself. 
 
214 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 III 
 
 Giving away money calls for as much skill as earning 
 money. To whom to give, when to give, how to give, 
 and how much to give: these are not simple questions, 
 and they have no simple answers. Common sense, as 
 well as experience, tells us that indiscriminate or un- 
 intelligent giving can be mischievous in a number of 
 ways. A great deal of what appears as philanthropy 
 is of debatable value to any one, beyond the rather 
 mechanical economic fact that it circulates some money. 
 There are plenty of people who question the wisdom 
 of some of the widely advertised benefactions of recent 
 times, and who can give strong grounds for their criti- 
 cism. This is not the place to discuss the complex 
 problems of endowments and foundations and or- 
 ganized charity, governmental or private, and individ- 
 ual almsgiving. What we are concerned with is only 
 how Edward Cudahy met those problems in his own 
 use of his wealth. 
 
 Take the first question: to whom was he to give 
 away some of his earnings? There was no difficulty 
 about finding persons and institutions eager to receive, 
 even asking for money. The mere rumor of wealth 
 brings such requests. Now it is impossible for any man 
 to investigate adequately all these possible objects of 
 his beneficence, and to weigh fully the merits of each 
 claim of charity. The large foundations have a staff, 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 215 
 
 part of the overhead of administration of their funds, 
 for such investigation. Edward Cudahy had to decide 
 early upon some policy which would guide him in de- 
 termining to whom he would give away his money. His 
 was not the type of mind to set up rules on the ques- 
 tion, rules to be followed with inhuman rigidity. Rath- 
 er he acted upon a few principles which had been 
 operative all through his life. 
 
 One of those principles was that "charity begins at 
 home." In practice, that meant for Edward Cudahy 
 that his employees had first call on his generosity, in 
 the measure of their need. It is baffling to search for 
 records of this sort of gift in the account books kept 
 for him. Hundreds of entries, marked simply "Cash", 
 and ranging usually from $50 to $500, are all the indi- 
 cations that exist of sums of money given to employees 
 in time of need. Only through conversation with some 
 of these men has the writer been able to identify a 
 number of these gifts. 
 
 Here are sample incidents. One man, employed in 
 the office, had been laid up for some weeks with in- 
 fluenza. A day or two after he came back to work, 
 Edward Cudahy met him, noted that he still looked run 
 down, and asked him briefly how he was feeling. The 
 man answered: "Oh, I'm all right. I'll pick up 
 strength in a little while." 
 
 Edward Cudahy said nothing; but half an hour later 
 he sent a messenger to call the man to his office. When 
 
216 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 he came in, wondering why he was summoned, Edward 
 Cudahy said: 
 
 "I don't like to see you go back to work until you are 
 really well. Why don't you take more time off, and 
 give yourself a chance?" 
 
 "Well," the man answered, "I'll be getting my va- 
 cation in three or four weeks. I can get along until 
 then." 
 
 "Take your vacation now," he was told. "And stay 
 as long as you need. Of course, your pay will go on; 
 but here is something to help out the vacation." 
 
 The "something" was $500.00. 
 
 Another employee, in a still more subordinate posi- 
 tion, and with a correspondingly smaller salary, lost 
 his son, a boy of fifteen, the eldest of a growing family, 
 after a lingering illness. Edward Cudahy and his son, 
 Edward A. Cudahy, Jr., went to the man's house to 
 offer their sympathy. The day after the funeral, when 
 the bereaved father came back to work, he was given 
 a thousand dollars to meet the expenses of his son's 
 illness and death. 
 
 Neither of these men had any expectation of such 
 gifts; they had no claim, real or fancied, to any special 
 help. As the second man said to the writer: "I was 
 very much touched by Mr. Cudahy and his son's visit 
 to me in my time of trouble. It meant a good deal 
 that men as busy as they are put themselves out that 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 217 
 
 way. But I was speechless, I could only babble when 
 they paid up my doctor's and hospital bill." 
 
 In the earlier years of The Cudahy Packing Com- 
 pany, when Edward Cudahy could still know person- 
 ally a good many of its employees, many of the men 
 came to him in their difficulties. They needed his 
 intercession for a wayward boy, or railway transporta- 
 tion for an impoverished relative, or bail for disturbing 
 the peace, or counsel of one sort or another. Very 
 few asked for financial help. Poverty has its pride, 
 often as high as the pride of wealth. But if the situa- 
 tion called for help in money, the money was forth- 
 coming. Edward Cudahy had a quick eye for the need 
 that did not readily find expression in words. 
 
 As the Company grew larger, Edward Cudahy's per- 
 sonal knowledge of its employees was inevitably nar- 
 rowed down to the comparatively small number of men- 
 he dealt with directly or knew from the earlier days. 
 Then he had to trust to hearsay as a means of knowing 
 where there was some special need amongst the men; 
 and hearsay is a poor means, inadequate, unreliable. 
 That was one reason why fixed pensions and insurance 
 schemes had to be devised, notably after the Company's 
 offices were moved to Chicago in 1911. 
 
 It is not always as easy as some cynics may think for 
 an employee to receive gifts from his employer. There 
 is a type of employee who looks upon any such gift, to 
 himself or to another employee, with the surly notion 
 
218 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 that it is at best a tacit acknowledgment that they are 
 all underpaid, or with the envious sneer, "Why 
 shouldn't the boss give us something? He's rolling in 
 wealth." There is, perhaps, a much larger number of 
 employees, who have no grievance about their wages, 
 and whose pride is touched by a gift from one who is 
 not a friendly equal, but an employer. 
 
 Edward Cudahy had to solve that problem, in part 
 by his knowledge of men, his swift appraisal of indi- 
 viduals, which told him where a helping hand would 
 be ill received, in part by his sincere sympathy and 
 kindness, his habitual modesty, which made it impos- 
 sible for him ever to be patronizing. As one man put 
 it: "I know lots of cases where Mr. Cudahy helped 
 fellows out of a jam, and once he helped me. A fellow 
 hates himself for needing the help, but I didn't feel 
 ashamed at taking it from him. He said very little in 
 words to me, but he had the kindest eyes I ever saw 
 in a man." Ninety-nine parts of tact is kindliness, and 
 the hundreth part is the ability to keep one's mouth 
 shut. Edward Cudahy was well stocked with both in- 
 gredients. 
 
 IV 
 
 Next in order came his gifts to organized charities, 
 Catholic and non-Catholic, to hospitals, schools, 
 churches, community projects. These again were main- 
 ly given to local needs, although his account books 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 219 
 
 show that he acceded to calls for assistance from dis- 
 tant places in the United States and abroad. Through 
 the kindness of Edward Cudahy's secretary, Miss Anita 
 Rigali, the writer has been enabled to scan the entries 
 in his private ledger for a number of years. For the 
 years 1918 to 1939, the total gifts recorded, not to in- 
 dividuals, but to various organizations, amount to more 
 than $882,000, an average of more than $40,000 a year. 
 These gifts were made from his own earnings, and 
 hence they varied with good and bad years, ranging 
 from as high as $231,000 in 1929 to as low as $1,500 
 in 1938, a year in which he suffered large financial loss. 
 
 For the overwhelming majority of these gifts there 
 is no record save his private ledger. Edward Cudahy 
 was as free from ostentation in his giving away money 
 as he was in everything else. He did not even expect 
 acknowledgment or gratitude for his gifts; which was 
 fortunate, since sometimes he did not get it. His only 
 concern was the eminently reasonable one that his gifts 
 might be put to good use. 
 
 A study of the list of donations compiled by Miss 
 Rigali from Edward Cudahy's private account book 
 makes clear how intelligent he was in his giving. He 
 observed shrewdly, judging needs and uses for the 
 money he intended to give. There were, it is true, cer- 
 tain fixed obligations in his mind, such as his contribu- 
 tions to his own parish church, and to other Catholic 
 churches. There were certain types of organizations, 
 
220 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 the Associated Catholic Charities, the Community 
 Fund, the United Charities of Chicago, to which he 
 contributed regularly, as assured outlets. Between 
 1918 and 1936, his donations to the Associated Catho- 
 lic Charities of Chicago amounted to more than 
 $150,000. But he was intelligently flexible in his 
 choice of agencies to meet changing circumstances. 
 
 Thus, when the major depression of 1930 created 
 new agencies for relief of the destitute, he added to his 
 list of beneficiaries such organizations as the Unem- 
 ployment Fund, the Joint Emergency Relief, the Emer- 
 gency Welfare Fund. He had no doctrinaire ideas 
 about charity any more than about other social prob- 
 lems. He knew that "the poor we have always with 
 us", that there is no complete solution of the problem 
 of poverty. His attitude was the practical one of meet- 
 ing concrete situations with the best help at his com- 
 mand. The men who sneer at that help as "mere 
 palliatives", simply blind themselves to the fact that 
 the disease is incurable. The roots of widespread pov- 
 erty are in man's incompetence; if you go far enough 
 back, they are in original sin, the temporal effects of 
 which have been left in men even after their redemp- 
 tion by Jesus Christ. 
 
 Christian charity is engaged with actual needs, with 
 some of the very tangible results of human blundering 
 and incompetence; problematical long-range adjust- 
 ments must wait until the immediate needs are taken 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 221 
 
 care of. Edward Cudahy had no illusion about his in- 
 ability to reform and reorganize the economic condi- 
 tions of a world that had dug a pit for itself. If others 
 thought they could achieve such a reform, let them 
 try; they had his sympathy in their undertaking. But 
 the best use he could see for his wealth was to spend 
 much of it on alleviating the distress within his reach. 
 
 Edward Cudahy appreciated, too, the fact that there 
 were always instances of need which were not met by 
 the organized forms of charity, which called for per- 
 sonal attention and the delicacy of personal sympathy. 
 His gifts to the large organizations were not meant to 
 relieve him from the duty of individual charity. But 
 these continuing private gifts evade our scrutiny for the 
 most part, just because he kept them private. 
 
 The writer happened to stumble on a few such in- 
 stances: a hospital bill paid, a monthly subsidy to a 
 poor family, arrangements for sanitarium care of a tu- 
 berculosis victim. One characteristic illustration con- 
 cerned an elderly man who, on account of his lungs, 
 lived in the Southwest; not very competent, earning a 
 most precarious livelihood; but with a touch of linger- 
 ing scholarliness. Edward Cudahy had never met him. 
 The man wrote, asking for help at some time of special 
 distress, and got it. Thereafter, for years, he sent Ed- 
 ward Cudahy, from time to time, a book or two he 
 had picked up, without stipulating any price for the 
 books. He was always sent in return a sum much more 
 
222 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 than the books were worth, the polite fiction of a deal 
 in books covering a periodic gift to a man who would 
 have chafed under relief by some organized charity. 
 
