The German-American Woolen Industry

The U.S. had a sizable German-ancestry population, not immediately inclined to take the part of Britain and France in regard to the war. The American wool industry itself was split, with the older New England companies, such as American Woolen Co., or the J.P. Stevens Co., having English roots; while many German firms opened branches in the US, concentrated around Passaic, New Jersey, beginning in the 1880s (and spurred by various tariff bills). The men in charge of these new American mills, such as Thomas Prehn of the Botany Worsted Mills, and Julius Forstmann of Forstmann and Huffman, also encouraged skilled German textile workers to emigrate, and work in their mills. As a result, once the US entered the war in April 1917, their adherence, during America’s neutral status, to the licensing regulations imposed by the British government, and supervised by the Textile Alliance, was questioned, as was their loyalty to the United States. On the other hand, Australia’s Dalgety Reviewreported in 1916, in regard to the past season’s American wool purchases, that:

            “The shipments were made subject to arrangements with the Textile Alliance that no wool nor any wool tops or yarn made therefrom should be exported to any destination from the U.S.A., and it was recently officially stated that the British Embassy at Washington having made the fullest investigation, was thoroughly satisfied that the spirit as well as the letter of the agreement had been honorably carried out.”

Letters from German bank and wool-buying representatives, presented in hearings on this issue in April 1918, suggested that Germany, recognizing the difficulties of shipping wool through the blockade, nevertheless wished to purchase wool and warehouse it against the end of the war, when it could be used to jump-start Germany’s textile industries. Anti-German sentiment contributed to the decision of the Federal Alien Property Custodian in early 1918 to take control of six German-connected woolen mills in Passaic – including Botany and Forstmann.