Clothing store

“ Of the garments manufactured by respondent, 82.8 per cent. are purchased by customers outside the state, mainly by department stores and men's clothing stores in the larger cities throughout the country. Respondent maintains a sales office and showroom in New York City through which 15 or 20 per cent. ”

“ To inspect our display of Men's, Boys' and Children's Ready-to-Wear Clothing.
floatYou will not be Importuned to buy—we are asking for a call only. We know you will like our goods and prices, and after a trial you will take pleasure in calling this store, your Clothing Store.
If you prefer your Cloths MADE-TO-ORDER we are the pioneer in that line, in North Hudson. ”

“ A large clothing firm or department store estimates that it will need a certain number of ready-made garments for its spring or fall trade. It may have them made in inside or in outside shops. An inside shop is a room in a part of the store belonging to the firm, or is a separate building elsewhere in the city under the direct management of a superintendent appointed by the firm. ”

“ Clothing stores, or more exactly, cloth-shops, are perhaps most numerous, countless useless duplications of the selfsame stock, with hundreds of bolts of as many different weaves piled high in the open doorways. Every merchant, however meager his supplies, announces himself an “importer and exporter,” and after morning mass manto-wrapped women wander for hours from shop to shop, haggling for a fancied difference of a half cent in some purchase which, in the end, is more apt than not to be abandoned. ”

“ With the exception of the abnormal stress and strain of the holiday season, the vertical system of Macy's transportation is never very seriously taxed.
To those upper floors, also, go the folk whose purchases necessitate the fitting of something or other to the human frame. As we have just seen, shoes are upon the second floor. On the third is the women's wearing apparel, with special dressing-room facilities for trying on and fitting. Similar conveniences are to be found in the men's clothing department upon the fifth floor. ”

“ He may be the head of a department store or the owner of a large clothing establishment or a merchant tailor. Whoever he is, if he is not able to erect or to provide suitable factories instead of shifting the responsibility of workrooms upon his petty contractors, he would better delegate the manufacture of his goods to someone who is. There is no more necessity for any of these men except, perchance, the merchant tailor to make his own garments in little shops and in tenements than for him to make his own muslins and challies and lawns, his silks and linens and broadcloths. ”

“ That was before the time of ready-made clothing, and real ladies were most particular about the quality of materials used and the nicety of workmanship.
One day a small new store, with a fifty foot frontage, appeared at the corner of Temple and Spring. Good shoppers soon recognized high grade materials and efficient salesmanship, and the firm had to move a few doors south to obtain larger space, and then, made bold by public favor, it went pioneering way out among the residences on Broadway near Third, to remain a few years until it set the fashion of Seventh street,—J. W. Robinson & Co. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The Board concluded: 'The men's clothing industry is thus an industry which is nearly entirely dependent in its operations upon purchases and sales in interstate commerce and upon interstate transportation. There is a constant flow of raw wool from the western States and foreign countries to the mills of New England where it is transformed into men's wear fabrics, thence to the sponging and shrinking plants of New York and Philadelphia, then, joined by the other necessary raw materials, to the fabricating factories of the Middle Atlantic States for manufacture into clothing. ”

“ Much of the work in the clothing trade is now done in shops, especially fitted for the purpose. These shops are more amenable to inspection under our factory laws, and a great deal has been done by state inspectors in this direction. ”

“ 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 woman who shops for a dress, hat, or coat in a modern store neither expects nor desires to see the entire stock or any considerable part of it. She is comfortably seated in a well-lighted room which contains little, if any, exposed merchandise. The salesperson, after a quick mental appraisal, asks a few leading questions, and brings from the stockroom one, two, or possibly three models, carefully chosen on the basis of suitability, size, and style. If these are rejected they are removed, and a second small selection brought out. ”

“ Certain principles as to proper dress for men in home-furnishing stores of dignity have been established. One metropolitan store insists that salesmen wear dark suits; black shoes always; white collars either attached or detached, not necessarily starched; neckties, dark preferably, and in harmony with the suit. ”

“ This movement toward standardizing the clothing industry aids the factory in overcoming the competition of the smaller shops. There is going on a sure but slow movement toward the elimination of the bad conditions in the garment trades, and the factories are increasing because people of even moderate means are demanding higher-priced and better-grade garments. ”