 It must be remembered that during this recent period 
 of wide-spread distress The Cudahy Packing Company- 
 was also subject to the harsh fluctuations of the eco- 
 nomic order. There were several years in which the 
 Company operated at a loss running into millions of 
 dollars. These were also years of vexatious uncertain- 
 ties about the policies of our governments, federal and 
 state, with regard to business. The "processing tax", 
 afterwards declared invalid by the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, although its worst hardship was the 
 complication and confusion it caused, put a large finan- 
 cial burden on The Cudahy Packing Company; a bur- 
 den which it could not pass on to others, and a loss for 
 which no legal redress was found after the tax had 
 been declared unconstitutional. Corporation taxes 
 mounted apace, often to the glee of the voter, who 
 thought he was "soaking the rich", and did not know 
 he was soaking himself. The tax on surplus earnings 
 attacked the one safeguard that had carried the Com- 
 pany through the bad years following the government- 
 ordered slaughter of livestock and the subsequent de- 
 struction of animals by drought. 
 
 These conditions cut down Edward Cudahy' s earn- 
 ings, and therefore his capacity to give money away. 
 But they did not destroy his generosity; and he found 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 223 
 
 a way to keep up his gifts by retrenching still more 
 on what he spent upon himself. He curtailed his 
 household expenses before he curtailed his gifts to 
 others. 
 
 Moreover, he accepted cheerfully the growing levy 
 of government taxes. He did not believe that all the 
 moves of the Roosevelt Administration were judicious. 
 He thought some of them were ill-advised and showed 
 lack of a sense of realities. But he was so thoroughly 
 in sympathy with the humanitarian aims of the Admin- 
 istration that he was willing to hope that the billions 
 it garnered from taxes might be spent to some improve- 
 ment of the common lot. He was modest enough, also, 
 to trust the presumptive skill of the government's po- 
 litical economists up to the point where they should 
 fail definitely and unmistakably. All that means that 
 he had learned intellectual as well as moral restraint 
 in his use of the wealth he had earned. He was one 
 of those businessmen, fortunately not uncommon, 
 whose success in managing a business concern does not 
 lead them to the belief that they qualify as experts in 
 political economy. 
 
 One use to which wealthy men have from time to 
 time devoted a considerable part of their wealth is the 
 promotion of educational facilities. They have been 
 drawn to build and endow schools and libraries, and to 
 
224 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 found lectureships and scholarships, because of their 
 nebulous, scarcely denned hope that financial aid to 
 schools and libraries will of itself secure improvement 
 in the quality as well as the quantity of education, and 
 that an improved quality and quantity of education will 
 go far toward solving the problems of mankind. It is 
 a charming hope. To lose it entirely would be tragic. 
 But it is a hope that has been struck to futility over 
 and over again. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's robust realism kept him from be- 
 ing drugged by that hope. He knew as well as any 
 one that the chief arbiter of any man's education, under 
 God, is the man himself. He knew that each man's 
 endowment, natural and supernatural, sets the limits 
 of his capacity for education; and that his environment 
 can only moderately help or hinder him in achieving 
 his education within those limits. All the millions in 
 the world spent upon schools and books and equip- 
 ment and academic gowns and daisy chains and syl- 
 labuses and football teams cannot make a bright child 
 out of a dull child, or an energetic child out of a lazy 
 child, or for that matter, a wise, enlightening, and in- 
 spiring teacher out of a muddled or conceited or undis- 
 ciplined man. We have proved to our bitter certainty 
 that a string of degree letters after a man's name means 
 little or nothing toward his competency as an educator. 
 
 But Edward Cudahy knew that money can do some- 
 thing, even if not much, in education; or at least in 
 
THE ELIZABETH M. CUDAHY MEMORIAL LIBRARY 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 225 
 
 educational facilities, which are not the same thing. 
 Better buildings, more commodious offices for deans 
 and professors, more books, ampler laboratory equip- 
 ment, nobler football fields: these things cost money. 
 If they can be had, they may make the external condi- 
 tions of education easier and more attractive. That is 
 all they can do; but it is something. They cannot sup- 
 ply talent, or industry, or other good habits; but they 
 can make it more comfortable for the teachers and the 
 students. Whether or not the more comfortable and 
 flattering circumstances foster the essential internal ef- 
 forts of the student to educate himself, is a debatable 
 question. The answer to the question, although usual- 
 ly enthusiastic in its affirmation, seems to be based more 
 on wishful thinking than on any test of realistic experi- 
 ence. Edward Cudahy was a little inclined to be skep- 
 tical of that affirmative answer. 
 
 Yet with his usual modesty he admitted that he 
 knew little about school education. He was conscious 
 that his own school education had stopped when he 
 was in his thirteenth year. Perhaps the school people 
 were right. In any case, he was generously willing to 
 take a chance, if only on the sound assumption that 
 education was so valuable as to make even the possi- 
 bility of helping it a cause worth spending his money 
 on. 
 
 From time to time, he gave various smaller sums, of 
 ten thousand dollars or less, to several Catholic schools 
 
226 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 and colleges; for on one point he had no uncertainty 
 whatever, that if his money could aid any education 
 it must be given to the education he believed in, Cath- 
 olic education. In 1918, the Rector of a Catholic uni- 
 versity approached Edward Cudahy with the request 
 that he endow a chair in the university. The amount 
 asked for the endowment was $100,000. Edward 
 Cudahy explained that he never had much ready 
 money, and that he could not let this gift use up money 
 devoted to local needs; hence he would have to make 
 payment in four annual installments of $25,000 each. 
 The Rector gladly accepted the gift in those terms. The 
 first installment was paid on December 31, 1918, the 
 second on December 27, 1919. The cancelled cheques 
 were returned from the bank; but no other acknowl- 
 edgment was received. When Edward Cudahy wrote 
 to the Rector about the matter, his letter was not an- 
 swered. Under the circumstances, he made no more 
 payments. Since then he has heard nothing of the 
 whole affair. 
 
 That experience was somewhat discouraging; but it 
 did not deter Edward Cudahy from one more venture 
 in spending his money on a university. This time he 
 himself chose his beneficiary, one of the many Jesuit 
 schools named Loyola, the one in Chicago known for 
 forty years as Saint Ignatius College, and since 1909 
 named Loyola University. He was drawn to offer as- 
 sistance to a Jesuit school because of his long years of 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 227 
 
 acquaintance with the Jesuits, from his own school- 
 days in Milwaukee, through his attendance at the Jesuit 
 church in Omaha, and his son's enrollment in Creigh- 
 ton University. 
 
 There was also another bond between him and the 
 Jesuits of Chicago. His brother, Michael Cudahy, per- 
 haps inspired by the founding of Armour Institute by 
 his old partner, had mentioned to several friends his 
 desire to help out the very youthful Loyola University 
 in Chicago. One of his hearers told the Jesuit rector, 
 Father Alexander Burrowes, who said he thought that 
 was a nice idea. A month or so later, the friend asked 
 Father Burrowes how he was getting on with Michael 
 Cudahy. "Oh, he hasn't been to see me," said Father 
 Burrowes. Ultimately, the friend got the two together; 
 and Michael Cudahy said modestly that he wished to 
 do something, but did not know just how to go about it. 
 He agreed to the suggestion to put up a science build- 
 ing on the north-side campus. The building was be- 
 gun a few months before his sudden death in 1910, 
 was completed by his family, ready for use in 1912, 
 and was called the Michael Cudahy Science Hall. 
 
 Fifteen years after the death of Michael Cudahy, 
 Father Agnew, then rector of Loyola University, asked 
 Edward Cudahy to endow a chair in chemistry. He 
 did not know that Edward Cudahy tended to shy away 
 from university chairs; but as a matter of fact he did 
 not get his chair of chemistry. 
 
228 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 When Father Robert M. Kelley became rector of 
 Loyola University in 1927, he was told by a mutual 
 friend of Edward Cudahy and himself, Frank Burkley 
 of Omaha, that Edward Cudahy had in mind giving a 
 substantial donation to Loyola University. Father Kel- 
 ley had found the University in debt to the amount of 
 $1,800,000. He suggested that the gift take the form 
 of paying off some, at least, of the University debt. 
 But Edward Cudahy had the businessman's code 
 toward debt: don't get into debt, unless you see your 
 way to getting out again. 
 
 Father Kelley then suggested the gift of a library 
 building; and a library it was, named in honor of Ed- 
 ward's wife, Elizabeth Murphy Cudahy. The building 
 was completed in June, 1930, seven years before Eliza- 
 beth Cudahy's death. Building and equipment cost 
 more than $400,000. At the same time, Edward 
 Cudahy set up an endowment trust fund, for the main- 
 tenance of the library building, of more than $100,000. 
 He has since continued to make donations toward 
 building up in the library a collection of Jesuit books. 1 
 
 VI 
 
 The last use of Edward Cudahy's money to be men- 
 tioned in this chapter should, perhaps, have been taken 
 up first of all: his provision for the future of his 
 
 1 See Appendix II. 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 229 
 
 children. His children were his natural heirs ; they had, 
 in one sense, a companion title with his own to the 
 wealth he had amassed. He was, moreover, a most af- 
 fectionate and devoted father, bound to his wife and 
 children by a great and generous love. They needed no 
 other title than their mutual love to secure from him 
 all that it was in his power to give. 
 
 But there is a real problem for any wealthy father in 
 deciding to what extent, and in what way, he should 
 pass on his wealth to his children. Edward Cudahy 
 knew that wealth is by no means an unmixed blessing, 
 even though it may appear to those who haven't got it 
 as the supreme blessing. His own wealth had come to 
 him as to a disciplined man, after plenty of hard work 
 and long years of effort, when his mental and moral 
 fiber had been toughened by habits of self-control. In 
 general it is reasonable to presume that such a man is 
 prepared, by his previous training, to use wealth with 
 intelligence and prudence. 
 
 On the other hand, he knew that wealth not earned 
 by its possessor, but given to him as, an inheritance, may 
 find him unready to receive it. He knew the common 
 saying, begotten of experience in this young country of 
 ours, with its history of rapidly accumulated and rap- 
 idly lost fortunes, "From shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves 
 is three generations." Yet he knew also that the least 
 mischievous thing that can happen to the inheritors of 
 wealth is to lose it. More disastrous to him is to keep 
 
230 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 his wealth and to let it degrade him into excesses of 
 pride, silly social contentions and rivalries of snobbish- 
 ness, empty-pated frivolity, the cheap forgetfulness of 
 all noble purpose, if not into such gross vices as drunk- 
 enness and sexual licence. 
 
