This person made his fortune by supplying meat to the Union soldiers during the Civil War. In 1870 he built his first meat-packing plant in Chicago, which soon made that city the meat-packing center of the U.S.A. What was his name?

Philip Danforth Armour was an American industrialist who indeed built a massive fortune during the Civil War by supplying meat to the Union Army. Anticipating market shifts near the end of the war, he made several million dollars by strategically buying and selling pork. Following this success, he and his brothers established Armour & Co. in Chicago in 1867, recognizing the city's potential as a meatpacking hub due to its central location and extensive railroad connections. While he initially rented a plant, he soon built his own large-scale facilities, helping to cement Chicago's future in the industry.

Armour was a key figure in transforming Chicago into the meatpacking capital of the world. His plants were built near the city's massive Union Stock Yards, which opened in 1865 and centralized the livestock trade. Armour pioneered the use of a "dis-assembly" line, an innovative process that inspired Henry Ford's assembly line. He was famous for his efficiency and for using every part of the animal, boasting that he used "everything but the squeal." This, combined with the adoption of refrigerated railroad cars, allowed Armour & Co. to distribute fresh meat nationwide, making it one of the largest food processing enterprises in the world.

Beyond his business acumen, Armour left a complex legacy. He was a significant philanthropist who founded institutions like the Armour Institute of Technology, which later became the Illinois Institute of Technology. However, he was also staunchly anti-union and fought against strikes for better working conditions in an industry known for being dangerous and paying low wages. His company's practices, and those of the industry as a whole, were later famously depicted in Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle."