How Gates Manufacturing decided on locating in Iola 40 years ago is à la Goldilocks and the Three Bears, according to Jerry Skidmore, who at the time was serving as an Iola Commissioner.
According to Skidmore, representatives from the Denver-based company first landed in Pittsburg to scout out possible sites for a new plant. Trouble was, the welcoming party didn’t show up.
From there they went to Chanute, where a labor union representative pressed them about the company’s union policies in a somewhat off-putting manner.
At Iola, however, they were given the red-carpet treatment and it’s been a wonderful relationship ever since.
So if you don’t think first impressions make a difference, think again.
With the advent of Gates, Iola seemed on the precipice of becoming a major industrial city.
Those were heady days.
In 1974, the per capita income of Kansans had increased by 14 percent over the previous year; farm income had increased by 51 percent.
The thinking back then was other industries would follow the lead of Gates and Berg Manufacturing, whose headquarters were in Chicago, and branch out to small communities like Iola.
“[O]ur great cities will shrink and thousands of towns like Iola will grow,” opined my dad, Emerson Lynn.
“There is no more cheap land; building is extravagantly expensive; and the personal car is threatened by scarce and expensive fuel,” he continued.
In short, Iola was destined to become a city of 10,000 in no time flat, the biggest thing to happen since the gas and smelter boom of the late 1890s.
Except it didn’t happen.
As soon as one company opened up, another would close.
Which is why the staying power of Gates has been an incredible blessing to Iola, and the leaders of those days, most notably Iola mayor Jack Hastings, and Iola Industries chairman Ray Pershall, have left their footprints in Iola’s history.
