Jefferson County Online A part of the IAGenWeb and USGenWeb Projects Who's Who in Jefferson County, 1931 Robert Bruce Louden, Sr.

"The Fairfield Daily Ledger"
Wednesday, July 8, 1931
Front Page

Who's Who In Jefferson County
By Herbert F. McDougal

Robert Bruce LOUDEN, Sr.

It took fate a long time to convince R. B. Louden that he was destined to be the president of an industry that was to make Fairfield's name known the world over. Mr. Louden thought he was school teacher material at first. Then he tried the law. He had his innings also as a real estate operator.

Then one day, out near Ness City, Kansas, a hot wind sprang up at a picnic he was attending, down on the river. It got hotter and hotter. The picnicers fled to the hills for comfort, and failed to find it. Before that wind died down, everything in the way of vegetation was cooked--oven to the rag weeds. It put a crimp in the real estate business--and Mr. Louden owned some dozen or more quarter-sections of land. Ness City's business element in those days was made up of bright young men there to make their fortune. They held a council of war, and decided that the boom had burst with a loud noise. Some of them went to California. A boom was on there. But it blew up more disastriously (sic) than the Kansas boom. Mr Louden went back to Kansas to see what he could salvage in the way of collectonsi (sic). There was no salvage. He went to Kansas City to try trading off some of his Kansas acres. There were plenty of trades, but no cash. A lot of the land he just abandoned to the tax collector.

It was 1889 when he finally got back to Fairfield. His brother William was deep in his hay tool business and needed help. He urged R. B. to go in with him. R. B. consented to help out for a little while. He has been helping out ever since and has seen that business grow and develope (sic) from a little shop back of the William Louden home at 501 West Washington street, to the present large factory which reaches out to every quarter of the world with its products, and in its peak year did a business of almost three million dollars.

The Louden office and factory in 1889 was a 20 by 30 foot frame building, two stories high with a lean-to. One gained the second story by climbing a ladder. As the business grew, sheds were erected for various purposes. The business was incorporated February 22, 1892. By that time the brothers, who had both been doing just whatever there was to do, divided the work between them. R. B. took the business end and became the president. He has seen the business prosper amazingly, and in 1921 he saw it meet the deflation period and suffer in the sickening slump that almost is forgotten now in the concern over the present depression. But it weathered the storm and came out with colors flying.

Mr. Louden has been an indefatigable executive. He keeps his fingers constantly on the pulse of the business. He travels numberless miles that he may keep accurately informed of conditions in the business and that affect it. He is widely known in industrial circles.

Unit by unit he has seen the plant build up, branches added, an army of traveling men organized. There are branches in St. Paul, in Toledo, in Albany, N. Y. When fully recruited, the army of travelers numbers sixty.

R. B. Louden was born down on Cedar Creek, the old family farm now known as Loudendale. He went to country school, and when parsons college was established, was the first student to pay his tuition. But one of the professors, possessor of a caustic tongue, grew sarcastic over his oratory on Friday afternoons. It didn't happen once, but a good many times. And it finally got on R. B.'s nerves. the result was that he quit college. And he didn't get the licking that he expected from his father. More than a half century later--in 1930--Parsons college made amends by conferring upon Mr. Louden the degree of Bachelor of Science in Business Administration as of the class of 1880 the one in which he would have graduated had he finished, thus giving recognition to his achievements in the realm of business.

A little while after his first experience as a college student he went to Kirksville, Missouri, to the state normal school, and was a close friend there of General John J. Pershing. One of the mementoes of those school days is a photograph of Pershing, himself and two others in a group. When he finished Kirksville in 1881, through the influence of a schoolmate, he went to Kinsley, Kansas, to teach school. Formerly he had taught at the Bradshaw school in Cedar township while he was pursuing his studies in Kirksville. After he had taught in Kinsley, he came back and taught a year at Abingdon.

Then his attention turned to law and he read law in the office of Henry N. West, and afterwards with James B. McCoy. He read twenty-five or more musty legal tomes, and went to Davenport, where the supreme court was in session, and took a gruelling oral examination from the justices and any of the visiting attorneys who wanted to ask any questions.

He struck out for Kansas in 1886 to make his fame and fortune in Ness City, and had built up considerable practice when that hot wind came. He tried California until the boom burst there. It was then he came by way of Kansas City to his connection with the Louden Machinery company.

When he was in Kirksville he met Miss Lizzie Carson of Livingston, Iowa, a classmate. They were married October 26, 1892. They have one daughter, Roberta.

Mr. Louden was active in the development of the Iowa Malleable Iron company. In its early history he served as managing director, tiding it over a period of turbulent growth.

He served thirteen years as a member of the Fairfield school board, a greater part of the time as president. He was progressive in his ideas of education. During his administration the kindergarten department was established, and the Lincoln and Washington grade and the High school buildings were erected.

Mr. Louden always has been proud of the fact that he is a Jeffersonian democrat, a believer in equal rights to all and special privileges to none--and never a believer in a high productive tariff, despite the fact that industrial leaders usually tend that way. He has been a delegate to three national conventions--Baltimore, to help nominate Woodrow Wilson; San Francisco, where James M. Cox was the nominee; Houston, where Al Smith was chosen.

He is a Shriner and a Rotarian--and always a "paying member" of any organization to which he belongs.

He is an ardent advocate of friendship with England, and counts an extensive tour of that country as one of the valuable experiences of his life. Here is a bit of his philosophy of living, "Cultivate young people and maintain an active interest in their affairs. Avoid self-righteousness. Busy yourself in the affairs of your own community."