Sewing society

“ All boys ought to be taught the use of hammer and plane and screw-driver, and, for that matter, plain sewing also. Girls need sewing no doubt; and they should be taught it at home, or at school, or wherever they can find a teacher. But, for all this, to assign to sewing any thing like the same relative importance that belonged to it a hundred 221years ago, or even twenty years ago, is to overlook the changed conditions of modern society. ”

“ In my opinion, this latter should be insisted on as a condition of their employment; for constant sewing, as we all know, is the most killing of all feminine employments to youth, health, and spirits. As a class, sewing-women grow prematurely old, both in face and figure. ”

“ So the majority of women, obliged to be entirely or partly self-supporting, turned to one or another branch of the sewing trades as a means of earning their livelihood. Women and young girls who were prejudiced against factory labor took up sewing because it could be done at home. Married women and widows, who could not leave their homes and children, took in sewing to be done in the intervals of their housework, and ladies of aristocratic breeding, reduced to poor circumstances, did needle work at home to earn their pin money or to increase the family income. ”

“ The sewing industry annually honors approximately fifty million people who sew at home and approximately forty million people who sew at least part of their wardrobes. Their initiative, creativity, and self-reliance are characteristic of the people of our Nation. ”

“ This would be far more economical than to hire women to work your sewing machines when you have them. "But," says one, "I must have a woman to knit my stockings, to make my underclothing and my children's clothing, and I must have a woman to wash and iron for me." ”

“ The Viscount de Campo-Grande, in addressing the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences at Madrid, two years ago, admitted that sewing was no longer an economy, but urged women to practise it still for the purpose of quieting their nerves. ”

“ Each person had so few garments, and they were so seldom renewed, that the amount of sewing in a household was no more than could be easily managed at home,—however exquisite and time-consuming might be the stitching, and marking, and buttonholeing, and all the rest of it. ”

“ She wanted the labor of the poor sewing girl, because she possessed great taste, and could dress her daughters better, and what was still more, though so little practised by the rich, cheaper, than she could get their dresses at a "regular establishment." ”

“ Americans are naturally proud of their practical genius; their love and mastery of domestic crafts, handed down from generation to generation, are among our prime national virtues. Throughout American history, one such craft has been the art of sewing. National Sewing Month, 1988, celebrates the American tradition of sewing in the home and salutes the estimated 90 million citizens who partake of its challenges and rewards. ”

“ Feeling that sewing and other household work should be taught in the national schools, as from her labors among the poor she had seen how often food was badly cooked, and mothers were ignorant of sewing, she gave liberally to the government for this purpose. ”

“ But the sewing that is worth while cultivating now is the kind that can't be done by the machine but by the fingers of an artist. Embroidery and specialized dressmaking like that we've been talking about—those are the kinds of sewing that make you a craftswoman and an artist and not a drudge."
"You've stowed away all that your teacher has told you, I see." ”

“ Hitherto men have allowed us at least to make up, if we would, the fabrics they sell us. But this last corner of our once royal feminine domain they are determined now to wrest from us. They have invented the sewing-machine, and already it takes from us not far from five hundred million dollars' worth of sewing annually. Our husbands are clothed entirely from the shops, and in all the large dry-goods firms they have marshalled the pale armies of sewing-girls to ply the wheel from morning till night in the production of ready-made garments for feminine wear also. ”

“ There is a market for beautiful sewing and for fine embroideries, but as for futile and inartistic chairbacks and their [Pg 31] tribe, their day is done. The exquisite Church embroideries bring in fair incomes to those skilled in that class of work; but there is no longer any demand for the home-made lace that occupied half the waking hours of many a woman’s life in the sixties and seventies. That nightmare is over. But let us hope that skill with the needle will never be despised among gentlewomen. To put it on the very lowest ground, it is a marvellous economy to be able to sew. ”

“ Another species of poor economy, is manifested in neglecting to acquire and apply mechanical skill, which, in consequence, has to be hired from others. Thus, all the plain sewing will be done by the mother and daughters, while all that requires skill will be hired. ”

“ Go into the upper lofts where much of this sewing is done, and what will you find? You will find them crowded with young girls, bending over sewing-machines, or over work-tables, breathing foul air, and, in some cases, engaged in conversations of the most objectionable character. Their pay is ridiculously small,—a dollar and a half for doing the machine-work on a full-trimmed fashionable "suit." ”

“ In fact, so far are we removed from the industrial customs of the era that many of the terms then common in every home have lost all meaning for the average modern housewife. For nearly two centuries the greater part of the preparation of material for clothing was done by the family; the spinning, the weaving, the dyeing, the making of thread, these and many similar domestic activities preceded the fashion of a garment. When we remember that the sewing machine was unknown we may comprehend to some extent the immense amount of labor performed by women and girls of those early days. ”

“ Tens of millions of Americans sew at home. Their efforts demonstrate the industry, the skill and the self-reliance which are so characteristic of this Nation.
In recognition of the importance of home sewing to our economy the Congress has, by Senate Joint Resolution 205, designated September, 1982, as National Sewing Month. ”

“ The supply of labor has been greater than the demand, and hence the competition that has arisen among clothing merchants, and the low price of made clothing as sold in slop shops. The use of sewing machines has to some extent done away with sewing by hand. Many a woman has been thrown out of employment by it, to which many of our newspapers can testify, and have borne witness during the past two years. We have heard of some slop shops in large cities offering to pay the highest wages to good shirt makers, each applicant to take a shirt and make it for nothing, as a sample of her sewing. ”

