Some Photographs Taken at Inauguration of the Uruapan Packing Plant. 18th January 1908. Mexican National Packing Co. [cover title]

Uruapan, Michoacán, Mx, 1908. Very good.. Twenty-four silver gelatin photographs, each 4.75 x 6.75 inches and captioned in the negative, each affixed to the recto of thick cardboard mounts attached to cloth stubs. Oblong quarto. Original black cloth, string tied, with gilt titles on front cover. Some bowing throughout. Minor wear and soiling to covers. Minor silvering and light wear to some photographs. Likely a presentation album containing two dozen substantial and informative photographs produced during the opening of a Mexican meat-packing plant owned by an eccentric American tycoon in January 1908.  The factory was launched by American entrepreneur John Wesley De Kay (1872-1938), who moved from South Dakota to Mexico in 1899 and launched the Mexican National Packing Company; he is sometimes called the "Sausage King of Mexico." The present album shows his company's refrigerated railway cars, the attendees of the inaugural banquet (including a band hired for the occasion), exterior and interior views of the plant (including one of the killing room and another showing sides of beef hanging in cold storage), and much more. Each photograph includes an informative caption written in the negative, providing ample identification of each photograph's contents. In one image, Mexico's Vice President Ramón Corral (whose traveling party is featured in more than one photo) presses a ceremonial button to launch the plant's operation, while the rather bohemian-looking De Kay stands behind him. A couple of shots feature the soldiers of Vice President Corral's military guard, identified as the "Rurales." The year after this album was produced, De Kay tried his hand as a playwright. His 1909 Broadway production Judas starred Sarah Bernhardt, but was regarded as blasphemous and bombed. During the chaotic years of the Mexican Revolution, he helped buy weaponry for the Huerta regime, and sold his meat-packing empire to the government in 1914. No listings in OCLC for any other copies of this wonderful album exemplifying commercial diplomacy between the United States and Mexico in the first decade of the 20th century.