The employers' ladder — dated rungs

1910 – 2026, as the record dates them

How to read this entry: No continuous employment series for Mishawaka industry exists in the record reached; what exists is rungs — dated figures from named carriers, each printed with its year and source, with the holes left visible between them. The two flagships' rungs stand in their own files and are cross-referenced, not re-dug: Ball Band's wartime peak of 9,446 employees in 1943 (and the "nearly 10,000" the marker tradition carries) stands in the Ball Band file, and AM General's present complex, about 400 UAW Local 5 members on the union's 2025 contract record, stands in the AM General file.

The rungs: 1910 — Dodge Manufacturing, more than 1,200 persons, Mishawaka's largest employer (the Mix biography, from the period record). 1926 — the American Foundry Equipment works, afterward Wheelabrator, arrives with a total workforce of less than 100, office, engineering, and production together (the company's magazine). 1970s — Wheelabrator's Mishawaka plant at 1,500 employees (the Auburn case study). 2006 — the old Dodge foundry, in its RMG afterlife, closing with an estimated 180 workers (the foundry trade press): the 1878 works' last dated rung, against its own house's 1,200 of 1910, is the city's industrial century in two numbers. Between and around the rungs: Dodge's Second World War employment, Ball Band's peacetime levels decade by decade, and Wheelabrator's year-by-year course are not carried in the record reached, and are named as gaps rather than interpolated — the settling sources are the South Bend Tribune's business pages across the century and the Indiana manufacturers' directories, which print employment by firm in their later editions.

Sources:

1. The entries of this section, at their own loci — the Mix biography for the 1910 Dodge rung; The Wheelabrator Way (1976) for the 1926 rung; Uzumeri & Black (Auburn, 1995) for the 1970s rung; Foundry Management & Technology (2 July 2006) for the 2006 rung; the Ball Band and AM General files of this build for the cross-referenced rungs.