During the War, President Julius Forstmann of Forstmann Woolen Co. told the Government that its specifications for uniforms were poor. He was asked to write new ones. They were accepted and after the War his company received the Distinguished Service Certificate for the excellence of its deliveries. It was the only U. S. textile company to receive such an award.
Mr. Forstmann has been thinking about quality again. As chairman of the National Quality Maintenance League he decided that business has hurt itself by subordinating quality to price appeal, using flamboyant sales promotion to cover shoddiness. He feels restoration of real value will be one of the first steps towards economic recovery. Last week his newly formed National Quality Maintenance League (which includes makers of woolens, silks, velvets, millinery, shoes, hosiery, handbags, underwear) was preparing a broad educational campaign to boost values, to calm down advertising writers. Many worsted & woolen makers feel that right now women do not want high quality so much as low price because of rapid style changes. They think "high styling" will have to halt before the buyers will pay for durability.
Mr. Forstmann is regarded as the fore most originator and maker of high-grade woolens in the U. S. He built the American Mills at Passaic, N. J., 30 years ago against the advice of experts who told him. that such woolens as his company made in Werden-on-Ruhr, Germany, could not be duplicated. He created Imperatrice and Beatrice (broadcloths) and most of the vogue-starting woolens including Marvella, Gerona, Charmeen and Chonga. He works alone in designing his fabrics and seeking colors from such sources as the plumage of birds in the Museum of Natural History. On his Kiel-built yacht Orion (333 ft., one of the world's largest) a radio keeps him in touch with his business.*
His hobbies are fishing and hunting on his Catskill estate. He has three sons, Reinhold, Curt and Julius. One is in the sales department, another in the manufacturing, a third handling finances. They were trained on sheep ranches, in mills abroad, in banks. In memory of a fourth son he established the Carl Forstmann Memorial Foundation in 1922. It lends and gives money to apt children of employes. It helps families in sickness, runs a night school for employes and their families. Despite this paternalism, and despite the fact that many Forstmann workers are more skilled, hence higher-paid, than the general run of mill workers, the Forstmann company has not escaped the labor troubles which continually harass the textile trades. In the big Passaic Textile strikes of 1926 Mr. Forstmann refused to allow his workers to join the American Federation of Labor, obtaining a permanent injunction against it. His firm even hinted that the factory would be moved unless its laborers behaved. Weaver Forstmann is proud of the fact that his forefathers signed the roster of the Weavers Guild of Flanders and later moved to Werden, Germany, where his great-great-grandfather and Johann Friederich Huffmann bought the Abbey of St. Ludger the Great because it had a fine carp pond which furnished water for the making of woolens.