“ Another stage in the evolution of the clothing industry is found in the factory itself. Just as the task system was an improvement over the sweat-shop in the home, so the factory is a big advance over the task system. The factory has grown very rapidly owing to the demand for tailor-made clothes, to the continual change in the styles, and to the large supply of cheap labor always at hand. ”

“ The demand for ready-made clothing for women is nearly as great and is annually increasing through the facilities offered by all large retail houses for shopping by mail. The tailoress and the maker of shirts have disappeared from the homes of their employers and have set up establishments of their own, or have become responsible to large business houses; the dressmaker and the seamstress are fast following in their footsteps, and the cook must set her face in the same direction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Remember this, dear, the tag of the maker of your apparel is not the only important mark of an exclusive shop—the principal mark is the cut and style, and these high-grade shops turn out hats, coats and gowns which the other shops endeavor in vain to imitate. That is why one can be recognized in a way by the clothes they wear. ”

“ Tailors' and dress-makers' trimmings are sometimes purchased for a small sum, and used in making up girls' hoods, boys' caps, &c. In London, most of women's second-hand apparel is (as it should be) sold by women. It is customary for buyers to cry down every article offered them for sale or barter, but those they offer for sale are magnified into ten times their value. Many of the men who go through the streets of our cities buying old clothes or giving china ware in exchange for them, take them home and their wives repair them. I called at a second-hand variety store in Brooklyn. ”

“ Nor is this all: some six or seven hundred young women—and young men, too—are also making a special study of retail selling in the city's evening schools. A single course at the DeWitt Clinton High [Pg 225] School is quite typical of these. Four evenings a week, for two hours each evening, a huge class is being taught—in an even more detailed way than is possible under a department-store roof—the principles and manufacture of textiles. In these classes a goodly number of the Macy family are enrolled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Things will be better as the spring comes on; folks will find they want new clothing, and orders will come in faster then. My mother and sister work at a factory where they make clothing, miss," she explained to Violet, who was listening to her with interest, "coats, and skirts, and blouses, and everything that people buy ready-made." ”

“ It contained a rustic-looking young man, dressed in new and showy garments that had the cachet of the department store, and a young woman brave in such finery as young women wear when approaching the most important hour of their lives. ”

“ And stay they have, to this very day, even though most of the New York stores still retain men to a considerable extent in some of their departments—notably those devoted to the sale of furniture, dress-goods and boots and shoes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a busy scene, the ware-room of Simon Skinflint & Co. Garments of every hue, size and pattern, were there exposed for sale. Piles of coarse clothing lay upon the counter, ready to be given out to the destitute, brow-beaten applicant who would make them for the smallest possible remuneration ”

“ The cheap colours of the shoddy open-air clothing-house, the blank faded green of the coster's cart; the dark bluish-red of the butcher's stall—they all take on a value not their own in the garish lights flaring down the markets of the dusk. ”

“ It was a small shop but so stuffed and crammed with garments of all kinds that they had overflowed into the street, for the narrow doorway was draped, choked and festooned with coats, breeches, pantaloons, shirts, waistcoats, stockings, boots, shoes, a riotous and apparently inextricable tangle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Messrs Ross and Glendining have also a clothing factory, the building for which was specially erected in Stafford street, where the various materials manufactured at the mills are made up into clothing. Altogether, the firm employ several hundreds of work-people, amongst whom are a large proportion of females. ”

“ Into the quiet of his office filtered a hum of activity exquisite to his ears, the clicking of billing-machines, the whirr of parcel-carriers, the sound of customers’ voices, buying merchandise. Out there the store was smoothly functioning, supplying modern civilization to ten thousand men and women. And it was his store! Not only did he reap the profit—that was a small part of his pleasure. It was his personality which gave all those people the opportunity to satisfy their needs, that was educating them to desire better things. ”

“ Claire and Mrs. Larry accepted the printed announcements mechanically, their gaze fixed on the tea room, which was already half full. On the platform, bustling employees of the store were arranging what looked like an exhibit, bolts of cloth and silk, ready-made garments, shoes, gloves, linens, perfumes. The saleswoman followed their curious glance.
“Those are the heads of departments and the buyers. They are going to answer questions after the lecture.” ”