 Edward Cudahy knew also that these mischievous 
 consequences are not due to wealth itself, that there is 
 no inherent evil in wealth. As an intelligent Catholic, 
 he understood that Jesus Christ was not condemning 
 wealth itself when He said: "It is easier for a camel to 
 pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
 to enter into the kingdom of heaven." What Our Lord 
 pointed out was the violent opposition between the 
 temptations occasioned by riches and the life He 
 brought to men. Wealth exempts its possessor from 
 one set of the annoyances and burdens of life, and 
 from some of the disciplines involved in lacking, and 
 having to struggle for, the common necessities. In 
 so far, it lifts its possessor out of the common rut; and 
 as a consequence, it may tempt him to think himself 
 superior to ordinary mortals. It thus creates a danger- 
 ous condition of life. 
 
 Yet he would be an inhuman father who would de- 
 prive his children of their inheritance in order to save 
 them from the dangers of wealth. Those dangers, 
 Edward Cudahy hoped, could be lessened and counter- 
 acted by the good principles and good habits he tried 
 to build up in his children. He and Elizabeth Cudahy 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 231 
 
 surrounded their children with their love, taught them 
 by their example as well as precept, sent them to 
 schools in which Catholic beliefs and practices were 
 stressed. Their children saw no pride or harshness or 
 strutting display in their home, but only Christian mod- 
 esty and cheerfulness and simplicity, the quiet, steady 
 love of God and their neighbor. They had never 
 known poverty, it is true. When they were born, their 
 father was already a well-to-do man. But they had 
 never known any of the destroying viciousness that can 
 accompany wealth. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's one surviving son, named after 
 himself, grew up very close to him. Old employees of 
 The Cudahy Packing Company recall how his father 
 brought him, even as a little boy, down to the orifice on 
 Saturday mornings, when he was free of school. Ed- 
 ward Cudahy was too busy to talk much with his son; 
 but he was comforted just to have him near him. There 
 was a growing understanding as well as great affection 
 between them. Young Edward went to work with his 
 father when he was nineteen, and thereafter marched 
 beside him, gradually increasing his share of responsi- 
 bility in the Company. No success that came to Edward 
 Cudahy gladdened him so much as to see his son de- 
 velop into a man strong of body and mind and char- 
 acter. He knew that his little kingdom of business was 
 going to fall into good hands. It was with serene 
 confidence that, in 1926, he turned over to his son the 
 
232 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 presidency of the Company, and himself became chair- 
 man of the board of directors. 
 
 Of his four daughters, Edward Cudahy felt equally 
 secure. They were intelligent, modest, kindly girls, 
 with good inheritances of body and mind, with the 
 sound and sensible training of their home and school 
 life. They were very dear to him. He had no mis- 
 trust of any of his children. 
 
 Yet he planned that they should inherit his wealth 
 with no shock of suddenness or unpreparedness. Whilst 
 they were still children, he set up a trust fund for each, 
 to which he could add as he would be able to do. He 
 devised the terms of the trust in such a way that each 
 child would receive the control of a part of the fund 
 at intervals of ten years, that is, when each attained 
 the age of twenty-five, thirty-five and forty-five years. 
 
 If he lived, he hoped still to guide and counsel his 
 children, through their love for one another, even when 
 they had outgrown his parental authority. If he died, 
 he had done the best he could do to protect them 
 against even folly that he could not foresee. It looks 
 like about as intelligent a plan as a man could make, 
 who knows that the future is not in his hands, but must 
 be determined by his children themselves, under God's 
 mercy and grace. 
 
 There is no summarizing such a chapter as this. The 
 scattered fragments of practice and incident that it con- 
 tains are offered only as rough indications of these 
 
THE USES OF WEALTH 233 
 
 truths: that Edward Cudahy, from the beginning, took 
 the Catholic point of view regarding his wealth, and 
 looked upon that wealth as a responsibility, a gift of 
 God's providence to be used wisely; that he studied his 
 use of wealth with as shrewd intelligence as he em- 
 ployed in gaining his wealth; and that his practice in 
 the use of wealth was an intelligent application of his 
 principles. It is submitted that such a use of wealth is 
 both an approving test of Edward Cudahy' s previous 
 education and a good continuance in his education. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE USES OF ADVERSITY 
 
 I 
 
 When we think or speak of "the common lot" 
 of mankind, we have mostly in mind the 
 harsher experiences of life: poverty, illness, defeated 
 ambitions, loneliness, rebuffs and insults, ignorance, 
 uncertainties, disloyalties, and death; the stuff of tears 
 and heartaches. No man escapes some measure of 
 these things. How each man meets them, in what 
 spirit he endures them, matters enormously in his edu- 
 cation. We should be able to learn something more 
 about the education of Edward Cudahy from the way 
 he managed himself in the face of adversity. 
 
 It is a curious fact that so many people estimate the 
 importance of hardships in a man's life rather by the 
 strange or striking character of the hardships them- 
 selves than by the effect they have upon the man who 
 endures them. Possibly even the ancient Hebrews read 
 the drama of Job much as we read our newspaper ac- 
 counts of "moving accidents by flood and field." Cer- 
 tainly our modern diet of sensationalism has dehu- 
 manized the point of view of many of us. 
 
 The aim of this chapter is not to harrow the reader 
 by any high-lighted picture of the trials of Edward 
 Cudahy, nor to call upon the reader's sympathy. Its 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 235 
 
 concern is much more with how Edward Cudahy faced 
 adversity than with the particular kinds of adversity 
 he encountered. 
 
 That does not mean that life was smooth and easy 
 for him, that he lacked the hard knocks which give 
 every man some of his educational opportunities. Even 
 the meager selection of facts from the life of Edward 
 Cudahy which this sketch has so far presented indicate 
 that he went quite fully through the normal range of 
 unpleasant and painful experiences common to most 
 men. 
 
 Through his boyhood and youth, he was well ac- 
 quainted with the privations of poverty, with the 
 monotony of manual labor, with the restraints of a de- 
 pendent position. He met death early enough, and 
 terrifyingly, when at the age of eleven he lost his 
 mother. He buried his second son, in the early years 
 of his married life; he survived to close in death the 
 eyes of his dear wife, bound to him by fifty-three years 
 of unwavering love. He had his abundant share of 
 illnesses ; he suffered severe financial losses ; he endured 
 unmerited hatred, and envy, and saw men gloat over 
 his pain and loss. It is a full record. Life did not 
 spare Edward Cudahy. 
 
 Through one sort of adversity, the hardships of pov- 
 erty, he broke his way, even as a young man, by his 
 native ability and energy, and by the helping hand of 
 
236 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 his brother Michael. What he had to learn from pover- 
 ty, he learned early. He did not have to stand its 
 grinding weight throughout middle life and into old 
 age. He did not have to carry up to the gates of death 
 the numbing insecurity of the poor, nor look back at 
 the end to see his children toiling up the same hard 
 road. 
 
 As a consequence, there were some who set his con- 
 quest of poverty over against whatever else he had to 
 endure, who had no decent human regard for any other 
 afflictions that might come upon him. They were ready 
 to make up in spiritual adversity for whatever he had 
 managed to escape in the way of material adversity. 
 "Job's comforters" are a long-lived breed. 
 
 It is jokingly said that "nobody loves a fat man"; but 
 there is grim truth in the statement that few people 
 love a rich man. Envy begets indifference at least, and 
 sometimes hatred. Yet to one who had experienced 
 them, to Edward Cudahy, envy and social hostility were 
 more terrible burdens to bear than poverty. There is 
 no getting away from adversity. Life tries us at every 
 turn; and even makes new trials out of our victories. 
 
 The all-important question remains: how did Ed- 
 ward Cudahy meet his trials ? There were for him, as 
 for every man, many ways of facing adversity. The 
 particular ways he chose were those dictated by his 
 temperament, his abilities, his past experience, his 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 237 
 
 principles. He was not built by nature to agree with 
 the old Duke in As You Like It, who sang so placidly, 
 "Sweet are the uses of adversity." His philosophizing 
 was inclined to be much more energetic. Some adverse 
 circumstances can be fought and mastered ; and he was 
 a fighter. If he, who knew his Shakespeare well, want- 
 ed a phrase to sum up his first reaction to the hard- 
 ships of life, he could rather pick Hamlet's fine mixed 
 metaphor, 
 
 "... to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them." 
 
 Wherever Edward Cudahy's quick intelligence saw a 
 fighting chance against adversity, he took it. That was 
 a simple explanation of why he did not long endure 
 poverty: poverty could be attacked and conquered. He 
 had the talent, and the driving energy, to conquer the 
 adverse material circumstances in which he was born, 
 and in which he spent his boyhood and youth. 
 
 He could also fight defects within himself, which 
 if unconquered would create new hardships; and he 
 was man enough and Catholic enough not to count 
 the fight a hardship in itself. He fought his own im- 
 pulses as stubbornly as he fought poverty: his hot tem- 
 per, his pride, his sensuality, his fears and doubts. He 
 knew how much of adversity is self-made by the very 
 men who later cringe before it. 
 
 But there are some hardships that a man cannot 
 
238 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 fight. We have only limited powers of fighting against 
 illness, and we have none against death. We can do 
 little to combat hostile opinion, "the slings and arrows 
 of outrageous fortune . . . the whips and scorns of 
 time . . . and the spurns that patient merit of the un- 
 worthy takes." These things Edward Cudahy had to 
 endure. 
 
 Yet even in endurance there is a difference of qual- 
 ity. One man endures cheerfully, another sullenly; one 
 man with the hard, remote, inhuman passivity of the 
 Stoic, another with the warmth and sympathy of Chris- 
 tian patience. There is a mystery about human suffer- 
 ing, for which only the Christian hope in an eternal 
 redress offers any solution. That hope was part of 
 Edward Cudahy's spiritual heritage. It kept his endur- 
 ance of evils from ever being harsh. 
 
 He was no mystic, to be rapt with the love of suffer- 
 ing. But he was an abiding Catholic man, who could 
 understand Francis Thompson's figure for the hard- 
 ships of life, that great phrase in The Hound of 
 Heaven, "shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly." 
 Adversities too came through the Providence of God. 
 They had their hidden blessings. They came accom- 
 panied by God's grace to make right use of them. A 
 man could grow strong and patient and humble 
 through adversities. They didn't have to break him; 
 they could make him a better man. 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 239 
 
 At the outset, then, we can see that Edward Cudahy's 
 response to the hardships which life brought him was 
 not simple and uniform, but varied and complex. Into 
 it entered his intelligence, to estimate the adverse con- 
 dition he was facing; his prudence, to judge what 
 course to adopt about it ; his habitual courage and ener- 
 gy of action, to fight if fighting were called for; his 
 Christian fortitude, to endure cheerfully, hopefully, 
 without resentment or vindictiveness, when only endur- 
 ance remained. Perhaps the best way to show how Ed- 
 ward Cudahy actually dealt with adversity is to sketch 
 his practice in a few large instances as illustration. 
 
