“Win with Hathaway” bumper sticker
Remembering the C. F. Hathaway Company, Waterville Maine
National media celebrated the C. F. Hathaway Company as America’s oldest and last major shirt manufacturer when it closed its Waterville factory in 2002. Over twenty years later, the Maine State Museum received a donation of dozens of Hathaway shirts and the company archives so that the story of this legendary company could be preserved and shared.
Company Beginnings
Charles Foster Hathaway (1816-1893) learned the shirt making business while working in his uncle Benjamin Hathaway’s shop in the family’s hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1837, Hathaway traveled to Waterville, Maine where he met his future wife, Temperance Blackwell. The couple married in 1840 in Plymouth and established their home there. In 1844, Hathaway bought his first Maine property in Waterville from his father-in-law.
A deeply religious man, Hathaway purchased and ran the Christian newspaper, Waterville Union, from March to June 1847 before the endeavor failed. By 1849, the Hathaways had moved back to Massachusetts where Charles opened Hathaway, Tillson & Sears, a shirt manufactury and wholesale business in Watertown. In 1853, he sold his shares in the Watertown company, reportedly to “get away from sweatshop conditions.” He opened his shirt factory in Waterville while continuing to operate as Charles F. Hathaway & Co. on Milk Street in Boston until at least 1860.
C.F. Hathaway began his Waterville factory in the parlor of his home. He hired women to come there to sew shirts by hand. At first, they fabricated twelve shirts a week. Hathaway increased production by employing the “putting out system” where he delivered pre-cut shirt pieces to women at their homes for them to stitch and finish. To streamline production, Hathaway built an addition to his house to bring the women together to work. As he expanded his factory, some women boarded at his house during the week and traveled home for Sunday to attend church and visit their families. In 1853, he also began hiring salesmen to sell shirts wholesale to local menswear stores in the region.
Charles Foster Hathaway, c. 1880
Hathaway shirt factory women workers, 1937
By the Civil War, Hathaway had equipped his factory with sewing machines and prepared to provide thousands of shirts to the Union Army. He sometimes gave them away to soldiers passing through Waterville. Production during the Civil War demonstrated that men’s shirts could be profitably mass produced, and Hathaway’s business boomed. Following the war, Hathaway added a steam power system, and in 1872, he employed 100 women and six men.
During his post-war expansion, Hathaway hired Colonel Lawrence Leighton, who became the first salesman to earn a commission for his sales. Leighton aggressively sold Hathaway shirts and demanded more. He also marketed Hathaway’s new products: the American flag and ladies’ pantaloons and petticoats. By 1870, retailers sold Hathaway’s products across the country, from Rhode Island to Kansas and Oregon. Although Hathaway diversified his products as the company grew, he ultimately specialized in fine dress shirts and filled government contracts for soldiers’ shirts.
Hathaway factory, Waterville. Maine. c. 1967
Hathaway shirt factory women workers, 1962
Company Growth
After Hathaway died in 1893, Col. Leighton took over the business and proved a better businessman than Hathaway. Leighton increased the workforce and ran over 100 sewing machines. Charles Hathaway’s workers were mostly English-speaking American women from rural New England. Beginning in the 1890s, French Canadian families migrated in large numbers to Maine, including Waterville. Over the next few decades, Franco women formed the majority of the Hathaway workforce.
When Col. Leighton died in 1915, his son Edward took over the business. One of his first big orders was for US Army uniform shirts during World War I. In 1920, workers at the Hathaway factory produced over 8,000 shirts a week. Their reputation for quality earned the shirts a place in the best menswear shops in New England. Sales volume hit an all-time high in 1929 at 600,000 shirts a year, but by 1932, the Great Depression caused sales numbers to drop to 150,000 shirts a year.
Hitting an International Market
In 1932, Ellerton M. Jette purchased the C.F. Hathaway Company and transformed it into an internationally respected company. Seeking a new image for the company in 1950, Jette engaged David Ogilvy of the New York advertising firm, Ogilvy, Benson, and Mather. Ogilvy masterminded one of America’s most recognizable advertising campaigns ~ the Man with the Eyepatch. By placing an eyepatch on male models, Hathaway elevated its standard shirt into one brimming with allure and mystery. The model for this campaign was Baron George Wrangell (1903-1969), an aristocrat from a White Russian family who fled the country during the Bolshevik Revolution. The ad first appeared in a 1951 issue of the New Yorker. Within five years, sales of Hathaway shirts doubled. The campaign lasted until the 1980s with various celebrities sporting the eyepatch.
In the wake of this advertising success, Jette opened corporate offices on Madison Avenue in New York City, but the center of production remained in Waterville. Jette developed a corporate structure for the C. F. Hathaway Company by hiring a vice president of sales, vice president of manufacturing, advertising manager, accountants and a comptroller. The company’s designer, Ashley Logan, introduced several innovations to the shirt industry including a 1942 U.S. patent for collars. Hathaway soon had regional offices across the United States.
Back in Waterville, the Hathaway Company faced an efficiency problem. In 1956, the company staff worked out of 7 separate buildings scattered around the city. To consolidate company operations, the C. F. Hathaway Company purchased and repurposed the Lockwood Woolen Mill and had a grand celebratory opening in 1957. At the same time, Hathaway purchased bathing suit manufacturer, the Gantner and Mattern Company of San Francisco.
Hathaway advertisement New Yorker, 1952
C.F. Hathaway Dictionary of Shirts and Shirting’s, 1977
Hathaway guide to fine dress shirts and neckwear, c. 1987
Bob Costas American Sportscaster advertisement, 1988
Turbulent Waters
Like many American companies, C.F. Hathaway endured corporate takeovers in the late twentieth century. The Warnaco Group, Inc., which also owned Speedo swimsuits and Warner and Olga lingerie, purchased the Charles F. Hathaway Company in 1960. In 1986, Warnaco, in turn, experienced a hostile takeover by a California-based investment group. The new owners opened shirt factories in foreign countries with lower operating costs. Ten years later, the owners announced they were discontinuing the Hathaway brand and closing the factory in Waterville.
Workers at the Hathaway factory did all they could to keep the factory profitable. Consultants retrained the staff to work faster and more efficiently. They agreed to stagnant wages and worked overtime or short weeks depending on the needs of the company. Workers cut costs and boosted production from 25,000 to 36,000 shirts a week.
Hathaway ACWA (Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America) strike. April, 1937
Despite these efforts, Warnaco decided to close the factory in 1996. Fortunately, former Governor John R. McKernan rallied a group of local investors to purchase the C. F. Hathaway Company. This investment enabled the company to operate for five more years until they could sell it to Connecticut’s Windsong Alliance Group, whose leadership included former Hathaway executives, with a promise to keep the Waterville factory operating.
Windsong could only keep the company open for five more months and closed in 2002. Ultimately, the Hathaway brand fell to fashion that favored casual styles made by inexpensive foreign labor, as well as the parent company’s quest for higher profits.
The Maine State Museum is grateful for the opportunity to preserve the memory of the C.F. Hathaway Company and looks forward to working with Hathaway workers, collectors, and historians to deepen the understanding of this important national business.
