West Branch Times, West Branch, Iowa, Thursday, May 20, 1926
Transcribed by Sharon Elijah, November 3, 2018

RISE OF DWIGHT OXLEY

     The following story of a former Springdale boy reads like one of the Alger tales, but it is true and just another proof that Cedar county, and especially the west end of it, produces boys and girls who “get somewhere.” Oldtimers, meet your friend, Dwight Oxley, and read what he has done:

     When Dwight K. Oxley, now secretary and general manager of the Southwest Cracker Company, was nine years old he worked one summer on a farm. In payment for sixteen hours of work a day, he received his room and board and at the end of the summer was given a suit of clothes and a pair of shoes for the school year.

     That summer marked the beginning of a new epoch in the life of young Oxley. From that time on, no one ever bought him a suit of clothes. Thrown on his resources, he supported himself at an age when most boys are asking their fathers for weekly spending money.

     Dwight Oxley was born forty years ago in the village of Springdale, Ia., a hamlet of half a dozen houses. His father operated a dray line between Springdale and West Liberty, then miles away, the nearest railroad point. Springdale was not then, and is not now, on the railroad. The elder Oxley died when Dwight was six years old, leaving a large family.

     After completing high school, college was out of the question, considering the financial condition of the Oxley family, so Dwight went to work in a Davenport broom factory, dipping brooms and doing other roustabout work. His pay was $1.25 a day, and on this he supported himself and sent some money occasionally to his mother and younger brothers and sisters.

     An older brother, in the meantime, had preceded Dwight to Davenport, and was a timekeeper for the American Can Company. After Dwight had worked for two weeks in the broom factory, his brother secured him a job at the can factory at an increased wage. This time he was paid the honorarium of $1.50 a day a most munificent sum.

     To an accident occurrence Mr. Oxley attributes a change in his occupation which made possible an advance from shop work to something better. After he had been working in the can factory as a laborer for about two years, an inventory was being taken, and additional help was needed. The office manager, looking thru the plant for assistance, found that Oxley had had a high school education and knew how to add, subtract and multiply. So the youth was called in for two days’ work in the office. Then he returned to his shop, but a week later was called back by the office manager.

     “How’d you like to work in the office?” he asked the boy.

     “That’s what I’ve been hanging around her for,” replied Oxley. “Sure I’d like it.”

     So he went in to the timekeeper’s office for his first white-collar job. His pay, however, was hardly commensurate with the added importance of his work. He received, at the start, $35 a month. Nevertheless, he worked there for a year, and began learning things about how an office is run.

     Oxley’s next job was with a street paving company as a bookkeeper and stock clerk, and then he was offered work as assistant cashier of an Armour Company branch at Dubuque. This was in 1907.

     Then came the panic of 1908, and again an accident changed the course of the young man’s career. The hard times caused by a large number of the branch employees to be laid off, and among them was Oxley. He was without work for several months, and came close to the point of destitution.

     During the latter part of 1908 the Iten Biscuit Company opened a plant in Omaha. Oxley, out of a job, was given a position as bookkeeper and assistant cashier. At once the biscuit and cracker business appealed, and he rapidly made progress in the plant, in three years he was superintendent.

     Back in 1914 in Wichita the West Biscuit Company was tottering to a fall. Its condition was desperate, and up in Omaha Dwight Oxley heard about it. So one day he hopped on a train and came to Wichita and offered to take charge of the plant and put it on a paying basis. The company was reorganized and took the name of the Southern Cracker Company and since Mr. Oxley has had charge it has increased its business annually from around $200,000 to between $750,000 and $1,000,000.

     Mr. Oxley is a member of the Rotary, Wichita and Wichita Country clubs, also of the Masonic Lodge, Consistory and the Shrine.