The meat industry was one of the first large-scale manufacturing industries to provide jobs for Negroes. Industry growth and change in the last part of the nineteenth century created many unskilled and semiskilled jobs available to Negroes, although job advancement was not obtained until after World War II and then only in skilled manual positions. The document reviews the basic industry background, early labor turbulence, changing racial employment patterns, and the future of the Negro in the meat industry. Industry wages now are good, working conditions are much improved, and most equal employment goals have been met in the manual sector. Credit for the present nondiscriminatory practices in this sector goes to the major labor unions. In the nonmanual sector, however, equal employment goals have not been achieved; few of the industry's white collar workers are represented by a union. It is somewhat ironic that jobs in the meat packing division, which contains the industry's largest firms and has the most advanced minority employment practices, are disappearing as a result of technological changes. The number of jobs in poultry and other small meat establishments in the South will increase but such jobs are less desirable than those which are being lost in the Northern meat packing plants. (MF)