Allendale once had a broom factory which sold brooms all over Northwest Missouri and Southwest Iowa. It was run by John Barnes, who began making brooms at the family farm northwest of Allendale in 1904 and continued almost 50 years. He moved the operation into town in 1952 and continued it until his death in 1953. After his death, Bea Ross taught himself how to make brooms with the factory’s equipment and continued the business for at least 16 more years, although he was only making a few dozen a year in 1969, at the time it was featured in the Times-Tribune.
The brooms were made from corn plants, which were harvested, cut, left to dry for two weeks, and then cured.
At its peak, the Broom Factory made between 200 and 250 brooms a week. It twice sold 2,500 brooms to Henry Field of Shenandoah. Another good customers was Place’s in Bethany, which would then turn around and resell them to their own network of stores.
Barnes was a fixture on the roads during those years, as he would regularly hitch a wagon and travel to Grant City, Allendale, Albany, and Mount Ayr to peddle his brooms.
But by the time Bea Ross took over, conditions were not ideal. At $1.50 an hour to hire a work crew, he figured that it was not profitable to make brooms at scale. When Barnes was at his peak, wages were $1 a day plus a meal, and youth were much easier to come by.
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