Radio Script #1329

Little Talks on Common Things
November 28, 1982

Although several times on this program I have had something to say about Charles F. Hathaway, the Waterville shirtmaker, I have said too little about the company he founded, the still existing C. F. Hathaway Company. Today I want to correct that oversight.

My comments about Mr. Hathaway have been prompted largely by his eccentric behavior, and it was indeed unusual. He despised ornamentation and he would have no buttons on his coat sleeves. He would not allow his wife to wear any buttons on her skirts and blouses, but, in that time long before zippers, made her use
hooks and eyes.

He was a religious fanatic. Not only was he a theological fundamentalist, which was not at all rare 150 years ago, but he insisted on his own particular brand of fundamentalism, and was constantly in dispute with the pastors of the Baptist Church, of which he was a member. At his shirt factory he opened each day with a half-hour prayer meeting. He had such a quarrel with his pastor, Henry Burrage, who later become Maine’s first official historian, that he hired a downtown hall where he held his own services. The church then excluded him from membership, but he later became reconciled, and he and his wife attended that church until their deaths.

Despite his oddities Hathaway rendered valuable service to both church and community. He was Superintendent of the Sunday School, and he conducted a Sunday School on the Plains for the children of French Protestant families. He will long be remembered as the founder of a company whose shirts are now sold all over the nation. Today we devote attention to that company rather than to its founder.

When Mr. Hathaway first built his factory a few rods off Appleton Street, it was known as the laundry. Why? Because it was where the shirts were ironed and prepared for sale. At first the shirts were made in homes according to patterns provided by Hathaway, then taken to the factory for ironing and packing. Although they were dress shirts, they were not the men’s shirts that we know today. Only men over 70 years of age today remember them – those stiff-bosomed, heavily starched shirts, in the center of which was worn a jeweled stud. They took attached collars that became soiled much faster than the shirts. It was a schoolboy, Albert Dunbar, whom Hathaway hired to take the shirt material to the homes and bring the shirts to the factory, for 25 cents a week. In 1879 Hathaway employed as a salesman the man who many years later would succeed him as head of the company, Col. Clarence Leighton. At first that man’s sales territory was limited to Maine and Massachusetts. He had an agreement with Hathaway that was heavily in his boss’ favor. Hathaway demanded that Leighton be responsible for collecting payment for all the shirts he sold.

Yet Hathaway was not a good business man. Though he distrusted everybody, and claimed he was constantly being cheated, he had no consistent business policies. Distrusting banks, he borrowed from individuals. He despised written contracts and preferred verbal agreements,which are known to be erratic. When he died, one debt was to Col. Leighton, from whom he had borrowed $5,000. His death in 1893 disclosed that his will bequeathed the majority of shares in the company to Waterville’s First Baptist Church. Col. Leighton had no difficulty buying those shares and obtaining control of the company.

In 1882 Hathaway had taken on Frank Smith as an office boy, and soon promoted him to office manager. Col. Leighton found Smith so valuable that he remained with the company in increasingly responsible positions. By 1900 the company had 165 employees and an annual payroll of $60,000. In 1898 Leighton secured a contract with the federal government to make flags used by the military in the Spanish War. One of those flags is now displayed at Waterville’s Redington Museum.

Ten years later in 1908 the company was still a tightly held corporation with only three shareholders: Col. Leighton, his son Edward K., and Frank Smith. After the colonel died in 1915 Edward became head of the company,with all stock owned by himself, his mother and Frank Smith.

By 1920 the company was making 700 dozen shirts a week and the annual payroll was $80,000. By that time the stiff-bosomed shirt had lost its popularity, and in another ten years had almost entirely disappeared. Before the First World War all dress shirts had been white, and work shirts black. After the War colored shirts came into demand, but they still had separately attached collars. It then took only a short time to bring shirts with the collars attached.

