These are dark days in America. The reasons vary and everyone has their own opinions why. I am not going to dwell on that theme because I am sick of listening to the blame game in the media. One thing I do know is that it was not caused by honest hard working people. Notice I said honest because no matter how ambitious people are unless they are honest, their work does not benefit society as a whole. Honesty is perhaps the best of the several virtues men wish to be known by. In my humble opinion honest, hard working people made this nation what it is today and totally dishonest ambitious people have placed us in our present straits.

There have been much darker days in our nation’s past and many of its greatest success stories had their beginnings there. There were dark days in nearby Lyons Falls when Lyons Falls Pulp and Paper Company closed its doors. Out of its ashes a new industry arose due to the hard work and entrepreneurship of a local woman, Otis Technology. When I heard it was the brainchild of a woman it rang a bell in my memory about another industry that owed its success to many women.

I doubt that many reading this have ever heard of the Longaberger Company of Dresden, Ohio. It was started in 1973 and is based in Newark, Ohio twenty-five miles from its manufacturing base in Dresden. In 2000 it posted $1 billion dollars in revenue.

Dave Longaberger the founder grew up in a family of 11 brothers and sisters. He had a severe case of stutters and epileptic seizures that stopped after 12 years. He spent three years in the fifth grade and graduated from high school when he was 21.

His business was making baskets from hard maple veneer. In the beginning of the business his weavers, who were mostly all women worked six months for no wages. They eventually got paid when they started to make a profit. They also worked in a dilapidated building with a leaky roof and no restroom. It was not an immediate success and at one time in 1986 he was in debt for $7 million dollars and ready to call it quits. He had two daughters who would not let him fail. The three of them rallied. They raised the price of baskets 18 percent, eliminated specials, cut the product line from 170 to 70, cut commissions and made massive layoffs.

I first heard of the Longaberger Co. through one of the many loggers I have worked with. A log buyer for the company was searching for hard maple logs. When I inquired about a log market I was told the transportation costs would be too high from our area. I next became aware of the company from a feature story in the April 8, 2001 Utica OD. It was a book review of a volume written by the founder David Longaberger titled “Longaberger: an American Success Story”. He died at the age of 64 in 1999 and wrote the book as a tribute to working American women.

An excerpt from the book reads; “if you want something done give it to a busy woman, America’s greatest untapped resource is its women.”

I confess I have not read the book as yet but am going to. No one has to tell me about what resource women are. I doubt that I would be much without my mother and my wife. Men depend upon a great many things to forge out a living but none as important or reliable as a good wife. When they say two heads are better than one a truer statement was never made.

I firmly believe that there has never been so much opportunity in this country as there is today. Too many are depending on government to do it all for them. It leaves a lot of room around them to work in if one really wants to succeed. A quote attributed to Ronald Reagan said that the ten most terrifying words in the English language are, “I am from the government and here to help you”. If you are or have been in any kind of business you have to know what he meant. With that kind of impediment in their way you have to admire even more entrepreneurs who have made it to where they are today.