CHICAGO — Chicago is a meat town. Tell someone you don’t like all-beef hot dogs or your Italian beef dipped in gravy and you may get an obscene hand gesture.

During its Union Stockyard years, the city used “everything about the hog except the squeal,” Upton Sinclair wrote in his 1906 novel, “The Jungle.” At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Vienna Beef was just getting its start, charging a dime for sausages covered in mustard and onions from a booth in the “Old Vienna” exhibit. The food spot became so popular, the brothers-in-law behind it decided to stay in town, building a legacy that became integral to Chicago’s identity.

Yet at the same World’s Fair, the Vegetarian Federal Union also set up an exhibit as a competing movement was taking shape: going meatless. Some adv

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