The W. S. and C. H. THOMSON Skirt Factory was one of the largest manufacturers of hoop skirts in the world. William Sparks THOMSON and his brother Charles Henry founded their eponymous manufacturing company in 1856, and Charles H. LANGDON joined the partnership in 1858. The factory was located in New York on Broadway, and it originally produced cloaks and mantillas (shawls). But after the steel-hooped cage crinoline appeared in France in 1856, W. S. THOMSON shrewdly jumped on board. In 1858, he patented the “eyelet fastening,” an H-shaped washer that was used with an eyelet to secure the crinoline’s steel hoops to its fabric straps. THOMSON claimed that this innovation made the hoop “indestructible.” In 1859, the factory is said to have produced three to four thousand hoops a day and used 300,000 yards of steel and 150,000 yards of tape per week. The Thomson company was a progressive supporter of working women. According to “Employment of Women: Thomson’s Crown-Skirt Factory,” published in Harper’s Weekly in February 1859: “The whole establishment is under the superintendence of a woman, who from the first has exercised control over the employment of hands, the arrangement of work, and the remuneration paid. Even the accountants of the factory are women.” The article also explains that the factory employed an average of one thousand “girls,” who had mostly “been taken from the ranks of plain sewers, and educated to the hoop skirt manufacture.” Thomson’s business was so successful that the company opened factories in London, Paris, Brussels, and present-day Germany, where the firm exuberantly touted its American-designed products. The Paris factory was located on the outskirts of the city in St. Denis. Emile BOURDELIN, writing in Le Monde Illustré in 1862, describes “la jupe-cage Américaine Thomson” as “une véritable révolution,” which was high praise coming from the fashionable French.