Hanes
John Wesley Hanes' brother Pleasant H. Hanes founded the P.H. Hanes Knitting Company in 1901. The brothers previously operated a tobacco manufacturing business, that they sold to R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1900. The P.H. Hanes Knitting Company merged with Hanes Hosiery in 1965. The P.H. Hanes Knitting Company complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. Consolidated Foods (later renamed Sara Lee) announced its purchase of Hanes in 1978.
Rohm and Haas
The company was founded in Esslingen, Germany, by Dr. Otto Röhm and Mr. Otto Haas in 1907. Haas moved to Philadelphia and began the American side of the business on September 1, 1909, from an office on Front Street, while Otto Röhm remained in Germany to run a company that would eventually become Röhm GmbH. The American company grew rapidly as World War I approached, because of their initial invention, a synthetic substitute (brand name Oropon) for fermented dog dung, which was used for bating leather (part of the old tanning process); leather was needed for the war in large quantities for belts and saddles.