Comfort became linked with quality in Hathaway shirts. Edward Leighton and his fellow stockholders made their first agreement with Ellerton Jette in 1931. Mr. Jette, made President of the Company, agreed to meet all expenses for a Hathaway sales office in New York City. Two years later Mr. Jette bought nearly all of the Hathaway stock, leaving Leighton and Smith each holding a single share. Jette was joined in the venture by Charles McCarthy, who became vice-president.

It was Ellerton Jette who gave the Hathaway shirt national and even international fame. He traveled allover the world, seeking high quality and unusual materials. The fabrics he used for Hathaway shirts included Indian Madras and Batique, the best Indian and Chinese silks, French prints, Scotch ginghams, and the finest broadcloth.

In 1937 when the Roosevelt New Deal gave strong support to Union Labor, Hathaway encountered its first strike. While causing much local agitation and some modest violence, it did not close the factory. Many employees continued to work, and the State Police gave them protection into and out of the building. After a few days more than 200 of the strikers had returned. By overwhelming vote the workers chose not to affiliate with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, but set up their own union, which the management immediately recognized. Mr. Jette increased wages by five percent and established for the first time at Hathaway a 40-hour week.

Later the local union did make national affiliation, and Hathaway became a nationally recognized union factory with happy employee relations. One of Mr. Jette’s most notable achievements was the Hathaway symbol, the man with the eyepatch. The idea was first suggested by the company’s advertising agent, Ogilvie in New York. But it was only when Mr. and Mrs. Jette, on an ocean liner to Europe, made the acquaintance of Lewis Douglas, U. S. Ambassador to England, that the idea came to fruition. Mr. Douglas wore an eyepatch that enhanced his dignified appearance.

Hathaway’s first man with the eyepatch was Baron George Wrangell of the White Russian nobility, who had fled Russia when the Bolsheviks took over from the deposed Czar. First appearing in an ad in the New Yorker, the eyepatch was an instant success. Although during its first eight years the eyepatch ads cost Hathaway an average of $62,000 a year, sales increased from five to thirteen million.

Before 1945 most Hathaway shirts had been sold in men’s specialty stores under the store’s private label. A drive was then started to use a combined label, showing both the store and the manufacturer. Later Hathaway shirts became so well known that stores were eager to sell them under the Hathaway label alone. From the New Yorker, ads showing the man with the eyepatch were extended into magazines of larger circulation, such as Life and Esquire.

In 1950 the company introduced Lady Hathaway shirts, which became a thriving part of the business. As the original plant off Appleton Street,even with several extensions, became overcrowded, the company took over parts of other buildings in Waterville. Then in 1956 it left them all, including the original factory, and consolidated all its Waterville operations in the large No. 2 mill of the Lockwood Cotton factory, which had been abandoned when that company ceased operations a few years earlier.

By 1957 Hathaway was employing 1,000 workers in Waterville and 500 in Lowell, Mass. The annual payroll had risen to $2,500,000. The minimum wage had reached a dollar an hour. In 1956 Hathaway made a merger with Wellington of Canada, and Leonard Saulter, sales manager in the Southeastern United States, was made vicepresident of Wellington-Hathaway Limited, operating in Canada. In the same year Hathaway bought Gardner and Mather of San Francisco, makers of bathing suits. Financial difficulties ensued, causing Hathaway to give up the San Francisco plant. Then recovery was rapid.

In 1960 Samuel Holtzmann, a Philadelphia industrialist, and a group of associates, bought 60% of Mr. Jette’s stock, and soon sold Hathaway to Warner Brothers, makers of foundation garments. Mr. Jette completely retired from the company in 1965. In the same Year a Hathaway plant was opened in Dover-Foxcroft, and the next year saw the opening of another in Calais. The company then opened its first foreign office in London and Leonard Saulter became the Hathaway president.

By 1970 Hathaway had 1,400 employees and an annual payroll of three million dollars. In 1977 total sales exceeded $38,000,000. Though much more could be told about the Hathaway company, especially about its very recent years, our time is up, and we must say goodbye until next week.

Year:1982