Chapter Summaries
The American Way
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Chapter 1 opens with discussion of Carl N. Karcher, one of fast food’s pioneers. Carl was born in 1917 in Ohio. He quit school after eighth grade and spent long hours farming with his father. When he was twenty years old, his uncle offered him a job in his Feed and Seed store in Anaheim, CA. Carl moved out to California, where he met his wife Margaret and began his own family. Margaret and Carl bought a hotdog cart; Margaret sold hotdogs across the street from a Goodyear factory while Carl worked at a bakery. During this time California’s population was rapidly expanding, as was the auto industry. Carl eventually opened a Drive-In Barbeque restaurant. The post-WWII economy provided him with plenty of customers.
In this chapter, Schlosser shows a different side of the fast-food pioneer. In comparing the rise of McDonald’s with the Walt Disney Company, Schlosser is able to depict Ray Kroc as a shrewd businessman concerned primarily, if not solely, with expanding his empire. This tale serves as a backdrop for Schlosser’s real project--which is to illuminate the machination of the contemporary fast-food nation. Schlosser effectively demonstrates how fast-food companies, which offer little in terms of nutrition, manipulate young minds in an effort sell their products. These companies go so far as to portray themselves as trusted friends and prey on school systems with declining revenue. While Schlosser also explores the history of attempted unionization in fast-food restaurants, he does not think about the real potential for teens to unionize. Schlosser shows how teens in Colorado Springs do not think about unions, frequently quit their jobs, and spend their money on wasteful, status-oriented items. Could these individuals form viable unions? If they did, would they be forced out of fast-food jobs, which would certainly become more attractive to better-qualified individuals? Would Americans be interested in spending more money on this food, which would seemingly have to become more expensive to cover the increased wages/ benefits of the fast-food workforce? When this chapter opens, the author is riding with a pizza-delivery man through Pueblo, CO. Pueblo is a different sort of town than Colorado Springs; some people call it “the asshole of Colorado” However, the differences between Pueblo and Colorado Springs are starting to disappear as restaurant franchises and ranch homes are built there. The Little Caesars that Schlosser visits is owned by Dave Feamster, former NHL player. Feamster opened the restaurant after he was hurt playing hockey. While he was being trained, he earned only $300.00 a week. To become a franchisee, he has to pay a $15,000.00 franchise fee. Franchising has been around since the 19th century, and was especially useful when fast-food chains emerged because banks were often unwilling to invest in this new industry. Ray Kroc began by selling restaurants to men in his country club This chapter begins at the J.R. Simplot Plant in Aberdeen, Idaho. J.R. Simplot was born in 1909 and grew up working on his family’s farm in Idaho. When he dropped out of school and left home at fifteen, he found work in a potato house. By age sixteen, he was a potato farmer. Soon, Simplot was buying, selling, and sorting potatoes--eventually becoming the largest shipper of potatoes in the West. During World War II, Simplot made a fortune selling dried onions and potatoes to the American military. Following the war, Simplot invested in frozen food technology and, in the 1950s, began selling frozen french fries to McDonalds. Ray Kroc described the frozen french fry as “almost sacrosanct.” In the opening section of Chapter 6, Schlosser visits with Hank, a Colorado rancher. Hank gives Schlosser a tour of his ranch, with the intent of showing him the difference between what he does and “raping the land.” Hank takes many precautions in raising cattle, so that the land remains lush and fertile. In contrast, the mass development of Colorado Springs wreaks havoc on the landscape. This chapter opens in Greeley, Colorado--a small meatpacking town, home to a migrant industrial workforce. Greeley, named after the well-known newspaper editor Horace Greeley, began in 1870 as a utopian community dedicated to agriculture, education, mutual aid, and high moral values. However, the prosperity and labor peace that were for so long central to Greeley, were destroyed by the IBP revolution. The IBP revolution began in Denison, Iowa when Currier J. Holman and A.D. Anderson began Iowa Beef Packers (IBP), applying the same labor principles to meat packing that the McDonald brothers applied to making hamburgers. This system required very little skill from its human operators. This chapter opens with a tour of a slaughterhouse “somewhere in the High Plains.” Schlosser observes the crowded, bloodied plant and the process that turns live cattle into what we are used to seeing in the grocery store. Meatpacking has become the most dangerous job in America. Unlike poultry plants, in which almost all tasks are performed by machines, most of the work in a slaughterhouse is done by hand. Hazards of the job include injuries from the various machines and knives, strain to the body from poor working conditions, and even methamphetamine use in order to keep up with the production line. Women face the added threat of sexual harassment. This chapter opens with an anecdote about the largest recall of food in the nation’s history. In 1997 approximately 35 million pounds of ground beef was recalled by Hudson Foods because a strain of E Coli was found in the food. However, by the time the beef was recalled, 25 million pounds had already been eaten. Schlosser notes that the nature of food poisoning is changing. Prior to the rise of large meatpacking plants, people would become ill from bad food in small, localized arenas. Now, because meat is distributed all over the nation, an outbreak of food poisoning in one town may indicate nation-wide epidemic. Every day in the United States, 200, 000 people are sickened by a food borne disease. Chapter 10 opens with a discussion of Plauen, Germany and its history. Schlosser notes that everyone he talked with about Plauen was surprised to hear he wanted to visit the seemingly provincial town. Schlosser details the city’s history from 1923 when it was the first place outside of Bavaria to subscribe to Nazism, until 1990 when it was the first town in East Germany to host a McDonald’s restaurant. Schlosser says the most surreal experience of his three years researching this book happened in Las Vegas in 1999. He calls Las Vegas “the fulfillment of social and economic trends now sweeping from the American West to the farthest reaches of the globe.” Here, in Las Vegas, Schlosser listened to Mikhail Gorbachev speak about Russia in the aftermath of the Cold War. He asked the crowd assembled at the Twenty-sixth Annual Chain Operators Exchange to send money to Russia. Schlosser notes how Gorbachev’s presence seems like an American version of a Roman circus, displaying the leader of a captured land. |