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...
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