 II 
 
 By temperament Edward Cudahy was not an easy- 
 going man. When illness came upon him, his impulse 
 was to resist it, to brush through it, or at least to ig- 
 nore it. Like all vigorous men, he did not reckon on 
 the likelihood of his being ill. As he would put it, 
 he had no time to waste on ill health. Yet illness, like 
 death, is part of the "curse of Adam"; and even a pow- 
 erful physique, or a strong constitution, is no guarantee 
 against it. 
 
 Somewhere along in middle life, Edward Cudahy 
 contracted a duodenal ulcer, which, whatever be its 
 technical etiology, may be called the ailment of the 
 
240 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 energetic. It is five or six times more common in men 
 than in women, and fifty times more common in the 
 high-strung, driving type of men than in the phleg- 
 matic. It has a trick of recurring in its natural victims, 
 even after apparent cures, for the obvious reason that 
 the conditions predisposing to its recurrence are part of 
 the victim's make-up. 
 
 Like most of the vigorous and energetic sufferers 
 from peptic ulcer, Edward Cudahy at first refused to 
 give in. He worked when he should have rested. He 
 fought his ailment; he wasn't going to be licked by a 
 pain in the stomach. But ultimately, like all his fellow- 
 sufferers, he was licked, he had to give up his work, 
 and be bossed around by the doctors. 
 
 But when he recognized defeat, he bowed to it intel- 
 ligently. He admitted that it was a good thing for a 
 strong man to be knocked out by illness; as he said, 
 "It took the conceit out of him." He did not like being 
 laid up; but he made profit out of it, in patience, obe- 
 dience to doctor and nurse. He never fought beyond 
 the point where he saw no chance of winning. 
 
 His chief concern in illness was to avoid burdening 
 others. Late in life, when he was in his seventy-seventh 
 year, his chronic duodenal ulcer perforated. He had 
 to be hurried to the hospital, and undergo an emer- 
 gency operation. His wife was also ill at the time, at 
 home. In the midst of his own trouble, his first 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 24 1 
 
 thought was to shield her from the knowledge of his 
 situation. Before he was placed in the ambulance to 
 be taken to the hospital, he arranged for a pious sub- 
 terfuge; Elizabeth Cudahy was to be told only that he 
 was travelling, on business. Well, he was travelling, 
 in an ambulance; and he had the considerable business 
 of a major surgical operation on his mind. 
 
 He recovered after the operation, although his ad- 
 vanced age at first gave little hope that he could survive 
 the shock and the general drain on his vitality. No 
 doubt, one reason for his recovery was that strange in- 
 ner fount of energy, that elan vital, which was also the 
 source of his vigor in action when he was well. That 
 is a native gift from God, inherited probably, certainly 
 not acquired by education alone. But the serenity of 
 mind in time of crisis, the steadfast courage even when 
 others were alarmed, the gathering of his forces for 
 the fight with illness, these were large psychological 
 factors in Edward Cudahy's recovery; and these were 
 qualities he had built up through long years of self- 
 discipline. 
 
 When he was very weak after the operation, he re- 
 ceived the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, and he had 
 the simple, Catholic faith which believes that one 
 effect of the Sacrament is to restore the sick to health, 
 if God so wills. That belief has nothing to do with 
 faith-healing. It is not superstitious. It is no more 
 
242 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 than the recognition that God is the master of life 
 and death, and the acceptance of the scriptural teaching 
 that our Lord Jesus Christ has instituted this Sacrament 
 as a channel, not for spiritual grace alone, but also for 
 the grace of restored health. Hospital staffs can tes- 
 tify at least to the frequently observed fact that restora- 
 tion to health does follow Extreme Unction, whether 
 or not they believe that there is any causal connection 
 between the observed facts. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's recovery was slow, as it would 
 naturally be in a man of his years. But as soon as he 
 could do so, he went back to work. Health was a gift 
 of God, to be used, not merely to be enjoyed. If, in 
 the Providence of God, it was taken away from you, 
 you had no further responsibility about it. But whilst 
 you had health, you had it on terms of its use; you 
 had to work with it. 
 
 He was getting on toward eighty years of age; his 
 son was most competently shouldering the business 
 built up through the long years of effort; he was un- 
 der no material compulsion to keep on working. But 
 there were two immaterial compulsions that drove him 
 back to his desk: the established habit of work, and the 
 humble belief that he was only the steward of his 
 health and strength until "the night cometh when no 
 man can work." 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 243 
 
 III 
 
 He went back to work. But after his seventy- 
 seventh birthday, the working days of even a strong 
 man are not likely to draw out much longer. Edward 
 Cudahy reluctantly acknowledged that fact, and was 
 prepared to accept it in his own way, with a mixture 
 of resolute striving against it so long as he could man- 
 age to strive and a gradual patient acquiescence when 
 it became evident that he had to submit. 
 
 In the midst of this time of difficult adjustment there 
 fell upon him a very heavy blow. Elizabeth Cudahy 
 had been ailing for some years. She had aged more 
 rapidly than he; time had dealt more harshly with 
 her. Her eyesight had been defective for many years, 
 as the result of a glaucoma. Latterly she had suffered 
 from that common ailment of old age, hardening ar- 
 teries. She had kept steadily cheerful and pleasant 
 throughout the increasing burdens of ill health, refus- 
 ing utterly to be an invalid, attending to her household 
 duties, diligent in her rounds of kindliness, in her re- 
 ligious observances, in her family interests, yet steadily 
 also growing weaker. 
 
 Once Edward Cudahy said to a friend: "I hope that 
 I will live to take care of Mrs. Cudahy to the end." 
 He did not add the unspoken thought that she would 
 be desolate and lost without him; and it was not in 
 his make-up to voice what would be his own desolation 
 
244 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 when she had left him. They had grown old together 
 in unbroken harmony, in a love that never faltered 
 through fifty-three years of married life. Neither of 
 them was demonstrative in speech; but their tender- 
 ness toward each other had so become a part of them 
 that it shone out in every word and look and action, 
 enriching and glorifying the little, daily commonplaces 
 of their lives, of which it could be said, in Belloc's 
 verse, "And Courtesy was in them all." 
 
 God gave Edward Cudahy his wish: that the hard- 
 ship of their parting should fall upon him rather than 
 upon her. She died suddenly, on May 3d, 1937. He 
 did not mourn her in words ; that was not his way ; his 
 sorrow looked out only from his eyes. Nor did he 
 "weep as those who have no hope." Death was a 
 bitter thing; but it was not an end. God, Who willed 
 death, willed also the resurrection and eternal life. The 
 empty heart would be filled again, in a little while. 
 
 Death is a unique performance ; it happens only once 
 to each of us. But we can have dress rehearsals, when 
 death strikes here and there, nearer and nearer to us. 
 A very large part of every man's education is in learn- 
 ing how to meet death, some day to die "as one who 
 had been studied in his death." Edward Cudahy's les- 
 sons in death were coming to an end, when he faced 
 the death of his dear Elizabeth. 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 245 
 
 IV 
 
 It was an anti-climax that the year of Elizabeth 
 Cudahy's death and the year following it were years 
 of heavy financial losses. They were the kind of losses 
 that many a man takes with bitter resentment: losses 
 due to no lack of skill or energy on his part, but to 
 circumstances which defeated the best efforts of his 
 Company, and which neither he nor the other officers 
 of the Company could control. 
 
 Four times before, The Cudahy Packing Company 
 had paid no dividends on its common stock, in 1911, 
 1921, 1922, and 1923; and once, in 1921, it had had 
 a net loss of over a million and a half dollars. But 
 in 1937 its net loss was more than a million and three- 
 quarters, and in 1938 nearly three million dollars. The 
 deficit of 1921 came as a consequence of what used to 
 be called the World War, which, amongst its minor 
 bad results, had violently upset both the production 
 and the marketing of meat products, first raising prices 
 too high, then dropping them too low. 
 
 The aftermath of that war brought about bad dis- 
 locations of employment, of foreign and domestic 
 trade, and of financial relations: all made still worse 
 by the incredibly stupid orgy of speculation which 
 wound up with a crash in 1929. Then the United 
 States Government undertook the enormously difficult 
 and complex task of re-establishing economic order. 
 
246 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 The whole economic situation and the political at- 
 tempts to deal with it probably mark a turning-point in 
 American history, and certainly are likely to furnish 
 materials of debate for generations to come. The cen- 
 tral political fact was that the Government, after 1932, 
 combined with its efforts toward economic recovery an 
 ambitious and determined scheme of socialistic reform: 
 a reform guided in part by humanitarian ideals of a 
 revolutionary character, in part by a Rousseauistic hope 
 of social justice, and in part by vote-getting politics. 
 
 In a previous chapter, some hints were given as to 
 the delicate economic balance of the meat-packing in- 
 dustry, in the narrow margin of profit upon which it 
 normally operates. The general strain between Gov- 
 ernment and business, and the particular interference 
 of Government with the supply of livestock, tended to 
 upset that balance. On top of that condition there 
 came a succession of years of drought in the territory 
 from which The Cudahy Packing Company drew its 
 largest share of animal supply. 
 
 For the meat industry in general the situation may 
 be summed up as this: whilst other industries and 
 services were making a slow recovery of better than ten 
 percent between the years 1932 and 1935, the meat- 
 packing industry not merely did not keep up with this 
 gradual general recovery, but slumped still further to 
 a total loss of business amounting to nearly one-half 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 247 
 
 of the sales of 1929. As an illustration, the per capita 
 consumption of pork dropped nearly 60% between 
 1932 and 1935. For once, the packing industry was 
 no longer a barometer of national prosperity. Even 
 when people had slightly more money to spend upon 
 meat, there was less meat for them to buy. 1 
 
 It was a time in which businessmen in general, big 
 and little, were angrily resentful toward the Govern- 
 ment, and extremely critical of its policies of interfer- 
 ence. But there was no trace of that resentment in 
 Edward Cudahy's public or private discussions of the 
 situation. He was inclined to think that the Govern- 
 ment had blundered in some of its policies ; but he had 
 modesty enough to think and say that the task of eco- 
 nomic recovery and social adjustment was so vast and 
 intricate as to make snap judgments ridiculous. 
 
