It should be a source of pride to every American meat retailer to know that America's most beloved president, Abraham Lincoln, won considerable fame as a butcher when he was a lad. In Carl Sandburg's book, 'The Prairie Years of Abraham Lincoln," we read:
"He lifted the slippery 200-pound hog, head down, holding the hind hocks up for others of the gang to hook, and swung the animal clear off the ground. He learned where to stick a hog in the under side of the neck so as to bleed it to death, how to split it in two ; and how to carve out the chops, the parts for sausage grinding, the hams, and cracklings.
"Farmers called him to butcher for them, at 31 cents a day—this when he was sixteen to seventeen years of age. He could knock a beef on the head, swing a maul and hit a cow between the eyes, skin the hides, halve and quarter it, carve out the tallow, steaks, kidneys and liver."
