The New Student's Reference Work/Armour, Philip D.

82330The New Student's Reference Work — Armour, Philip D.

Ar'mour, Philip D., a Chicago merchant, head for many years of the great firm of Armour & Co., pork-packers and dealers in dressed meats and provisions, was born at Stockbridge, N. Y., May 16, 1832, and died at Chicago, January 6, 1901. The house with which he was long identified, and through the successful operations of which Mr. Armour amassed a large fortune, was founded in 1865 by Herman O. Armour, Philip D. Armour joining the Chicago concern in 1875. The volume of its business, which gave employment to more than 11,000 persons, exceeded a hundred millions a year. Much of his large income Mr. Armour gave away in private and public charities. The chief object of his benevolence was the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago, which was opened in 1893, and now has 68 instructors and an enrollment of 1,800 students. Connected with this were a mission and a group of apartment buildings, rented to working-men and their families, known as the Armour flats. Mr. Armour's enterprises included, besides the great dressed-meat factory, a grain business of large volume and ownership in a great railway system. His wealth was estimated at his death at about forty millions.