 For at least one whole generation, if not longer, the 
 American people had sown the wind; they were now 
 reaping the whirlwind. Edward Cudahy did not pro- 
 fess to know what would come of the dashing, and at 
 times apparently reckless, experimentation of the fed- 
 eral and state administrations. The job of the man in 
 business was simply to size up the facts before him and 
 do his best to deal with them. 
 
 1 Brookings Institution, The Recovery Problem in the 
 United States, Washington, 1936; p. 629. The figures on 
 meat consumption are from the estimates of the United 
 States Department of Agriculture. They are summarily 
 quoted in The World Almanac, 1937; pp. 362, 903. 
 
248 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 It is galling to a businessman's pride to have his 
 honest work knocked about, and to see his own vigor- 
 ous and skillful efforts frustrated. But that frustation, 
 Edward Cudahy insisted, was also one of the hazards 
 of business; and he set no great store by his pride. If 
 he could not learn to grin and bear reverses, he would 
 be making a botch of something more important than 
 his business, his own character. 
 
 As a final illustration of the way in which Edward 
 Cudahy faced adversity, we may consider a chain of 
 incidents that happened about the turn of the twen- 
 tieth century. In the early part of the winter of 1900, 
 a man came one evening to Edward Cudahy' s house in 
 Omaha, asking for help. The man's name was Pat 
 Crowe. Six years or so before he had been short in his 
 accounts as a salesman in the retail market of The 
 Cudahy Packing Company. Edward Cudahy, by paying 
 the shortage himself, and not turning Crowe over to 
 the bonding company, had then saved him from crim- 
 inal prosecution. But Crowe had gone from bad to 
 worse. Now he was just out of jail, he admitted, and 
 needed money to get to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he 
 said he expected to find work. 
 
 Edward Cudahy gave him ten dollars, and told him 
 to come to the office in the morning, when he would 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 249 
 
 get him a railway ticket to Cheyenne. Crowe thanked 
 him rather fawningly, but added that he needed a coat. 
 Edward Cudahy gave him his own overcoat. So far, 
 that was a common type of incident. Crowe's bad 
 record did not stand in the way of his getting help. 
 
 But Crowe did not come to the office in the morning. 
 Instead, with the aid of a fellow-criminal named James 
 Callahan, he planned to kidnap Edward Cudahy's son, 
 then a boy of fifteen, and hold him for ransom. The 
 kidnapping was carried out a week before Christmas, 
 with a demand for $25,000 ransom, under threat of 
 blinding the boy if the money were not promptly paid. 
 Edward Cudahy paid the ransom; and his boy was re- 
 turned unhurt. 
 
 Blackmail under threat of lasting injury to a man's 
 young son strikes most of us as a particularly vile 
 crime. In this case there was added the special infamy 
 of a bestial ingratitude on the part of the kidnapper. 
 Amongst civilized men, that sort of crime ordinarily 
 creates a general anger against the criminals and sym- 
 pathy for the victims. There were plenty of civilized 
 human beings in Omaha; but there were enough of the 
 others to prompt a newspaper campaign of vilification, 
 directed, not against the criminals, but against the vic- 
 tims. Edward Cudahy was gravely chided by some 
 editors for having paid the ransom money. It was sug- 
 gested by others that the whole affair was an advertis- 
 ing stunt, or even that it was a conspiracy between 
 
250 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 young Edward Cudahy and Crowe, in which the boy 
 would split the ransom money with his kidnaper. 
 
 Roderick Murphy, a brother-in-law of Crowe, first 
 pointed out the identity of the criminal. But the police 
 officials showed little zeal in tracking down Crowe and 
 securing evidence against him. Crowe, after wander- 
 ing as far as South Africa, wrote a confession of his 
 guilt some three years later, in a letter to Father James 
 Murphy, of Vail, Iowa, a village some fifty miles 
 northeast of Omaha; and the letter was published in 
 newspapers. 
 
 It was nearly another year before Crowe was cap- 
 tured, in Butte, Montana, and brought to Omaha for 
 trial. Then the prosecuting attorney for the State, 
 since there was no law against kidnapping in Nebraska, 
 had him tried for robbery. The case for the State was 
 presented weakly; and a complacent jury promptly ac- 
 quitted the confessed criminal. These things happen 
 not infrequently in the United States. 
 
 That is a pretty good pile-up of adversity: to have 
 his only son kidnapped and threatened with blindness; 
 to be held up to public scorn for ransoming him ; to be 
 sneered at as a partner of the kidnapper; and, after the 
 criminal had publicly admitted his guilt, to have him 
 set free in a travesty of justice. 
 
 Crowe had written in his published letter of April 
 22, 1904: 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 251 
 
 "... I have wronged a man that has been a friend 
 to me. I am guilty of the Cudahy affair. I am to 
 blame for the whole crime . . . Cudahy is a remark- 
 ably good man. I have known him many years and 
 must say that he is generous and forgiving, and 
 it would be hard to find a better man, but he feels 
 he owes it as his duty to the public to prosecute 
 me." 
 
 Even though Crowe wrote these statements as a pre- 
 amble to his whining petition that Edward Cudahy 
 compound a felony and offer him assurance that he 
 would not be prosecuted, his statements, as the evi- 
 dence shows, corresponded with fact. 
 
 When Crowe was captured in Butte, he sent word he 
 wanted to have for his defending counsel a very 
 capable Omaha lawyer, James P. English. Now James 
 English's brother, Will, had been an employee of The 
 Cudahy Packing Company for a dozen years or more. 
 In view of that fact, James English hesitated to take 
 Crowe's case. Will English solved the difficulty by tell- 
 ing Edward Cudahy that his brother had been asked to 
 defend Crowe. Edward Cudahy answered: 
 
 "Why shouldn't he? Crowe is entitled to a proper 
 hearing, and by the best lawyer he can get. Tell your 
 brother that I have no desire to stop him from defend- 
 ing Crowe." 
 
 It does not seem too much to say that the man who 
 could control his justified anger against one who had 
 
252 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 injured him so inhumanly had already learned a good 
 deal of Christian patience and charity. The sense of 
 Crowe's injury never died in Edward Cudahy. Forty 
 years later, it was still evident that the memory of that 
 dread day when his son was threatened with mutila- 
 tion and blindness was a bitter memory. But as cour- 
 age is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of fear, 
 so is charity not insensitiveness to injury, but the reso- 
 lute abandonment of revenge. 
 
 Yet for Edward Cudahy to have carried his forgive- 
 ness to the point of trying to head off the efforts of the 
 State to convict and punish the confessed criminal 
 would have been an excess of tolerance. Virtue, as 
 Aristotle reminds us, walks in the middle path: here, 
 between vindictiveness and sloppy weakness. As a 
 matter of fact, he did not have to go to the silly ex- 
 treme; the State and the jury took care of that. 
 
 More notable was his fortitude and self-restraint in 
 the face of the sneers and insults which an ugly press 
 inflicted upon him. All that looked like pure malice. 
 Crowe had his obvious selfish motive, money: and 
 $25,000 is much more than "thirty pieces of silver." 
 But the respectable, smug newspaper men had not 
 even the Judas excuse of greed. They had only envy 
 and hatred of a man whose sole title to their enmity 
 was that he was a Catholic and a successful business- 
 man. Edward Cudahy felt their malevolence keenly. 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 253 
 
 It shocked him, puzzled him, hurt him; but it did not 
 embitter him. 
 
 He was not learning for the first time the abundant 
 injustice and harshness of men, the mystery of man's 
 inhumanity to man. He had seen it written pretty 
 largely across all our history. He had read its climax 
 in the passion and death of the noblest of all men. It 
 was a commonplace of his Catholic faith that the dis- 
 ciple could not expect from the world better treatment 
 than his Master had received. Our Calvaries are little 
 Calvaries; but the road up them is heart-rending just 
 the same. Any man who has learned that truth as 
 Edward Cudahy learned it has gone a long way in his 
 education. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE EDUCATED MAN 
 
 I 
 
 Strictly speaking, no man's education can be said 
 to be completed at any time in this life. In cold 
 fact, a man's education is not a finished job until it 
 brings him either to the possession of God in the 
 Beatific Vision or to the terrible alternative of the eter- 
 nal Pain of Loss. The two ultimate goals of human 
 education, heaven or hell, dwarf into insignificance 
 all the minor stages on the road to the one or the other. 
 But there are minor stages on the road; and for us, 
 who know nothing experientially of heaven or hell, 
 these minor stages are our practical gauges of good or 
 bad results in the work of education. One of these 
 stages our forefathers used to speak of as "the grand 
 climacteric." The name may have gone out of fashion 
 in medical circles ; but it still lingers along in a limping 
 way in literature. It indicated in a vague way that 
 time in a man's life at which his development as a hu- 
 man being might be looked upon as nearly complete. 
 Physically, mentally, morally, it was the plateau. Be- 
 yond "the grand climacteric" was only the patient plod- 
 ding on, and the rapid or slow descent to senility and 
 death. This side of the grave there were no more 
 heights. 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 255 
 
 Belloc, ignoring the pronouncements of the medical 
 fraternity, fixed "the grand climacteric" for every man 
 in that moment when he begins to see his life as a thing 
 past. It may seem fair to say that when a man has 
 reached that stage in his journey his task of education 
 is nearly done: we can at least begin to examine it as 
 if it were a finished thing. 
 
 Hence, if we consider Edward Cudahy as he rounded 
 out, say, his seventieth year, we may with reasonable 
 approximation look upon him as an educated man. 
 The main lines, at any rate, of what he had made of 
 himself were then clear; only minor details were like- 
 ly to change much. 
 
 At seventy, Edward Cudahy was tall and straight, a 
 six-footer; his hair and close-clipped moustache clear 
 white; his eyes large, still undimmed, dark, lively, and 
 expressive. In middle life, he had weighed close to 
 two hundred pounds, and had been exceptionally mus- 
 cular. Now, he had none of the paunchiness that mus- 
 cular men so often fall into as they grow old; he was 
 lean and hard, thirty pounds lighter, alert and compact. 
 
 His manner was quiet and reserved, an easy quiet, 
 with no sense of strain, no mannerism of any sort. His 
 voice was singularly pleasant, in the middle register, 
 well modulated, warm, unaffectedly free of the nasal- 
 ity so common in American voices. In speech and 
 manner he was dignified without being conscious of 
 dignity, with a winning friendliness evident at once; 
 
256 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 but no back-slapper. He had an excellent command 
 of written and spoken English, a use of language that 
 was terse without being abrupt or harsh. 
 
