Cheever, L O

English

The Palimpsest

Comments on 11 Years

Iowa Research Online

Masthead Logo The Palimpsest
Volume 48 | Number 3 Article 3
3-1-1967
Comments on 11 Years
L O. Cheever
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Recommended Citation
Cheever, L O. "Comments on 11 Years." The Palimpsest 48 (1967), 93-96.
Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol48/iss3/3
Comments on 11 Years
In M ay of 1956, the Society published the first 
in what was hoped would be a series of reports 
devoted to Iowa industry. That report covered 54 
companies with 500 or more employees. W ith  this 
issue of The Palimpsest the project is revived. A 
few comments may shed some light on what has 
transpired in the 1 1-year period between the 1956 
and 1967 reports.
Twenty-nine of the companies covered in the 
1956 report are present in this issue. There were 
30 companies with 1,000 workers at that time. 
There are 38 companies listed in this issue. Drop­
ping from this select group since 1956 were Solar 
Aircraft, Des Moines, with 2,500 workers; Farley 
and Loetscher, Dubuque, 1,100 employees; and 
the Curtis Companies of Clinton, with 707 em­
ployees. A drop in employment brought the omis­
sion of Keokuk Electro-Metals of Keokuk (now 
Vanadium Corporation of America), Cherry-Bur- 
rell, Cedar Rapids, and Carr, Adams and Collier 
of Dubuque (now Caradco).
Three of the firms listed above, Farley and 
Loetscher, Curtis, and Caradco, were connected 
with the woodworking industry. The disappear­
ance of the huge lumber rafts from the Mississippi
93
94 T H E  P A L IM P S E S T
and the drying up of nearby sources of lumber 
heralded problems for those plants unable to adapt 
to new conditions. Along with Caradco, other 
Iowa woodworking firms have continued in opera­
tion through the manufacture of new items and 
the use of new raw materials.
Tw o new companies added to the 1967 list 
came from the electronics field, Bourns, Inc., 
Ames, and Standard Kollsman, Inc., Ottumwa. 
The other newcomer was Sheller-Globe, with 
plants in Keokuk and Iowa City. Fruehauf Trail­
er, on the 1956 list, has a new facility under con­
struction in Fort Madison.
W hile  meat packing and allied industries con­
tinue to dominate the sta te’s economy, most of the 
larger packers showed a decrease in the number 
of employees. This had come about because of 
the closing of obsolete or uneconomical plants, the 
trend to small, more compact units, and the growth 
of automated operations. The loss in employ­
ment has been partially offset by the emergence 
of smaller regional packers.
The growth of companies participating in the 
field of farm machinery and heavy construction 
equipment has been a major factor in the Iowa in­
dustrial picture. 1 he largest employer of Iowans, 
Deere & Company, has in excess of 18,000 work­
ers in its four plants, an increase of 8,500 in the 
1 1-year period. J. I. Case, with plants in Burling­
ton and Bettendorf, and Oliver, in Charles City,
C O M M E N T S  O N  11 Y EAR S 95
also in the farm machinery category, are in the 
first 11 of Iowa’s largest employers.
For many years Iowa has been considered a 
rural state with its economy resting on an agricul­
tural foundation. Nothing could be further from 
the truth. Iowa is in a transition period —  from 
rural-urban to urban-rural. It is a period which 
has brought a decline in farming employment, a 
slowing of population growth, but the erection of 
new or the expansion of older manufacturing com­
plexes. Although the mechanized farming indus­
try continues to play its part in Iowa’s economy, 
the value of the state’s industrial production in 
1966 exceeded $10 billion, more than a billion 
above 1965, and $4.7 billion in 1960. The value 
of farm production was about a third of that for 
industrial production. However, 1966’s $3.3 bil­
lion total for agricultural product was $331 mil­
lion above the previous year and $850 million more 
than in 1960.
Feed and grain mills dot the landscape in every 
direction, making their contribution to better live­
stock, better products, and better use of the land. 
But the number of persons working in these mills 
is very small. Take Monsanto Company of St. 
Louis for instance: with 17 agricultural centers in 
Iowa, less than 200 people are employed. The 
answer, of course, is automation. The mills of the 
state require a minimum of people for a multitude 
of operations. Everything is done by push button
96 T H E  P A L IM P S E S T
from mixing a product with an exacting list of in­
gredients to bagging and stockpiling. Now even 
the processing and packaging of frankfurters is 
handled on an automatic line.
Iowa agriculture and farm-oriented industries 
continue to have an impact on the state s economy. 
Some of the more glamorous industries have now 
appeared on the scene. The electronics industry 
found Iowa a fertile field and in a 10-year period 
doubled the number of people employed in its fac­
tories and more than doubled the value of its pro­
duction. Collins Radio is a good example. Its 1 1 ,- 
500 employees in Cedar Rapids is the largest
group employed in any single city in the state.
Employment figures for Iowa’s 38 largest ill-
dustrial units are as follows:
Deere 18.000 D u Pon t 1.600
Collins 11.500 A m ana 1.500
Rath 4.088 S tan d a rd  Brands 1.500
W ilso n  & Co. 3.600 S y lv an ia 1.500
M ason  & H a n g e r 3.515 Q u a k e r  O a ts 1.400
Alcoa 3.500 A rm strong 1,385
Morrell 3.500 Sheaffcr 1.350
M a y ta g 3.405 Bendix 1,300
D ubuque  Packing 3,000 Lennox 1,250
C ase 2.800 Ford 1.200
O liver 2.500 A rm our 1.133
Firestone 2.400 Des M oines Register 1 .100
Swift 2.400 Penick & Ford 1,075
Fisher 2.157 A M F  W e s te rn 1.000
O sc a r  M a y e r 2.082 Bourn 1.000
M eredith 2.080 G ra in  Processing 1.000
Sheller-Globe 2.058 Horm el 1.000
C ham berla in 1.735 S tan d a rd  Kollsman 1,000
Iow a M anufac tu r ing 1.700 Zenith 1,000
L. O. C heever


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