WHERE THE CATTLEnARE FAT . . .nby Jane GreernThe good news fornLinton, North Dakota,nis not that things have improvednbut that someone withnclout has finally noticed howngood things have always been.nMost of Linton’s residentsnwere born there, 65 milesnsoutheast of Bismarck. Lots ofnpeople have left over thenyears, and no one ever movesnto Linton except by marriagen— that is, until two years agonwhen Hal Rosenbluth discoverednthe town. The UppernMidwest work ethic and thencomputer age have combined to put Linton back on thenmap.nRosenbluth is the thirty-seven-year-old CEO of RosenbluthnTravel, a Philadelphia-based agency variously cited asnbeing either the third- or fourth-largest in the United States.nIt was started as a steamship ticket office by Rosenbluth’sngrandfather in 1892, and that year had billings of $20nmillion. Rosenbluth went to work for the company in 1974,nand after a year, bored with the vice presidency, he went tonwork as one of the company’s reservation agents, where henshaped most of his ideas on management. Ninety-eightnyears after its founding, the agency’s yearly billings top $1.1nbillion. Excellence expert Tom Peters gave the agency hisn”Service Company of the Year” award in 1988.nRosenbluth Travel has offices in 160 cities, includingnLondon and Singapore. The smallest had been Ponca City,nOklahoma, population 26,000—before Linton, whosenpopulation during the 1980’s fell sharply from its 1980nfigure of 1,561.nAt first, Rosenbluth was just trying to help the droughtstrickennMidwestern farmers he kept reading about duringnthe summer of 1988. The U.S. Agriculture Departmentnsteered Rosenbluth’s offer of help toward North Dakota,nwhere state officials told him Emmons County was thenworst-hit. The philanthropist decided to bring some temporarynpart-time jobs to Linton, and hired 40 Lintonites to donelectronic data processing at five dollars an hour. To somenfarm wives, a job with Rosenbluth’s agency was the happynalternative to losing the farm or looking for and commutingnto a job an hour away in Bismarck.nThen the Linton Industrial Development Corporationn— which hadn’t previously had a lot of lucky breaks —ndecided to pull out all the stops in persuading Rosenbluth tonstay. The LIDC paid the first two months’ rent on a formernfarm implement building for the temporary workers, andnstarted a formal letter-writing campaign to Rosenbluth’snPhiladelphia office.nThe courtship worked. The part-time temporary jobsnbecame full-time, with benefits. A phone company fiber-noptics line was installed. Rosenbluth Travel started bringingnplanefuls of executives to Linton for training and planningnmeetings, and the excess spilling over into motel rooms innWishek, population 1,300, 33 miles from Linton. AndnRosenbluth is building a 20-bedroom chateau on 308 acresnoverlooking the Missouri River, 13 miles west of Linton.nThe chateau will be used as an executive retreat, conferencencenter, and training center for Rosenbluth employees andnclients. Canoeing, fishing, hunting, trail rides, and a “workingnmini-farm” will help high-pressure city execs ease theirnstress. The chateau staff will be made up of locals, and mostnof the building materials and furnishings bought locally.nIt may sound like Hal Rosenbluth wears a halo, but he’snthe first to admit that Linton has been good for him, too. “Anmajor plus is the people — their work ethic, their education,ntheir sincerity, their willingness,” he told the BismarcknTribune. “These are things we have had within ourncompany for years, but they’re drying up in the big cities.nOther companies are constantly complaining, ‘We can’t findngood people.’ They’re looking in the wrong place, that’snall.”nPerhaps the only bad news to come out of the Rosenbluthndeal was that this past April he asked Linton kids to find annew town motto. “Where the cattle are fat and the fish arenfloppin'” just didn’t seem to fit the image of a hotbed ofneconomic development. Linton Chamber of Commercenpresident Vince Watkins wanted something “a little morensophisticated, but still with a hint of the rural” (a hint of thenrural being what one gets when one stands downwind of thenaforementioned cattle). Even radio commentator Paul Harveyngot into the act, providing his audience with statisticsnabout this “real nice town” in, of all places, “SouthnDakota.” Watkins got calls from disc jockeys and talk shownhosts in Las Vegas, Honolulu, and Boston, all of themnwanting to poke fun at Linton, but he did his best to use it tonthe town’s advantage.nThe new motto, culled from dozens of entries: “Preservingnthe past and working for the future.” Zzzzzzzzzz. Inmuch prefer the one mailed in from Kansas by a man whonheard that Linton has six places of worship and five wateringnholes:n”Fill the churches.nEmpty the bars.nLinton, North Dakota,nWill shine like the stars.”nJane Greer lives in Bismarck, North Dakota.nnChroniclesnAdvertise In. . .nA MAGAZINE OF AMERICA N_—C-U’L T U R EnEach month Chronicles offers a sophisticated, well- v^neducated audience unavailable anywhere else. Ournexclusive advertising space is uncluttered andnsurrounded by award-winning graphics and design.nFor your free irvformation packet please contact LeannnDobbs or Cathy Corson at 815/964-5054.nnnDECEMBER 1990/23n