In 1940, there was extended public debate over working conditions in Bata’s shoe factory in Belcamp, Maryland. This picture of Hilda Davis making shoes presented the factory in a desirable light.
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Thomas Bata
Thomas Bata
The Shoe Man
Date of birth
1914
Point of origin
Czech Republic
Bata was born into a properous family business of shoemaking and moved to Canada in 1939.
Pictured here in 1990, Thomas Bata reentered the shoe business in his country of origin, Czechoslovakia, after the “Velvet Revolution” overthrew communist rule in 1989.
Bata shoe store, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1942. Bata opened its first factory in Switzerland in 1932. Ten years later, the company had about 400 employees manufacturing shoes for a network of about two dozen stores.
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Workers at a shoe factory in Svit, Czechoslovakia, 1966. This factory was the hub of a Bata company town created in 1934, but was nationalized and renamed under communist rule.
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Thomas J. Bata, 1914-2008, Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic.
Bata was born into a properous family business of shoemaking. In 1939, with war in the air, Bata moved to Canada, setting up a factory town: Batawa, Ontario. He served in the Canadian Army during the Second World War. Despite destruction of business properties in Europe, Bata’s shoe empire survived the war, and the headquarters for the business were moved to Canada in 1964. Bata passed control of the company on to his son in 1984.
