The Power of Testimony

DIKKON EBERHART
young men weighing no more than one hundred pounds came
of age by mastering two thousand–​pound Percheron horses—​
sometimes, indeed, four of them at the same time. The terrain
was flat and vast. Young men were out there alone on the land,
controlling their teams with the flick of reins and a whistle.
A.L. left school at age fourteen and began his career as a
farm laborer. But he had bigger ideas than that. Chicago was
the place where a young man with drive could succeed, and so, a
year later, A.L. made his way there. During the next six years, he
managed to save enough money to open his own store, selling
men’s fashions. But he was too restless for retail, and he sold the
store and went out on the road as a glove salesman.
The financial panic of 1890 drove A.L. back to Chicago,
where he capitalized on what was a family acquaintance with
George H. Swift. Swift brought the young Eberhart into the
Swift meatpacking company, and over the next few years A.L.
rose until he was a manager of Swift’s South St. Paul, Minnesota,
branch.
By 1900, A.L. had made a name for himself—​he possessed
energy, drive, imagination, and the hunger to live well. The late
nineteenth century created an opportunity for many men to
get rich. One of them was a New York–​born German butcher
named George A. Hormel. Any man with the ability to catch a
wind as it blew—​and with the vision to sail it cunningly—​could
make the prairie hum. George A. Hormel was one such man.
By the time of my father’s birth, Austin, Minnesota, was humming.
There, in 1894, Hormel had begun to build his dream of
a meatpacking enterprise that could rival George Swift’s. He had
assistance from his three brothers, but most especially, in 1900,
he seduced A.L. away from Swift. Hormel knew a comer when
13