The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy

A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry

Gretchen Cherington

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781647420840
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Three powerful men converge on the banks of the Red Cedar River in the early 1900s in southern Minnesota—George Albert Hormel, founder of what will become the $10 billion food conglomerate Hormel Foods; Alpha LaRue Eberhart, the author’s paternal grandfather and Hormel’s Executive Vice President and Corporate Secretary; and Ransome Josiah Thomson, Hormel’s comptroller. Over ten years, Thomson will embezzle $1.2 million from the company’s coffers, nearly bringing the company to its knees.

The Butcher, The Embezzler, and The Fall Guy opens in 1922 as George Hormel calls Eberhart into his office and demands his resignation. Hailed as the true leader of the company he’d helped Hormel build—is Eberhart complicit in the embezzlement? Far worse than losing his job and the great wealth he’d rightfully accumulated is that his beloved young wife, Lena, is dying while their three children grieve alongside. Of course, his story doesn’t end there.

In scale both intimate and grand, Cherington deftly weaves the histories of Hormel, Eberhart, and Thomson within the sweeping landscape of our country’s early industries, along with keen observations about business leaders gleaned from her thirty-five-year career advising top company executives. The Butcher, The Embezzler, and The Fall Guy equally chronicles Cherington’s journey from blind faith in family lore to a nuanced consideration of the three men’s great strengths and flaws—and a multilayered, thoughtful exploration of the ways we all must contend with the mythology of powerful men, our reverence for heroes, and the legacy of a complicated past.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• 1. Flimsy Pretext
• 2. Company Town
• 3. He Could Cleave a Hog with a Single Blow
• 4. Oakwood Cemetery
• 5. Spam Town, USA
• 6. Six Feet of Manhood and Not a Mark of Fear
• 7. He Could Sell Refrigerators to Eskimos
• 8. On My Own
• 9. Musings near a Putting Green
• 10. A Cyclone Lands
• 11. Rock Star Status in a Small Midwestern City
• 12. Let the Good Times Roll
• 13. Tears in My Arugula
• 14. It Was the Sausage
• 15. Power in Promotion
• 16. River Rambles with Knowles
• 17. The Jig Is Up
• 18. Too Big to Fail
• 19. Debits and Credits
• 20. If There’s Anything in Prayer, I Certainly Ought to Get Well
• 21. Poetry Slam
• 22. Visionary Farms
• 23. Old Papers
• 24. Aftermath
• 25. And the Strong Right of Human Love Was There
• Postscript
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Poetic License
• Selected Titles from She Writes Press