The firm of E.C. Beetem & Co. was established in 1901, incorporated as E.C. Beetem & Son, Inc. in 1923, and for a time was one of the leading carpet manufacturers in the United States. The company employed women in the finishing and materials departments, the office, and at home assembling rag rugs; men were employed as weavers.

John C. Stephens (1843-1900) and Edward C. Beetem (1852-1938) formed the partnership of Stephens & Beetem at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and bought the firm of Frysinger & Co. of the same place in 1875. In 1877, they built a carpet factory. The firm of E.C. Beetem & Co. was established in 1901, after Stephens' death. In the same year, the firm made the Carlisle Carpet Mills. In 1906, the Charles B. Young Co. became the selling agent for the firm; the company produced their first "Hit and Miss Rag Rug," and Charles Gilbert Beetem (1881-1969), partner of his father, went to Philadelphia to establish a rug factory at Kensington, which specialized in Raglin carpets, so as not to interfere with carpet weaving in the mills at Carlisle.

In 1914, the Kensington plant was moved to a new mill in Carlisle as the elder Beetem sought to reassert control over his son's enterprise. By then, the volume of business had reached $400,000 a year, and the firm was one of the leading carpet manufacturers in the country. In 1914 C. Gilbert Beetem joined the company and expanded it with dye works in Carlisle and two mills in Philadelphia. They traded under various names: E.C. Beetem and Son, Bedford Mills, Carlisle Carpet Mills, Carlisle Dye Works, and Raglin Hand-craft Mills, and as Eden Mills in Philadelphia. They manufactured handwoven rag rugs, carpet, jute-filled rag rugs, chenille rugs, cotton bath rugs, novelty rugs, draperies, curtains, and pillow covers. The firm continued to be managed in such a way as to be able to flexibly respond to market forces. It relied on a predominantly female workforce, depending on women sewing the rag rugs in the home.

Beetem's products had a wide distribution throughout the United States. By 1923, the following large distributors were secured to handle production output: Artman-Treichler Co. (Philadelphia), Carson Pirie Scott & Co. (Chicago), J. Kennard & Sons Carpet Co. (St. Louis), and W.&J. Sloane (San Francisco). The business was incorporated as E.C. Beetem & Son, Inc. in 1923. In 1925, they severed connections with the Charles B. Young Co. and secured the services of George K. Van Nostrand, Inc., of New York, but this connection later proved disappointing. In the years that followed, the increasing flow of Japanese products reduced the volume of Beetem's business. Changing patterns of operation, with women no longer sewing rags at home, and management problems also contributed to the business decline, and operations ceased in the 1960s.