Clothing industry

“ It has in fact created an entirely new and most important branch of that industry,—the ready-made clothing business,—giving employment to hundreds of thousands of people, and providing well patterned and well finished garments at prices undreamed of in other days. ”

“ In the clothing trades the industrial revolution has made some way, and is doubtless going to make still more way, but it is unlikely that the older-fashioned methods of tailoring and dressmaking can ever be superseded as completely as was the hand-loom weaving in the cotton trade. Dress is a matter of individual taste and fancy, and much as the factory-made clothing and dressmaking has improved in the last ten or twenty [Pg 65] years, it is unlikely ever to supply the market entirely. Stay-making is a rapidly developing factory industry at Bristol, Ipswich and elsewhere. ”

“ It is in the manufacture of textiles—including all materials used in the manufacturing of clothing—that human ingenuity is best illustrated.
The magnitude of the textile industry in the United States is evident when we consider that it gives employment to a round million of people, paying them nearly five hundred million dollars annually in wages and salaries, producing nearly one and three-quarters billion dollars in gross value each year, and giving a livelihood to at least three millions of our population.
Wool, cotton, flax, and silk have been used since early times. ”

“ The manufacture of garments remains the largest sector within the industry, employing 61,500 workers. A wide range and variety of clothing, from high fashion dresses to cotton singlets, is produced for export all over the world. Embroidered blouses, beaded or sequinned woollen cardigans, silk and brocade, and evening coats have worldwide popularity while, in conformity with world trends, demand has increased significantly for permanent press garments. Custom and mail order tailoring, principally of men's suits, has developed rapidly in recent years as an important branch of industry. ”

“ Twenty-five per cent. of all the effort put into the processes of industry and commerce is concerned with the supply of clothing. Most of the clothing is made under conditions which determine the life and welfare of such a large proportion of the people that we find in the garment-making industries themselves a distinct and definite challenge to the religious and social agencies. There are some fundamental considerations which must be borne in mind and which will help us to see the problem as it affects the workers. ”

“ The wholesale manufacture of ready-made clothing has superseded the output of the individual tailor shops. Under the present system of wholesale manufacture of ready-made clothing, the work is subdivided into many branches. Formerly a tailor made and completed the garment himself, by reason of skill which it took four or five years to acquire; now the garment passes through the hands of a dozen or more workers, who are each skilled in some particular branch of the industry. Their skill is acquired in a few months, and they can only do certain kinds of work. ”

“ THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TRADES IN MODERN INDUSTRY Under the old conditions of apprenticeship a boy learned all the processes and became a tailor. To-day, in a thoroughly organized clothing factory, thirty-nine different persons perform different specialized operations in the manufacture of a coat. ”

“ To a large degree the clothing trade is a belated industry, through the non-application of improved machinery and through the failure to adopt factory methods.
Home work is another cause of much trouble. ”

“ The crofters content themselves without dyestuffs. The industry [Pg 90] is maintained by nobility to help the islanders and the fabrics are fashionable and high priced.
Covert cloth is a twilled woven cloth of great beauty and durability. It is rather heavy, of hard finish and is used for jackets and winter suits. To this list of woolen goods may be added the crape cloth with crinkled, rough surface, nun's veiling, flannel which is woven in a variety of ways, broadcloth, wool canvas, and poplins. ”

“ Before sewing machines were to be found in every home and ready made clothing in the stores styles did not change so rapidly. Commercial conditions now make it to the advantage of a great army of people that the styles in dress change often and radically. The manufacturers of cloth, the wholesale merchants with their agents, the retailers and their numerous clerks, wholesale garment-makers and their many employes, pattern-makers, dress-makers, milliners and the manufacturers of all minor articles of clothing are all benefitted by this oft recurring change in style. ”

“ The Clothing Company is a typical small manufacturing concern which produces less than one-half of one per cent. of the men's clothing produced in the United States and employs 800 of the 150,000 workmen engaged therein. ”

“ Manufacturers cater to the whims and fancies of people and import to this country foreign styles. The rapidly changing styles cause people to throw upon the market a great amount of cast-off clothing only partially worn. ”

“ These comprise the making of men's and women's suits and dresses, coats, hats, shirts, underwear, collars and cuffs, gloves, etc. As we have seen, the making of wearing apparel has always been woman's work. During the domestic period of industry the same hands that spun the thread and wove the cloth also sewed the garments. When spinning and weaving had been taken out of the home and made specialized factory occupations, the making of clothes still remained a domestic occupation because no machinery had as yet been applied to this branch of manufacture. ”

“ But the old fashions are passing from Europe: the sewing machine and the railway sweep before them the pleasant provincialisms of dress. A shirt with the bosom heavily embroidered, a skirt with a year’s stitching in the hem are not to be imitated by the dealer in ready-made clothing, who offers, instead, cheapness and the brisk variety of the town. ”

“ What a contrast from the present system, which raises wool upon our Western hills and prairies, makes it into cloth in the large factories, and fashions it into trousers, vests, and coats in the great wholesale clothing establishments. ”

“ You should see the servant-girl, with her greasy flounces, and soiled artificial flowers. You should see young men, with staring diamond pins stuck on their coarse shirt-bosoms, with shabby velvet vests, and mock chains looped over them.
You should go into the “furnishing stores for ladies’ and children’s garments;” and see how impossible it is to find plain, substantial articles of clothing for either—two thirds, at least, of the cost of every article being for elaborate trimming, and ruffling, and useless embroidery. ”

