On those weekends, Robert watched and learned as broom makers weighed out 12 ounces of the long fibers, then bundled them with tin-coated wire and spun them into shape with a pedal machine.
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He learned every job in the factory from a foreman who kept his secret, including how to make brooms from the crop that his father bought on those Sunday drives.Ĭredit: Brent MannRobert Libman used to sneak into his father's factory to work when he was a teen. When he was 14, Robert began working in the Libman broom plant on weekends without the elder Libman's knowledge. "My father didn't want me in the company because it was so hard."īut his father's work ethic inspired Robert so much that he went against his father's wishes for him. He considered it dirty, manual labor, Robert remembers. "I saw how my dad negotiated, how he talked and that had a big impact on my life," Robert says, now 71, recalling those Sundays with his father and the lessons he learned along the way.ĭespite taking Robert with him on those drives, his father had no intention of letting his youngest son join the family business.
With his son sitting next to him, Clarence Libman would make deals with farmers who grew broomcorn, a hardy sorghum plant with long, tough fibers that the Libman family had built its broom business on since 1896. Libman: Generations Working to Achieve the American Dreamįor much of his childhood in the late 1940s and early '50s, Robert Libman would keep his father company as he drove the back roads of central Illinois.
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