Klots Throwing Company.

The Klots Throwing Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1894. The business had been founded by Henry Durell Klots and George Klots, silk throwsters, in New York City in the 1880s. The expansion of the company was largely the work of Marcus Frieder.

Frieder was born in Szinna, Hungary, on February 7, 1860, and emigrated to America in 1890, where he became a bookkeeper for the Klots brothers. The New York mill burned in 1894, and at Frieder's suggestion, the business was relocated to Carbondale, Pennsylvania. This was part of a general movement of the silk industry into the anthracite and bituminous coal fields, where the wives and daughters of the coal miners formed a large pool of untapped labor.

Frieder became manager of the Carbondale mill, and on the death of Henry D. Klots, he succeeded to the presidency. Under Frieder's management, the Klots Throwing Company became one of the larger silk manufacturers in America. It built additional mills at Archbald, Scranton and Forest City in the Northern Anthracite Field, at Cumberland and Lonaconing in the Maryland bituminous coal field, and in Virginia and West Virginia. From 1915 to 1921 another Frieder firm, the General Silk Importing Company, was the largest American importer of raw silk. Between 1917 and 1927 Fieder also expanded heavily into New England. In January 1927 the General Silk Corporation was formed as a holding company for all of Frieder's operations. At its peak, Frieder operated 14 mills with 6,000 employees and annual sales of $50 million.

Frieder's business was greatly affected by the rise of rayon as a substitute for silk, and in 1932 the firm was forced into bankruptcy. Frieder and his son, Leonard Peter Frieder, reorganized the Carbondale, Lonaconing and Cumberland Mills as General Textile Mills, Inc. General Textile Mills, Inc., was renamed Gentex Corporation in July 1958 to reflect its new product lines.

Marcus Frieder died in New York on October 13, 1940. Leonard P. Frieder operated the business until his death in 1972.