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On October 23, 1954, the Alexandria, Louisiana, Town Talk announced that, "Louisiana Poultry Co.'s plant . . . has been leased to two Chicago businessmen-J. H. [Herb] Johnson and J. C. [Jess] Merkle." The plant had been recently abandoned by Cudahy Packing, the second time it had closed in its two-year history. According to Town Talk, Merkle and John- son were untroubled by the plant's less-than-stellar record and confident about the future of poultry processing in Louisiana.1 As employees of Swift, one of the "Big Four" American meat processors in the first half of the twentieth century, Merkle and Johnson also trusted in their own exper- tise. They were willing, according to Merkle, to take the significant risk of leaving Swift to "see if we couldn't go into business for ourselves."2 Their confidence was well-placed. The plant in Alexandria thrived, and Merkle and Johnson began to think about expanding.
In 1955, the Greater El Dorado Committee (GEC) visited Merkle and Johnson's Louisiana plant and returned to Arkansas impressed with the pair's work. The GEC was El Dorado's official "booster" organization and the visit part of a "planned program to obtain new industries" for the south central Arkansas city.3 The committee offered to build a poultry plant in El Dorado, 150 miles from Alexandria, if Merkle would agree to operate it. This turned out to be an offer "that we just couldn't turn down," recalled Merkle.4 On July 19, 1956, J-M Poultry Packing Com- pany opened in El Dorado. Fewer than 100 employees processed about 20,000 birds per day.5 Over the next fifty years, El Dorado's stake in poul- try processing expanded from a modest, individually owned plant to the poultry processing headquarters for a transnational giant, ConAgra. The poultry plant became Union County's largest employer. In this relatively small southern city, growing and processing poultry became a multi-mil- lion dollar industry.6
The evolution of El Dorado from oil boomtown to poultry processing center illustrates the ability of boosters to redefine a town economical- ly and socially. Poultry never entirely displaced the city's petrochemical industry, which has a strong economic and cultural presence even today. But El Dorado repeated a pattern of becoming heavily dependent upon one industry, despite the prescient contention of the city's boosters...