“ It has been taken out of the hands of the American group. The old-fashioned dressmaking and tailor shops have given way to the huge lofts where many factories are turning out clothing for men, women, boys and girls in large quantities. ”

“ It has been all of these in the past, and many of the same factors are still apparent in our present-day use of garments: but a new interpretation of the word has come in with our new industrial conditions. Dress is an enormous economic factor the world over, and nowhere more so than in America, where it is an over-exploited industry, whose markets have been stretched abnormally, not only by the increasing production of inferior articles, but by a psychological factor, far more potent even than the law of normal supply and demand ”

“ To possess mechanical skill alone is not sufficient. A successful garment depends not only upon the dexterity with which the worker manipulates the actual tools of her craft, but upon all her faculties and her power of applying them. She must have a comprehension of the laws of beauty in dress, construction, ornament, color, selection, economy. The artisan knows the technical part only, and looks upon each dress—each piece of lace and velvet—as so much material to be snipped and cut and sewed, copying from the fashion plate, making gown after gown alike. ”

“ If you don’t go over a ready-made garment, even at sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents, you have wasted several dollars of father’s money, and I will explain why.
“In order to turn out clothing in quantities large enough to yield a profit and at prices low enough to have popular appeal, a manufacturer must depend upon certain employees to inspect the output of the factory. These women and girls work rapidly and sometimes miss defects. ”

“ Until the early part of the second quarter of the 19th century, the ready-made clothing trade in the United States was confined almost entirely to furnishing the clothing required by sailors about to ship out to sea. ”

“ The reason for the levelling up or down as the case may be, is due, of course, to the standard of luxury having been raised and the price of materials for clothing having been lowered. As regards the determination of the profession of the wearer from his or her dress, it must be said that often we remain quite at a loss in the matter. ”

“ The local stores are there with the bargain counter and the special sale and all the other devices. The Poles and the Lithuanians with whom we have talked have dwelt especially on the helplessness of their countrywomen in the hands of the unscrupulous merchant or the shrewd clerk.
Clothing presents to even the enlightened and the sophisticated a most difficult problem in domestic management. "Fashion wears out more garments than the man." ”

“ This Table exhibits an alarming decline in the importation of all the materials for our staple manufactures, except raw silk, which has considerably increased. That increase has not arisen from any increased sale of articles of clothing, viewed as a whole, in the nation since 1845, but solely from the great extent to which, since that time, the fashion of ladies' dress has run in favour of silk attire. ”

“ If another customer came along they’d have to stop in the middle of a sale and refer him to a clerk around in the other aisle.
“A furnishing goods department should be continuous. The sale of a shirt will lead to the purchase of a tie or a collar or hosiery. The goods should be in sight so that they automatically suggest themselves.
“You enter this store and the first impression you get is a big clothing store. That is what you want. Clothing dominates the store. Furnishing goods and hats are important and necessary side lines. ”

“ True, every woman will not sew well at first, but we have found that nearly every one will learn, and have now no trouble with our workers, and the garments made by them are [Pg 28] good enough to be placed in any ordinary clothing bazaar for sale. ”

“ The quality which proprietors of garment making establishments value above all others in their employees is adaptability. The reason for this is that the manufacturing of clothing differs from almost all other kinds of industrial work in the frequency with which changes take place in the size and shape of the product and in the range of materials which must be handled by the same workers. ”

“ But the improvement in manufactures and the general adoption of machinery into the making of cloths, and especially the general use of the sewing-machine in the fabrication of garments, have made such a difference in the comparative cost of clothing, that it may be believed that never before was the world so comfortably dressed as at present ”

“ It was estimated that about one million men, women and children were exclusively employed in the clothing trade,—“all have their dependence solely and wholly upon the said Manufacture, without intermixing themselves in the labours of Hedging, Ditching, Quicksetting, and others the works belonging to Husbandry.” ”

“ It is much easier and quicker than working by hand, and so cotton cloth can be made more cheaply. Frank Allen says he saw a loom at the silk factory he visited. If it were not for machines, our clothes would cost much more than they do. Think of all the people who help to give us our cotton clothes, from the planter who sows the seed to the manufacturer whose men prepare and weave it. Have you ever visited a cloth factory and seen the many machines and heard the great [68] buzzing noise which they make? It is a busy place. Some factories make only warp, or filling, yarns. ”

“ At the same time a related trade was also growing in the cities, especially in New York City, that of dealing in second-hand clothing. Industrious persons bought up old clothes, cleaned, repaired and refinished them, and sold the clothing to immigrants and transients who wished to avoid the high cost of new custom-made clothing. ”

“ All those engaged in the making of garments and other goods of silk, artificial silk, linen, cotton and woolen fabrics, such as clothing workers, workers in collar and shirt factories, including all salesmen, clerks, stenographers in distribution places (dry goods stores) . All workers employed in establishments where wearing apparel is made of fur, felt, straw, etc., as furriers, glove makers, hatmakers, straw hat makers, millinery workers. ”

“ In consequence, a deterioration of fully thirty-three and one-third per cent in weight has taken place, in addition to the establishment of a much higher range of prices for the same qualities of goods. The clothing manufacturer, therefore, through the inability of the cloth to stand ordinary wear, is largely deprived of the opportunity to produce garments upon which a good reputation can be based. ”

“ They do not need our building material, and as for clothing, one American is worth more as a customer than a hundred of these natives. While a few wear rich robes, the mass content themselves with a very scanty costume of very cheap cotton—a costume which someone has described as "a handkerchief around the loins and a table cloth around the head." No shoe manufacturer need send a salesman to these parts, for even the coachman and footmen in livery are barefooted. ”