Discussions

was a man I never new, that being said it is probably why he was a larger than life hero for me.  
 
Born in Dubuque, Iowa, he left home at fourteen to make a career for himself, after a few shrewd business deals he leased land and got into the potato growing business. He was successful at producing potatoes, but his sales were very poor. What he could not store he placed in storage.  
 
He also built storage warehouses for his neighbours whom he rented to. With tons of potatoes in storage he travelled to the California coast and signed a deal to supply French fries to an up start fast food company called MacDonald’s. He returned to Pocatello with the contract and asked the local Bank to lend him enough money to start a Potato processing plant, which they did.  
 
The story I heard goes on to say he was only nineteen when he did this. He was so successful that he and his neighbours had to increase their production and so they started to use more and more fertilizer, so much so that he decided to buy a used fertilizer plant from New York, dismantling it, shipped it across country, and rebuilt it in Pocatello.  
 
This was the start of his empire, he needed chemicals for his fertilizer so he purchased a mine, he needed pit props for his mine so he bought a forest, when he found he had an enormous supply of scrap potatoes and peelings he started stockyards to recycle them.  
 
He is reported as saying “you do not have to have brains when you have the money to hire them.”  
 
In the late 1950’s he started a potato operation around Carberry with a processing plant on the edge of town. He started a feedlot with thousands of head of cattle on the opposite end of town managed by Mr. and Mrs Hoff: their son Steve Hoff did the animal husbandry.  
 
In 1963 he opened up his Chemical Plant outside of Brandon, My clock card number was 1036: I was the 36th employee at his plant. I was employed during the plant start-up.  
 
Mr. Simplot has supported thousands of families in Manitoba over the last forty years, but we always considered his $100 offer to quit smoking with in a year as a productivity scheme, our thinking was that if you were not smoking you would be out in the plant working, he of course was a health nut and hated all tobacco products and their uses.  
 
Mr. Simplot ran his plant in Idaho as a family operation, but in Brandon the plant was run by friction between management and employees. He was the head of a private company, which made it difficult to negotiate union contracts because the company profits were never published: his representatives always claimed they were loosing money. All in all, Mr. Simplot has been good for Brandon, and he was good to me, goodbye Mr. Simplot, we will remember you.  
 
I would like to write the history of the start of the United Steel Workers Union at Simplot, but most of the participants who unionized this company are now deceased. If anyone has information on this topic I would like to contact you.