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Show Town Uses Resources To Build Industry For Slack Times BRULE. Wis. - The village of Brule is the home of a new Industry that appears to have a great future. N. H. Adams of Minong, who had specialized in making and distributing distrib-uting evergreen garlands and roping, rop-ing, decided that Brule, because of its location, would be an Ideal area for making Christmas wreaths. He took his idea to Brule and found a ready response. Each day last year, from October 29 until Christmas, 24 women assembled as-sembled in the community hall to fashion wreaths from balsam boughs under Adams' direction. Adams reported wreath making took on the aspect of an old-time quilting bee. It enlivened the social so-cial life of the community which ordinarily slows down after the bustling tourist season. It also gave the town a new source of income. Men, too, had a big part in the venture. They hauled In truckloads of boughs from their farms, receiving receiv-ing 2 cents a pound for them. une man, however, worked In the main hall with the women. He was genial Wilbert Ronn, who kept a warm fire going, carried boughs to the work tables and made the basic wires for the wreaths. The industry was not set up on an assembly line basis. Each woman began and completed an individual wreath. The average production was five wreaths an hour. About 500 were completed each day. The finished wreaths were hauled to Minong at the end of each day where they were packed for shipment ship-ment to the far flung markets. One of the markets was a large grocery chain which ordered 6,000 for decorating store windows during dur-ing the Yule season. The Brule Industry turned out over 12,000 wreaths last season. The workers selected hours most suitable for their horns life. The schedules, however, had to fit In with the available working space in the hall. Miss Lenore L. Landry, Douglas county home agent, described the enterprise as a "profitable small industry in-dustry ii; the heart of the evergreen country, making good use of one of the many resources of the county." Arkansas and Missouri communities communi-ties got into the wreath making act, too. Cones which were wired on most of the wreaths in clusters of three were imported from those states. |