Bat'a's Belcamp

In 1904 a young Czech named Thomas Bat'a (rhymes with "hotcha") left his small shoe factory in Zlin to study mass production methods in the U. S. He applied what he learned so well that by the World War his Zlin factory was turning out 6,000 pairs a day. Then Austria took over the plant and Shoemaker Bat'a returned to the U. S., set up a small factory in Lynn. When Czecho-Slovakia was born in 1918, he returned to Zlin to build Bat'a Shoe Co. into one of the world's largest (capacity: 250,000 pairs a day). Seven years ago Thomas Bat'a was killed in his private airplane, but last week his firm came again to the U. S.--it asked bids on an elaborate plant at Belcamp near Baltimore to employ 1,000 shoemakers within a year.

Boss of Bat'a now is Thomas' half-brother Jan, a vigorous anti-Nazi who was wisely sojourning in Rumania when Germany grabbed Czecho-Slovakia, but has since returned to Zlin. His biggest current problem is the 25% countervailing duty imposed by the U. S. on German-made goods, which completely kills Czech shoe imports (3,250,000 pairs last year). The Belcamp plant is Bat'a's attempt to hold this fat U. S. market.

Representing the Bat'a family in the U. S. is 24-year-old Thomas Bat'a Jr. At his father's funeral, all Bat'a employes vowed "in the presence of our dead chief to uphold his ideals: service to customers through cheap shoe production and service to fellow workers through high wages." Thomas Jr., then aged 18, laid on the bier a bunch of white roses inscribed: "I promise. Tommy."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.