In compliance with this resolution, the Commissioner of Corporations, Mr. James R. Garfield, went to Chicago in April and began the requested investigation, which was prosecuted throughout most of the ensuing year. "The inquiries of the Bureau of Corporations were naturally concerned chiefly with the six great concerns which, by the injunction of 1902, were grouped together, and which were popularly considered as the Beef Trust. The ‘Big Six,’ in the approximate order of their magnitude as indicated by the number of animals slaughtered, are: Swift & Company, with seven large plants; Armour & Company, and the Armour Packing Company, which have the same stockholders, and which together operate five packing-houses; the National Packing Company, with eight comparatively large plants and two or three minor ones; Morris & Company, operating three plants; the Cudahy Packing Company, with three plants in the middle West and a minor one at Los Angeles; and the Schwarzschild & Sulzberger Company, operating three plants. Nearly all of the important packing-houses of these six companies are situated in the eight great live-stock markets,—Chicago, Kansas City, South Omaha, East St. Louis, South St. Joseph, Fort Worth, South St. Paul, and Sioux City." As for the National Packing Company, it grew, apparently, out of an abortive scheme for the consolidation of the other five concerns which was rumored in 1902. "Shortly prior to the formation of this company the Armour interests had acquired control of the G. H. Hammond Company and the Omaha Packing Company, the Swifts had secured the Anglo-American Provision Company and the Fowler Packing Association, and the Morris family had become dominant in the United Dressed Beef Company of New York. The National Packing Company, organized in 1903, took over the control of the various corporations thus previously acquired by the three packing interests named, and has since absorbed two or three other smaller concerns. The directorate of the National Company consists almost wholly of representatives of the Armour, Swift, and Morris companies. Aside from this community of interest, the bureau finds that there is no important inter-ownership of securities among the six leading packing companies."