In the 19th century, São João da Madeira registered an intense growth, the fruit of commercial and industrial development linked to the manufacture of hats and dairy industry. J. Gomes de Pinho was the first empressario to establish a hat factory in 1802, but it was António José de Oliveira Júnior, an ex-functionary who would drive the local industry with his establishment in 1892 of the first fur hat factory. It would eventually become one of the major symbols of São João da Madeira's new economy, the "Empresa Industrial de Chapelaria Lda." Totally mechanized by the early 19th century, it would become the largest factory in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the 19th century. Oliveira Júnior was recognized by the national government, who issued him a diploma of Industrial and Agricultural Merit, its citizens later honouring him with a bust and the naming of one of its roads. The prosperity that developed, also supported by the nacscent growth of the footwear industry, allowed the growth of a dynamic centre that attracted more inhabitants with the possibility of work.