 Even to one meeting him for the first time, he con- 
 veyed an impression of force and power, physical and 
 mental, but a restrained and controlled power. What 
 he had to say was vivid and forthright, the talk of a 
 man who knew his own mind, knew what he was talk- 
 ing about, and did not use words idly. But his direct- 
 ness and forcefulness in conversation had no touch 
 whatever of the domineering or self-imposing. His in- 
 tellectual modesty was as manifest as his sound knowl- 
 edge and vigorous judgment. Within the range of his 
 observation and study, his opinions were quietly confi- 
 dent and assured; at the same time, he saw clearly 
 where were the limits of his own experience and his 
 own grounds of certainty; beyond those limits, he was 
 prompt in saying, "I don't know." 
 
 In a striking number of ways, Edward Cudahy 
 matched Aristotle's famous portrayal of "the great- 
 souled man" in the fourth book of the Nichomachean 
 Ethics, a work no longer listed amongst the best sellers. 
 He had the great natural endowment of Aristotle's 
 "magnanimous man": a strong body; a quick, accurate, 
 searching mind; a power of resolute purpose; an im- 
 mense energy. (God had given him also the gift of 
 faith and all that goes with it: gifts beyond Aristotle's 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 257 
 
 ken.) He himself had worked incessantly with his 
 gifts, developing and enriching them. 
 
 He had not worked in the highest levels of specu- 
 lative thought, he was not a philosopher or poet; his 
 circumstances had limited his creativeness to the hum- 
 bler, material affairs of an industrial and commercial 
 career. Aristotle might have frowned at that career, 
 as banausos, vulgar. But in it Edward Cudahy had at- 
 tained mastery, which would have mollified Aristotle; 
 and he had that quality of "the great- souled man" 
 which Aristotle emphasizes, a clear-eyed recognition 
 that he was a master. 
 
 His mastery, moreover, was not merely of material 
 processes. It included, by all means, those developed 
 qualities of intelligence and courage and self-restraint 
 and fortitude which make up mastery of one's self. 
 He had equipped himself with the virtues which Aris- 
 totle postulated for his ideal of "the great-souled 
 man." He had learned to follow the golden mean, 
 the rule of right reason that amounts to practical wis- 
 dom, that guides and controls energy of action with- 
 out diminishing it, that counsels and effects modera- 
 tion in the use of pleasant things and endurance of 
 unpleasant things. 
 
 His dignity was based upon serenity of mind. He 
 had charted a course for himself, and had not badly 
 deviated from that course at any time. He had lived up 
 to his principles. What others judged of him mattered 
 
258 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 much less than what he judged of himself and infinite- 
 ly less than what God judged of him. He was, there- 
 fore, as Aristotle would have him, armed against com- 
 mon opinion, and had neither to fear frowns nor curry 
 favor. 
 
 II 
 
 But Aristotle's * great-souled man" seems to have 
 been armored in pride and self-confidence; and that 
 Edward Cudahy was not. Three centuries after Aris- 
 totle had come One Who dared to say to men: "Learn 
 of me because I am meek and humble of heart"; 1 a 
 teaching which the Greek philosophers could scarcely 
 comprehend, and certainly could not advocate. The 
 ideal of inner lowliness which Jesus Christ held up to 
 His followers conflicted with the Greek concept of 
 greatness of soul. To them it would have seemed 
 either dishonest, a sort of hypocrisy in a man of great 
 gifts (just as humility is always puzzling and suspect to 
 the naturalistic world today), or weak, as marking a 
 lack of intellectual appreciation of the mastery such a 
 man had achieved. 
 
 Yet from his boyhood Edward Cudahy had begun to 
 learn that the highest educational achievement of any 
 man still leaves him dependent upon God and infinitely 
 lower than the divine perfection. The Christian ideal 
 in education toward which Edward Cudahy had striven 
 
 i Matthew, xi, 29. 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 259 
 
 all through his life had in it an element of self-distrust 
 and self-depreciation which tempered all his recogni- 
 tion of his own attainments. 
 
 Paradox as it must have seemed to the pagan philoso- 
 pher, ancient or modern, there was no weakness in that 
 self-depreciation, no timidity, no shutting of one's eyes 
 to the reality of one's gifts and accomplishments. The 
 paradox is resolved by the fact that the self-deprecia- 
 tion was not absolute, but relative. It denied nothing 
 of one's real achievement; it accepted that achievement 
 fully, and gratefully; but it set it over against the per- 
 fection of God Himself, and saw that it was as nothing 
 in comparison with that perfection. 
 
 When Edward Cudahy had reached his eightieth 
 birthday, his nephew John Cudahy, then Ambassador 
 of Belgium, wrote to congratulate him. In his letter 
 he said: 
 
 "It is not your success in business, extraordinary as 
 that has been, which makes me proud of you; it is 
 the integrity of your character, never touched by 
 prosperity, and the simple fidelity with which you 
 have followed the traditions to which you were 
 born." 
 
 Simple fidelity to early religious traditions and be- 
 liefs and practices, as John Cudahy knew, have not 
 always marked the men whom the world recognizes as 
 successful men. A vast number of persons have come 
 
260 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 to accept almost as axiomatic that material success is 
 accompanied by an independence of God, a slow or 
 swift abandonment of Christian modesty and humility, 
 a sort of petulance toward the lowly attitude of mind 
 they bore in their days of struggle, poverty, and insecur- 
 ity. They had arrived now; they could do without 
 God. They dominated some little corner of this world ; 
 and therefore they were beyond their old loyalties, and 
 dependences, and obedience to divine laws. 
 
 The sad fact is that there are many instances which 
 seem to support that pitiful assumption. We may 
 rightly think that it was because of the temptation to 
 pride inherent in material success that Jesus Christ 
 cried out: "Woe to you that are rich, for you have 
 your consolations." 1 
 
 If Edward Cudahy felt the force of that temptation, 
 he had educated himself to meet it. His words and 
 conduct give ground for the belief that he had even 
 educated himself to forestall the impulse of pride, that 
 he had anchored himself so securely in years of humble 
 faith in God and dependence on God's will, through 
 daily prayer, through the use of the Sacraments, 
 through the habit of loyalty, that the very notion of 
 prideful revolt took no hold upon him. 
 
 Whatever judgment men may pass upon him, we 
 may believe that in the sight of God this was his 
 
 i Luke, vi, 24. 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 26 1 
 
 crowning success in his education: that in all his im- 
 mense preoccupation with business affairs, and through- 
 out those successful results of his work which have so 
 often turned successful men into the fools who say in 
 their hearts, "There is no God," he had kept unspoiled 
 a humble and a contrite heart. 
 
 Ill 
 
 That is one way of looking at the results of Edward 
 Cudahy's education. It is not the popular way today; 
 and perhaps there never was a time in which such a 
 standard of education was universally acceptable. So 
 far as the present temper of opinion is concerned, 
 there is a strong likelihood that to many educationists 
 the judgments expressed here are nearly unintelligible. 
 
 In a generation in which education and schools have 
 become synonomous, we have made book-knowledge 
 our final test of excellence in education. Perhaps that 
 fact goes far to explain why we are, on the whole, so 
 appallingly shallow even in our book-knowledge. A 
 man gets wisdom out of books only in the measure of 
 the qualities he brings to his reading. A sloppy mind 
 and an undisciplined will may be engaged with books 
 for a whole lifetime, and emerge at the end of it still 
 a sloppy mind and a flabby character, with only some 
 little accretion of detachable erudition accumulated, 
 like barnacles, on the way. 
 
262 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 If we test Edward Cudahy's education by his book- 
 knowledge, it stands the test well. He had read a great 
 deal, discriminatingly, actively, with a mind sharpened 
 by daily energetic use outside of books, with critical 
 acumen, with a resolute intolerance of trash and false- 
 hood. The honesty of mind that carried him unstained 
 through his business career acted as vigorously in his 
 reading. You could no more sell him diseased ideas 
 in books, no matter how popular they happened to be, 
 than you could sell him diseased hogs or cattle for his 
 packing plants. The contempt for herd opinion which 
 Aristotle marked in "the great-souled man" was, in 
 Edward Cudahy, an honest scorn for all the facile, 
 empty shibboleths that go to make up so large a part of 
 our modern enormous output of books. 
 
 He brought to his reading high intellectual qualities: 
 a developed accuracy of reasoning, a wide knowledge 
 of humanity acquired in his competitive dealings with 
 other men, a store of principles derived from his Cath- 
 olic teaching and from "the great tradition" in educa- 
 tion which for so many centuries had leaned on Catho- 
 lic teaching, the habit of swift, honest appraisal based 
 upon observation and established truths. 
 
 He had a tenacious memory, strengthened by con- 
 stant use: the comprehensive sort of memory that 
 functions in holding old and new ideas together for 
 the mind to compare them and judge between them. 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 263 
 
 He came to his reading as a man equipped, by the kind 
 of education which books alone can never give, to deal 
 with books as a formed person, a competent master of 
 books, able to use books as tools for his own further 
 development. 
 
 Success in that kind of book-education cannot be 
 measured by a mere enumeration of the books he had 
 read. It was what he got out of the books that count- 
 ed: the enrichment of knowledge and understanding 
 and appreciation which was a blend of his own quali- 
 ties with the values in the books, a permanent addition 
 to his whole personality. Nor will our present school 
 formulas of "tests and measurements" serve to gauge 
 how rich were the total achievements of his reading. 
 What he had got from books had become a part of 
 him, just as what he had got from his daily work and 
 prayer, from music and the drama and conversation, 
 from rebuffs and pain and disappointments, had be- 
 come a part of him. 
 
 Edward Cudahy's book-education had no separate 
 existence of its own, as mere erudition sometimes has. 
 He was too much alive to let books dominate him, as 
 they dominate so many men who pass as educated men. 
 Knowledge fused with other qualities in him to make 
 up that rounded fulness of living which the old Greeks 
 called harmony. He carried throughout his life an 
 amazing sense of proportion and balance, not as a 
 
264 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 calculated scheme, but as an habitual and almost sub- 
 conscious attitude, the habit of intellectual order, of 
 putting first things first. 
 
 There is no way of proving that that balance and 
 proportion and harmony in his intellectual life tied up 
 with his moral and religious life. Living realities are 
 apprehended, not proved. But to those who really 
 knew Edward Cudahy it will come as no strange say- 
 ing to suggest that the basis of his intellectual integrity 
 and balance was his acceptance of the command of 
 Jesus Christ, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." 
 
