Article: Recession Reflected in Closure of Arkansas Manufacturing Plants.

By David Mercer, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jan. 13--When Aalfs Manufacturing went to Mena in 1985, the company's bluejeans plant could only have been seen as a godsend.

Cowden Manufacturing Co., one of the city's largest employers, had just closed its shirt plant, erasing about 100 jobs, recalls Henry Sunderman, now the town's mayor. Mena was still reeling from the recession of the early 1980s, and unemployment hovered around 17 percent, he said.

Along came Aalfs, which moved into Cowden's vacant plant on U.S. 71. The Iowa-based company hired about 100 people to start, then added more to meet ...

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