Recession Hurts Midwestern Economic Staple, Businesses Take Long View

KCUR | By Frank Morris

Published December 2, 2008 at 2:36 AM CST

Leland Smith, a 40 year Maytag veteran, at the Jasper County Historical Society Museum

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-799257.mp3

Newton, Iowa – These days, if you've got something in your home from Iowa, it's probably in a kitchen cupboard, or in the refrigerator. But for a long time it likely was the refrigerator, or the washing machine, or the dryer. Maytag and Amana once two of the largest appliance companies on Earth, sprang from little Iowa towns. Now those communities are scrambling to deal with that industry's sharp decline, and to capitalize Iowa's emerging alternative energy business.

KCUR's Frank Morris offers this audio slideshow

Economy

Frank Morris

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.

See stories by Frank Morris

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