The History of Racine Hosiery Company

Racine is constantly drawing to it new industrial and commercial enterprises. Its development along manufacturing lines within the past few years has been notably rapid and among the concerns which have been started in the city in less than a half decade is that operating under the name of the Racine Hosiery Company, with W. R. Anderson as president, Alexander R. Anderson as manager and treasurer and J. H. Brinsley, secretary. The success of this undertaking was insured from the beginning, for its officers are men of long and broad practical experience in connection with every phase of the knitting business. W. R. Anderson has had forty years' experience as a dyer and is now the highest salaried man in that line of work in the country, having charge of the finishing and dyeing department of the Chicago-Kenosha Hosiery Company. His son, Alexander R. Anderson, brought to his present duties the lessons learned from twenty years' training in all departments of the mill, including the office work, and, moreover, he based his advance in business upon a thorough technical training in chemistry received in the Northwestern University. The secretary of the company has had fifteen years' experience in the knitting end of the business, and thus the combined ability of the officers is adequate to every phase of the business and every situation that may arise.

The plant is located at Fifteenth and Clark streets and has eight thousand square feet of floor space. Its machinery was set in operation on the 3rd of September, 1912, the company having a paid-up capital of fifteen hundred dollars. The capacity of the plant was forty-two thousand pairs of stockings annually, the output of three knitting machines and three operatives, and from that beginning the business has increased until the machines now number twenty-nine, with a production of eight hundred and twenty thousand pairs of stockings annually, while thirty-five employees are on the pay rolls of the company. The production of this mill consists of pure thread silk and artificial silk and the product is finding a ready market from coast to coast. All of the hosiery is made with the latest and most up-to-date improvements known to the trade of knitting, such as French welt top, reinforced transfer, expanded heel, narrowed ankle, double sole and advanced toe. The incorporation of these features allows the manufacturers to give the broad guarantee which is sent out with every pair of stockings-satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. The methods of manufacture and the business policy of the house insure a continuance and promise a development of the trade, and Racine has reason to congratulate herself upon this accession to her manufacturing circles.

Source: Racine, Belle City of the lakes, and Racine County, Wisconsin : a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement; Chicago: S. J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1916, 1216 pgs.