H. L. Hunt (1889-1974) was an entrepreneur who built a financial empire from a small early investment in oil in Arkansas. In his later years he was perhaps the world's richest man.

Born on his father's farm near Vandalia, Illinois, on February 17, 1889, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt worked nearly full-time on the farm as a boy, reaching only the fifth grade in the public schools. At age 16 he left home, travelling across the United States working as a farmhand, cowboy, lumberjack, and mule skinner. When his father died in 1911 he left the young man an inheritance of about $6,000. With that money Hunt bought himself a cotton plantation near Lake Valley, Arkansas, in the Mississippi Delta.

Not content with simply farming, Hunt began speculating in cotton and timber land near Lake Providence, Louisiana. By 1920 he owned some 15,000 acres of land in Arkansas and Louisiana on which he planted cotton to take...