Monday’s editorial on globalization made several errors in its recounting of the history of Berg Manufacturing, Echlin, Inc. and the progression of the company to Haldex. The errors were made because the “facts” came from personal memory, a notoriously unreliable source.
City Editor Bob Johnson trusted the Internet and confirmed his findings with Bill Lee, a former Berg executive.
Echlin Inc. was founded in 1924 and began expanding through acquisitions in the mid-1960s. In 1971 it purchased Berg Manufacturing, which was relocated from the Chicago area, where the Berg family lived, to Iola in 1973. Lee remembered that Echlin had a plant in Independence and thus was familiar with the southeast Kansas area and knew it was a good place to do business.
Midland Brake was added in the early 1980s, and the name of the plant here became Midland Brake. In 1998 Echlin sold its holdings to Haldex.
Monday’s chronicle was inaccurate. I am chagrined and apologize. The message, however, was accurate. Berg was operated in Iola under the leadership of Sergio Campanini and his fellow executives with the welfare of Iola and Berg employees clearly in view. It goes without saying that the transition from a U.S.-based company to an international conglomerate with its headquarters in Sweden brought in decision-makers with totally different perspectives and values.
It is equally apparent that globalization is as unstoppable as the ocean’s tides. Employers will chase low wages until competition and the increasingly free movement of people, capital, goods and services levels the economic playing fields of the world and entrepreneurs will turn to other ways to increase quarterly profits.
Globalization is the offspring of freedom and self-government; free trade, free enterprise, individual freedom to travel, freedom to create the societies in which we live.
Some of the consequences were unintended. None will be permanent. The only immutable is change.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
