1998-03-12-nytimes-william-f-farah-dies.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/12/business/william-f-farah-dies-at-78-led-family-clothing-business.html

William F. Farah Dies at 78; Led Family Clothing Business

By Jennifer Steinhauer

• March 12, 1998

See the article in its original context from March 12, 1998, Section D, Page 19Buy Reprints

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William F. Farah, whose men's apparel business was the object of one of the most bitter labor disputes in the history of the apparel industry, died Monday in a private nursing home in El Paso. He was 78.

According to his son James, Mr. Farah had suffered a long illness.

The descendant of a Lebanese family that settled in Texas at the beginning of the century, Mr. Farah lived through almost every aspect of the modern garment industry's development.

After turning a small family business into a multimillion-dollar public company, he suffered at the hands of his own board, and in a final proxy battle, he was ultimately rendered powerless.

Mr. Farah raised the standard for apparel production in the United States with a manufacturing plant in El Paso, but he was not prepared to deal with the rising demands of the local labor force. In the 1970's, he suffered a strike and a product boycott that ate away at his company's bottom line.

His aggressive sales techniques and his ability to protect his trade secrets gained him admiration within the industry, but they also aroused suspicions of even his most ardent supporters, who at times found him overreaching. And he fell into a famous garment industry quandary, watching his later fortunes rise on a fashion hit -- the leisure suit -- but failing to get out fast enough once the fad faded.

Mr. Farah, who was known as Willie, was born in Las Cruces, N.M., in 1919. His father, Mansour, was a hay and dry goods merchant who had come west via Canada, and his mother was the second of 16 children of a Greek Orthodox priest and his wife.

The family later moved to El Paso and opened a clothing factory in 1920, which served up such workaday fare as blue shirts, denim pants and bib overalls.

Mr. Farah graduated from El Paso High School and attended the Texas College of Mines before joining the family business. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a B-26 bomber pilot and instructor. When he returned from the war, he married Betty Jean Corcoran and rejoined the family apparel business.

His brother, James, who had become chief executive in 1937, died in 1964, and Mr. Farah took the helm, overseeing the company's transition into one of the largest pants manufacturers in the country. Farah Inc., which was best known for its Farah slacks and jackets and the John Henry and Savane lines of men's and boys' wear, went public in 1967.

Mr. Farah, who was as obsessive about order in his plants as he was about engineering innovations and good marketing, often rode a bicycle through the aisles of his sewing rooms monitoring productivity. He introduced dress slacks and invented machines that could automate the addition of zippers and belt loops. Sales boomed. One of his great coups was to greatly help popularize the polyester leisure suit by mass-producing them; he made a a lot of money on sales of them in 1975.

Despite this, the company over all was hurting. 2,000 workers, most of them Mexican American, struck the company, seeking the right to join a union as well as greater job security and wage growth. Subsequently, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, supported by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Roman Catholic Bishop in El Paso, organized a boycott of Farah clothing, which hurt the company's sales.

The bitter battle pitted the mostly white Protestant business leaders of El Paso against both Mexican laborers and Roman Catholic leaders, who won the backing of national liberal politicians like George McGovern, who was then the Democratic nominee for President, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Mr. Farah repeatedly said that he would never entertain the notion of a union at Farah Inc., and once said, ''We have 'em whipped, and we're going to keep 'em whipped.'' Nevertheless, the strike, which was billed as second largest of its kind, after the California grape strike, ended 22 months later, with Mr. Farah's agreement to recognize the union.

The effects of the labor dispute were lasting. The company suffered several quarters of losses and laid off scores of workers, resulting in the resignation of several members of the board. Mr. Farah resigned as chief executive in 1977.

A year later, he returned, dismissing most of the company's top executives with the help of armed guards.

In 1989, he again stepped down as chief executive, but he remained the company's largest shareholder and a board member. He tried to regain the post through a proxy fight in 1990, arguing that the company's business was faltering and needed his leadership. The board resisted, and removed him as a member.

Farah, which is still publicly traded, is not the name in men's apparel that it was in Mr. Farah's day.

Mr. Farah spent the last part of his life active in El Paso community affairs, and helped build a cancer treatment center for the city. He is survived by his wife and four children: James, of New York; Kenneth and Haleen, of Dallas, and Robert, of El Paso.