 IV 
 
 Gregory of Nazianzen and Basil and Ambrose and 
 Augustine were talking sounder psychology than the 
 modern world may think when they set down reverence 
 as the great achievement in education. We men come 
 from God and go to God. Between our birth into this 
 world and into God's grace and our final judgment, 
 we have no nobler exercise of our intelligence than its 
 recognition of our dependence on God. 
 
 We can, therefore, rightly call Edward Cudahy an 
 educated man if only on the ground that reverence for 
 God grew in him all through his life. That test of his 
 education Aristotle and Plato also would accept. His 
 Catholicism enlarged and stabilized the reverence 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 265 
 
 which the nobler pagan minds appreciated as a man's 
 first and last achievement in his education. 
 
 It is a realistic and enlightening approach to Edward 
 Cudahy's education to say that reverence for God un- 
 derlay all his virtues, intellectual virtues, moral virtues, 
 religious virtues. He was eager and industrious, be- 
 cause he was the steward of God's gifts, accountable 
 for his use of those gifts. He was modest and unas- 
 suming, because he recognized that all he had he had 
 from God. His courage was in part a natural and su- 
 pernatural endowment from God, in part a developed 
 habit begotten of confidence in God. His honesty and 
 business integrity were founded upon the justice com- 
 manded by God. His charity was the charity of a sup- 
 pliant before God, dealing mercifully with others as 
 he looked for mercy himself. His religious loyalty 
 and fidelity was the humble tribute of a creature to his 
 Creator, of a redeemed Christian to his Lord and Sav- 
 ior. His life becomes unified and simple and intelli- 
 gible through his abiding reverence. 
 
 If we could see in full detail how that reverence 
 colored all his thinking and speaking and flowered out 
 in his actions, we would have pretty nearly the core of 
 the whole story of Edward Cudahy's education. It 
 showed in his conversation, not in pious phrases, which 
 were alien to his temperament, but in an unstrained 
 guard over his speech. He was never scurrilous or 
 
266 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 coarse in talk, never flippant or indiscreet. His rever- 
 ence for God implied respect and consideration for his 
 fellow-men; his wit was never caustic or malicious; he 
 was intolerant of the detractions of petty gossip. He 
 had a power of quick, sharp appraisal of other men, 
 and saw their faults and limitations as clearly as he 
 did their good qualities ; but he was habitually guarded 
 and reserved in discussing the defects of others. 
 
 Through years of frequent and frank conversation 
 with Edward Cudahy, the writer has been impressed 
 by the fact that he never spoke harshly of any one. That 
 did not mean any pollyanna sort of self-deception or 
 sentimental sugaring over of the faults of others. There 
 were occasions when honesty, and justice toward an- 
 other, compelled him to express condemnation of some 
 individual's conduct; but his disapproval was put in the 
 minimum of words, and with whatever of excuse or 
 condonation his clear intelligence could fairly devise. 
 
 That is saying a good deal for the self-restraint of 
 any man, and more than a good deal for the self- 
 restraint of a man as intellectually sharp as Edward 
 Cudahy. St. James, perhaps, would admit him as pass- 
 ing his own high test of the perfect man: "If any man 
 offend not in word." 
 
 His sense of humor was touched with the same qual- 
 ity. Men at all times have made much of possessing 
 a sense of humor; perhaps most men would feel hurt 
 if denied the right to claim a sense of humor, the quick 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 267 
 
 perception of the incongruous and ridiculous. For- 
 tunately for a sad enough world, some capacity for 
 humor is fairly widespread. But most of it works only 
 on the incongruities of other men. Edward Cudahy's 
 sense of humor was of the rare kind that could see the 
 ridiculous in himself. He faithfully observed the mys- 
 tical Rule Six: "Don't take yourself too damn serious- 
 ly." Not all the jokes in life are on the other fellow; 
 Edward Cudahy could see them when they were on 
 himself. 
 
 If that attitude is not a calculated pose, it is one of 
 either resentful or humble self-depreciation. In Ed- 
 ward Cudahy, it was not a pose, and it was not resent- 
 ful; it was a chuckling, cheerful humility. He had 
 learned to laugh at himself, at his blunders, at the 
 gaps between his desire and his performance, not bit- 
 terly, but good-naturedly, because he had learned to 
 keep in mind the majestic background of eternity that 
 makes all human endeavor seem so petty and all our 
 passing tragedies such affairs of small moment. The 
 most devastating of all incongruities was the infinite 
 distance between himself and God. His sense of hu- 
 mor was the Christian sense of humor, which has in it 
 an amazing amount of reverence. 
 
 That sort of a sense of humor is also one of the 
 elements of fortitude. Because he had it, Edward 
 Cudahy calmly accepted from others treatment which 
 
268 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 would have driven Aristotle's "great-souled man" into 
 a cold fury of retaliation. 
 
 His sense of humor working in that way did not 
 reach the magnificent heights of St. Thomas More; but 
 perhaps it did as well as the legendary calm of Socrates 
 under the tirades of Xantippe. One illustration of it 
 was his manner of accepting the repeated, snubbing dis- 
 courtesy of a Catholic priest who actually owed him 
 much gratitude for his benefactions. This clergyman 
 on two occasions sent out word that he was too busy 
 to see him when Edward Cudahy made a pre- 
 announced visit. By no look or word did Edward 
 Cudahy show chagrin or resentment; and he made it 
 a point afterward to enquire courteously about the 
 well-being of the priest. Only, after the second rebuff, 
 he did not again call upon him. 
 
 It was part of Edward Cudahy' s tradition that rever- 
 ence for God extended to God's ministers, even when 
 their conduct failed to square with their profession. He 
 was not a thick-skinned man to such boorishness as 
 this priest displayed; he did not condone it; but he 
 could and did endure it serenely and humbly. The 
 priest had a string of degree letters after his name; 
 but there is a considerable possibility that Edward 
 Cudahy was the better educated man of the two. 
 
 But his reverence for God, as is to be expected, was 
 most evident in his practice of religion, his direct deal- 
 ings with God. There was a simplicity and solidity 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 269 
 
 about his worship of God which had never changed 
 substantially from the years of his childhood. He had 
 grown up in the Catholic faith, as a boy grows up in 
 his father's house; he was always at home there; his 
 code of conduct linked spontaneously with the place. 
 His reverence in worship was as unostentatious as a 
 decent boy's good manners in his home. He was re- 
 spectful without being stiff or formal or self-conscious ; 
 at ease, without slouching. 
 
 It is not astonishing to learn that he had acquired 
 the habit of prayer. His day was filled with concen- 
 trated work, and had little opportunity for prayer; but 
 it began and ended with prayer. Like many old men, 
 in his later years he did not sleep well. When some 
 one once asked him if that sleeplessness did not make 
 the nights seem intolerably long, he answered: "No, I 
 don't mind it. All my life, whenever I waked at night, 
 I have been accustomed to say some Our Fathers and 
 Hail Marys. I just say more of them now than I used 
 to." 
 
 When he was in his eighty-first year, he was laid up 
 for some time with a sharper attack of an old chronic 
 bronchitis. Between his illness and the natural weak- 
 ness of his great age, he had not been able to attend 
 Mass on Sundays. The priest who from time to time 
 brought him Holy Communion, usually about nine 
 o'clock in the morning, reminded him that he was ex- 
 empt from the Eucharistic fast, and advised him to take 
 
270 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 the medicines he was accustomed to use during the 
 night for relief from his wearing cough. Edward 
 Cudahy said: "Yes, I know. But I'll stay fasting." 
 
 There was no parade about it, no long-winded ex- 
 planation or pious disclaimer. He had always fasted 
 carefully from midnight before Holy Communion, out 
 of reverence, and in obedience to the precept of the 
 Church; he would keep on doing so. 
 
 Perhaps as near as we can come to formulating edu- 
 cation is to say that it expresses the sum of a man's 
 native gifts plus his acquired habits. In the case of a 
 baptised person, one must add also the gift of sanctify- 
 ing grace and what the theologians call the infused 
 virtues, of faith, hope, and charity. 
 
 But the formula, even though fairly accurate, is cold 
 and dead, remote from the living reality of the human 
 person himself, equipped with his individual gifts from 
 God, and struggling through whatever of blunderings 
 and frailties, with whatever of success or failure, to 
 bring himself, as a person, into accord with God's plans 
 for him. As a process, a man's education holds all the 
 tragedies and all the triumphs of life and eternity, the 
 terribly lonely journey "down to the pit or up to the 
 throne." 
 
THE EDUCATED MAN 271 
 
 All we can catch of Edward Cudahy on that long 
 journey are little glimpses. The crust of his mortality 
 enveloped him, as it does every man: the barriers stood 
 high and stiff between him and even those who knew 
 and loved him best. It is so with most men. Only here 
 and there, some man of the writer's trade, and particu- 
 larly skillful in his trade, manages to get something 
 more of himself into words, in such books, say, as the 
 Confessions of St. Augustine or Jean- Jacques Rousseau, 
 or Newman's Apologia. In comparison with men of 
 that sort Edward Cudahy was inarticulate. 
 
 He revealed himself more in action than in words. 
 Not that he was secretive by intent; but he had no 
 knack of self-revelation. The very restraint which was 
 part of his self-control made it impossible for him ever 
 to wear much of his heart upon his sleeve — or upon 
 his writing-pad. For any one else to claim to enter 
 fully into all the workings of his mind, to try to portray 
 completely what he revealed so sparingly, would be 
 arrogance. 
 
 That first impression of him that one got, of con- 
 trolled power, remained, after years of close acquaint- 
 ance with him, the dominant impression. It was 
 warmed by his generous affection, his unselfish kind- 
 liness, his great simplicity. He was the easiest man in 
 the world to talk to, frank, pleasant, equable in tem- 
 per, good company anywhere. 
 
272 THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD CUDAHY 
 
 Yet unconsciously he stood out in a roomful of peo- 
 ple as a person of distinction, a man whose soul, hum- 
 ble before God and man, had a dignity that could not 
 merge itself with any group, an aloofness not planned 
 or desired, but inevitable. Immeasurably more than 
 by his admirable manners, he was an aristocrat; he 
 could get down on the floor to play with his grandchil- 
 dren, and still be a figure of dignity and power. 
 
