The 1951 Flood
Click here for the story of the 1951 KC flood.
1951 memo prepared by a Kansas City Soap Plant employee shortly after the flood...
Individual letters to:
Ivorydale - Mr. F. Feid
Port Ivory - Mr. J.W. Bassett
St. Bernard - Mr. M.R. Schrader July 20, 1951
Chicago - Mr. L. E. Strub
Baltimore - Mr. G. L. Andrews
Portsmouth - Mr. T. Skeppstrom Dallas - Mr. P. Fulkerson
Quincy - Mr. R. R. Thompson St. Louis - Mr. A. C. Haas
Macon - Mr. F. B. Cheuvront Long Beach - Mr. P.A. Nichol
Mr. G. L. Andrews
Baltimore Factory
We will have in your hands within the next few days a supplement to Moonbeams which will give the highlights of the flood at the Kansas City Factory. This supplement will contain pictures of the flood together with some of the interesting stories which have developed.
In addition to the information in the Moonbeams supplement, we know you will be interested in what the Company is doing to take care of our Kansas City employees. This information should be of interest to the members of your Union Executive Committee, and we suggest that you pass it along to them at some opportune time, not as an advertisement of our generosity but as an indication of what the Company is doing in an emergency for its employees.
1. The Company made available at Kansas City a sum of money to be used for direct emergency relief of any employees in the flood area. This money is designed to help employees who had no cash available and who had immediate obligations to meet.
2. Also a substantial sum of money was made available for two purposes: to expand our regular relief loan fund to provide money for employees to use in meeting current living expenses or other obligations not of a direct emergency nature, and, two - to be used as direct gifts to the employees to replace essential furnishings in their homes lost in the flood. By essential furnishings we mean such things as stoves, refrigerators, beds, bedding, chairs, tables, and the like.
3. Employees will be provided with as much work as possible in cleaning up the plant and getting to back in operation. The objective is to distribute the available work uniformly during the period when the factory is being cleaned up in preparation for full operation. After the plant is in operation, it is hoped that overtime work will keep loss of earnings for the year at a minimum.
4. Some of the men and women who volunteer to do so and who cannot be used at the factory in cleanup will go into the flooded homes of our employees to assist the occupants in cleaning out the flood damage in those homes. The Company will pay for this time.
5. The Company is planning to offer to reimburse Kansas City people who have taken in the families of our employees for any extra cost they have been put to during the time our employees are living with them.
6. Pensioners are considered the same as employees and all of the above applies to them except, of course, the opportunity to work.
P.A. Brown
cc: Mr. H.D. VanBuren
Mr. S.P. McCalmont
Mr. P.K. Honey
Rehabilitation Estimates...
