By — Connie Kargbo Connie Kargbo By — Christopher Booker Christopher Booker By — Corinne Segal Corinne Segal Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/rural-pennsylvania-hat-company-keeping-made-america-alive Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter The oldest hat factory in the U.S. tells a larger story about manufacturing Economy Aug 27, 2016 4:09 PM EDT In the heart of Amish country, hat makers are maintaining a century-old business. The Bollman Hat Company, located in the small town of Adamstown, Pennslyvania, is America’s oldest hat maker, having survived since 1868. At the time, the machines used to produce the hats were powered by water. Today, electricity has replaced water as the machines’ main power source, but much of the process to produce the hats has remained the same. Blocking of the Kangol Ventair 504 cap during production. Photo By PBS NewsHour According to the U.S. Labor Department, nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000 and 2010. But some companies, including the Bollman Hat Company, are making an effort to bring small numbers of jobs back to the country. In 2001, the company secured the rights to Kangol, the British hat brand that became iconic as early rap luminaries like Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash and LL Cool J sported it. For years, the hats were manufactured in China — but this year, Bollman bought and shipped knitting machines from China to Adamstown, where the company began producing Kangol headwear at its factory. Final inspection of a wool felt Bailey western hat, part of Bollman’s operation dating back to the 1860s. Photo By PBS NewsHour Don Rongione, CEO of the Bollman Hat Company, said that bringing production to the U.S. saves the company money by cutting out some of the costs to transport the product. “We don’t have to transport the product and over time, as labor rates continue to rise, in other parts of the world at a faster rate than they are here in America, it would actually become cost-competitive to do it here,” he said. Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said that these developments in manufacturing mark only an incremental improvement to the U.S. economy. “Manufacturing is growing a little bit, but we lost over a third of our manufacturing jobs in the 2000s. It was decimated. And we’re running essentially an $800 billion trade deficit,” he said. The embroidery of the Kangol Ventair 504 cap after it has been knitted, shaped, and sewn. Photo By PBS NewsHour For more on the growth in U.S. manufacturing jobs, watch the PBS NewsHour tonight. By — Connie Kargbo Connie Kargbo Connie Kargbo has been working in the media field since 2007 producing content for television, radio, and the web. As a field producer at PBS NewsHour Weekend, she is involved in all aspects of the news production process from pitching story ideas to organizing field shoots to scripting feature pieces. Before joining the weekend edition of PBS Newshour, Connie was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand where she trained Thai English teachers. By — Christopher Booker Christopher Booker Christopher Booker is a correspondent and producer for PBS NewsHour Weekend covering music, culture, our changing economy and news of the cool and weird. He also teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, following his work with Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism in Chicago and Doha, Qatar. By — Corinne Segal Corinne Segal Corinne is the Senior Multimedia Web Editor for NewsHour Weekend. She serves on the advisory board for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. @cesegal
In the heart of Amish country, hat makers are maintaining a century-old business. The Bollman Hat Company, located in the small town of Adamstown, Pennslyvania, is America’s oldest hat maker, having survived since 1868. At the time, the machines used to produce the hats were powered by water. Today, electricity has replaced water as the machines’ main power source, but much of the process to produce the hats has remained the same. Blocking of the Kangol Ventair 504 cap during production. Photo By PBS NewsHour According to the U.S. Labor Department, nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000 and 2010. But some companies, including the Bollman Hat Company, are making an effort to bring small numbers of jobs back to the country. In 2001, the company secured the rights to Kangol, the British hat brand that became iconic as early rap luminaries like Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash and LL Cool J sported it. For years, the hats were manufactured in China — but this year, Bollman bought and shipped knitting machines from China to Adamstown, where the company began producing Kangol headwear at its factory. Final inspection of a wool felt Bailey western hat, part of Bollman’s operation dating back to the 1860s. Photo By PBS NewsHour Don Rongione, CEO of the Bollman Hat Company, said that bringing production to the U.S. saves the company money by cutting out some of the costs to transport the product. “We don’t have to transport the product and over time, as labor rates continue to rise, in other parts of the world at a faster rate than they are here in America, it would actually become cost-competitive to do it here,” he said. Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said that these developments in manufacturing mark only an incremental improvement to the U.S. economy. “Manufacturing is growing a little bit, but we lost over a third of our manufacturing jobs in the 2000s. It was decimated. And we’re running essentially an $800 billion trade deficit,” he said. The embroidery of the Kangol Ventair 504 cap after it has been knitted, shaped, and sewn. Photo By PBS NewsHour For more on the growth in U.S. manufacturing jobs, watch the PBS NewsHour tonight.