 What has here been written of him is, therefore, 
 fragmentary and inadequate, no more than broken de- 
 tails which the reader's imagination must piece together 
 into some sort of image of the man himself. If, out of 
 even these scattered bits, some hint may be gathered 
 that here was a person who had been greatly gifted by 
 God and who had done a great work in developing his 
 gifts, the summary, bald as it is, may be all that can be 
 offered of the education of Edward Cudahy. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 When John Cudahy, a nephew of Edward Cudahy, 
 was United States Minister to Eire, he hunted up some 
 early records of his family in Ireland, and sent them as 
 a Christmas present to his uncle Edward, in 1938. John 
 Cudahy' s researches were fairly extensive, although 
 mostly through secondary authorities. He included in 
 his data a photograph of Castle Ballycuddihy and a 
 copy of the Coat of Arms which Joyce assigns to the 
 Cuddihy family. There was no snobbery in the report, 
 nor any attempt to set up a claim of his branch of the 
 family to the Cuddihy arms; there was only a proper 
 interest in the ancient roots of his people, from which 
 they had been cut off through their emigration to 
 America. 
 
 Edward Cudahy thanked his nephew warmly for his 
 Christmas gift, and wrote appreciatively of the labor 
 involved in its compilation and the affection which 
 had prompted him to send it. But he added, signifi- 
 cantly: 
 
 "I was never very much concerned about the origin 
 of the family. But I was always proud that our 
 Father and Mother were strong and healthy, and 
 that we have inherited from them good constitutions 
 and good religious training." 
 
 Then, when he had looked over the list of variant 
 spellings of the family name, which John Cudahy had 
 
274 APPENDIX I 
 
 gathered from several sources, Edward Cudahy added 
 a postscript: 
 
 "No doubt Cuddihy is the correct spelling of our 
 name. I remember, as a small boy of five or six 
 years, that the matter of changing the spelling was 
 discussed in family circles, and that Michael was the 
 principal spokesman for changing the spelling to 
 Cudahy." 
 
 Some of the information which John Cudahy collect- 
 ed about the Cuddihy family has been used in the text 
 of this book. Here is a selection from some of his 
 other notes: 
 
 "A sketch of timber known as Kilbride Wood was 
 held by the family, according to Callan tradition, be- 
 fore migrating to America. (In a Papal Document of 
 1462 Callan parish is called the Rectory of Callan 
 otherwise Kalbride.) 
 
 "In Irish Heraldry (published in 1905 by Murphy 
 and McCarthy, Dublin) appear the Coats of Arms of 
 seven hundred Irish families. That of the Cuddahy 
 family is the silhouette of a dragon with the back- 
 ground of the sun over mountain tops. Beneath are 
 the Latin words, Sursum Corda, Lift up your hearts . . . 
 
 "The first extant written record of the name is in the 
 Index of Ossory Wills, where the name, Jeremiah 
 Cudehy appears in 1674; John Cudihy, with the ad- 
 dress, 'Borris in Ossory', in 1712; and Nicholas 
 Cuddihy, Milltown, County Kilkenny, in 1800. (The 
 Diocese of Ossory embraced the parishes of Callan, 
 Tullamaine, Cooliaghmore, Killaloe, Ballycallan, and 
 
APPENDIX I 275 
 
 Tullaroan. Corrigan, History and Antiquities of the 
 Diocese of Ossory, vol. Ill, p. 291.) 
 
 "On the Catholic Qualification Rolls, 1778-1798, 
 there are the following names: 
 
 John Cuddihy of Milltown, County Kilkenny 
 
 Nicholas Cuddihy of Milltown, County Kilkenny 
 James Cuddihy of Milltown, County Kilkenny 
 
 "The assessment of the Parish of Callan, under the 
 Tithe Composition Act of 4 George IV, chapter 99, 
 dated June 18, 1827, had the names: 
 
 Patrick Cuddihy - Kilbride Commons - 472 
 Edmond Cuddihy - Westcourt Commons - 542 
 
 "The Index to Marriage License Bonds, Ossory: 
 Elizabeth Cuddihy and William Finn - 1729 
 Patrick Cuddihy and Ann Bassett - - 1799 
 
 "In the Diary of Humphrey O'Sullivan, a Callan 
 schoolmaster (edited by Rev. Michael McGrath, pub- 
 lished by Simpkin, Marshall, Ltd., London, 1936, for 
 the Irish Texts Society), appears an entry under date 
 of April 2, 1827: 'I went from Callan to Kilmaganny 
 in company with Margaret Barr, widow, and her 
 daughter, sweet worded, sweet voiced little Margaret. 
 We had an old, half blind, lean bodied, unkempt, dark 
 brown guide, to wit, Michael Cuddihy.' 
 
 "An Irish manuscript, written in 1798 by Donchadd 
 O'Sullivan, the father of Humphrey O'Sullivan, 'be- 
 longed to one Seamus Cuddihy, living near Callan in 
 the Diocese of Ossory,' according to Seamus O'Casaide. 
 (The Irish Book Lover; vol. XXVI, No. 2. Sept.-Oct, 
 1938, p. 35.) 
 
276 APPENDIX I 
 
 "The Primary Valuation of Tenements in the Parish 
 of Callan, County Kilkenny, under date of October 12, 
 1849, shows the following entries: 
 
 Jeremiah Cuddihy - Mill Street 
 Lessor Earl of Carrick 
 
 John Cuddihy - Green Street 
 Lessor James Corr 
 
 Richard Cuddihy - Crossage 
 Lessor Viscount Clifden 
 
 John Cuddihy - Haggarts Green 
 Lessor Anastasia Dalton" 
 
 At this point John Cudahy inserts some notes on the 
 history of Callan, which the writer has used and en- 
 larged in the text of the first chapter of this book. 
 Then followed the entries regarding his grandparents 
 and their children born in Callan, which were copied 
 for John Cudahy by the parish priest of Callan, the 
 Reverend Fintan Phelan, from the parish register of 
 marriages and baptisms: that particular book of records 
 having been begun on January 20, 1821. The notes 
 then continue: 
 
 "The old family residence on Mill Street has now 
 been demolished and replaced by a modern dwelling. 
 
 "Beyond the known descendants of the family which 
 emigrated from Callan in 1849, 1 have never been able 
 to find any relative, with the possible exception of 
 Mrs. Mary K. Evans, Lovely Banks, via Geelong, Vic- 
 toria, Australia, who wrote me on August 13, 1938: 
 
APPENDIX I 277 
 
 'I recollect when a first cousin of my father, 
 named Richard Cuddihy, living in New Zealand at 
 the time, corresponded with Cuddihys of the Meat- 
 works in U. S. A. They were related, and newspa- 
 pers were often sent to the New Zealand Cuddihy, 
 who in turn forwarded them to my father and 
 brother.' 
 
 "This lady had previously written me that she 
 thought her father, Michael Cuddihy, was a brother 
 of my father, Patrick, and her paternal grandfather, 
 John Cuddihy, was a brother of my paternal grand- 
 father, Patrick. 
 
 "Edward A. Cudahy, senior, during the summer of 
 1938, told me that he remembered hearing his father 
 speak of a brother, Richard, living in Australia, with 
 whom his father corresponded over a period of years. 
 My father told me that he thought he would have been 
 christened Richard, if he had not been born on Saint 
 Patrick's Day." 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 Edward Cudahy was likely to be embarrassed when 
 he was caught in the act of making large gifts. It was 
 his habit to "do good by stealth, and blush to find it 
 fame." But Father Robert M. Kelley, the rector of 
 Loyola University, persuaded him to write a formal 
 letter announcing his gift of a library to the Univer- 
 sity. The phraseology of the letter is stiff, because he 
 was ill at ease in writing such a letter; but its thoughts 
 and sentiments are most genuine. There is a whole 
 lifetime of his actions to prove this genuineness. Here 
 is the letter: 
 
 January 13, 1930. 
 Dear Father Kelley: 
 
 As a tribute of devotion to my beloved wife, Eliza- 
 beth M. Cudahy, it is my cherished privilege to pre- 
 sent to Loyola University the Elizabeth M. Cudahy 
 Memorial Library. 
 
 I feel that in thus adding to the facilities of this 
 great institution I am recording in a definite and 
 permanent way, my loyalty to my faith, my esteem 
 for the sons of the saintly Ignatius of Loyola, and 
 my desire to further the cause of Christian education. 
 
 The most precious of our possessions are not the 
 material things of life, but rather those endowments 
 that make for higher cultural standards. Libraries, 
 those store-houses of wisdom, are essential in our 
 educational designs, and to have been the medium 
 through which this library is provided for Loyola, 
 is an honor of which I am deeply appreciative. 
 
APPENDIX II 279 
 
 It is my fervent wish that the faculty, students and 
 friends of Loyola may find in this memorial, not a 
 mere thing of steel and stone, but a living, vibrant 
 force and an enduring monument to the advance- 
 ment of learning and those spiritual values in which 
 our securities as Christians and citizens are reposed. 
 
 Accept then, dear Father, this library. My high 
 hope is that it prove an inspiration and a haven to 
 the thousands who may enroll under the colors of 
 Loyola in our own day and in the generations that 
 are to follow us. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 E. A. CUDAHY. 
 
 Since he had to say something on the occasion, it 
 was in keeping with his character that he should dwell 
 intelligently upon the purposes back of his gift. Those 
 purposes, simple and clear, were two. The first was 
 that Elizabeth should have her memory fixed in a public 
 acknowledgment, not after her death, but whilst she 
 still lived. Death dwarfs memorials. To one who 
 beholds and possesses the infinite beauty and wisdom 
 of God, a monument of stone and steel here on this 
 earth is almost a ridiculously tiny thing; and even that 
 nobler gift, the love that inspires the monument, is in- 
 finitesimal beside the infinity of God's love. The time 
 for his testimony of devotion was the present, when 
 Elizabeth could still warm her soul at the precious 
 small fire of human love. The other purpose was to 
 
280 APPENDIX II 
 
 enlarge the educational facilities of a Catholic college. 
 What use would be made of the added facilities was 
 a matter for hope only. 
 
 At the entrance to the reading room of the library, 
 there is a modest bronze plaque, with a dedicatory in- 
 scription which Edward Cudahy composed and signed. 
 It reads as follows: 
 
 THIS LIBRARY IS REARED 
 
 A TRIBUTE OF DEVOTION 
 
 TO MY BELOVED WIFE 
 
 ELIZABETH M. CUDAHY 
 
 AS A SIGN OF 
 
 MY LOYALTY TO MY FAITH 
 
 MY ESTEEM FOR THE SONS OF IGNATIUS 
 
 MY ZEAL FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION 
 
 WITH THE HOPE THAT 
 
 THE FACULTY STUDENTS AND FRIENDS 
 
 OF LOYOLA UNIVERSITY 
 
 MAY FIND IN THIS LIBRARY 
 
 A HAVEN OF STUDY 
 
 A HOME OF CULTURE 
 
 A STOREHOUSE OF SPIRITUAL VALUE 
 
 AN INSPIRATION TO HIGH IDEALS. 
 
 1930 E. A. Cudahy