“ We invariably object to changed conditions in those departments of life where we have established ethical values. For all the 154daughters to sew while the mother read aloud to them was esteemed right; and, therefore, the radiating diffusion of daughters among clubs is esteemed wrong,—a danger to home life. In the period of the common sewing and reading the women so assembled were closely allied in industrial and intellectual development as well as in family relationship. ”

“ A very large proportion of our women have not money enough to hire their sewing done, and it is upon these that the wearisome burden falls. To keep up, to vary with the varying fashion, they toil in season and out of season. Day after day you will see them at their work-tables, their machines, their lap-boards; ripping, stitching, turning, altering, furbishing; complaining often of sideache, of backache, of headache, of aching all over; denying themselves outdoor air and exercise and reading-time,—and all because they consider dressing fashionably an essential of life. ”

“ Those who set the fashions are in their league, and help them to put down private competition by making the designs more and more complicated and artificial, so that professionals only can perfectly execute them, while they have so multiplied the "necessary" articles of dress and housekeeping, and so raised the standard of their adornment, that no woman who does all her own sewing can do anything else. ”

“ Yes, we make a touching picture of the prosperity of the sewing business. What movement! What activity! What life! Each dress will busy a hundred fingers instead of ten. No longer will there be an idle young girl, and we need not, Sire, point out to your perspicacity the moral results of this great revolution. Not only will there be more women employed, but each one of them will earn more, for they cannot meet the demand, and if competition still shows itself, it will no longer be among the workingwomen who make the dresses, but the beautiful ladies who wear them. ”

“ A native always appreciates most that upon which he has bestowed labor or money; so both boys and girls learned to sew. It was rather amusing to see them, in the absence of other garments to which they might pin their sewing, place it between their toes. ”

“ While thus industriously working with the needle, we began to feel the effect on female labor which the introduction of sewing-machines had occasioned. The prices given by the tailors were not only becoming less and less, but our employers were continually more exacting as to the quality of the work, and evidently more independent of us. In very busy seasons, when they really needed all the clothing we could make up, they were courteous enough, because they were then unable to do without us. But the introduction of sewing-machines seemed to revolutionize their behavior. ”

“ When they were worn out—no cotton; a lady would live on bread and water sooner than come to that. Much of this linen nether-wear was made in the National Schools, where sewing was an important feature in the education of the poor. ”

“ It makes beautiful sewing, to be sure; but when a woman has a family of little children and a small income, if all her sewing is to be kept up in this perfect style, she wears her life out in stitching. ”

“ We worked under her during a great part of the day, either in the still-room, or at our sewing in a chamber that opened out of the great hall. My lady despised every kind of work that would now be called Fancy-work. She considered that the use of coloured threads or worsted was only fit to amuse children; but that grown women ought not to be taken with mere blues and reds, but to restrict their pleasure in sewing to making small and delicate stitches. ”

“ I ask what would be expected of a poor sewing-girl, young and pretty, about eighteen, with a romantic affair on her hands that is purely a question of love; with little knowledge of life and no idea of morals; eternally sewing near a window before which processions were not allowed to pass by order of the police, but near which a dozen young women prowled who were licensed and recognized by these same police; what could you expect of her, when after wearying her hands and eyes all day long on a dress or a hat, she leans out of that window as night falls? ”

“ And even had there been such grateful conveniences, we should not have been invited to sit down; and unless invited, no sewing-woman would risk a provocation of [Pg 92] the wrath of an ill-mannered shopman by presuming to occupy one. Few employers bestow even a thought upon the comfort of their sewing-women. ”

“ Punch has accepted their invitation to spend the summer.
The dressmaking is still going on. You should hear the machines whir and the tongues clatter in the sewing room. Our most cowed, apathetic, spiritless little orphan cheers up and takes an interest in life when she hears that she is to possess three perfectly private dresses of her own, and each a different color, chosen by herself. And you should see how it encourages their sewing ability. Even the little ten-year-olds are bursting into seamstresses. ”

“ Sewing-Machine Instructors. In many of the stores of New York, where sewing machines are sold, we notice that many of those who give instructions to buyers of machines are men. Shame on the men that teach women to sew! When such is the case, to what may not a woman resort for earning a livelihood? Shame on the man that engages in such an effeminate employment, save he who is deformed and cannot engage in harder work! Shame, I say, on the man seen at a sewing machine, or with a needle in his hand! ”

“ After nursing come lessons in sewing, and besides the making of the common things the better class of girls will learn to make lace and to do fancy work. In the year's service the better class girls will sew for the poor and the poorer girls will sew for themselves. ”

“ It meets the demand of the unprincipled shopkeeper, and he has, perhaps, employment for a dozen or more. A man that has a ladies' furnishing store, told me he pays girls that [Pg 310] sew neatly by hand 371⁄2 cents a day. Many clothing merchants have their work done in the country, because they can have it done more cheaply. The sewing done by French linen makers is very beautiful. The majority of sempstresses have no time they can call their own. ”

“ In their cooking laboratory they learn to cook simple foods, one thing at a time, until they reach the upper grades, where they must prepare entire meals on limited allowances.
The sewing is equally practical. The girls learn to patch, darn, hem and make underclothing and dresses. Then, going into homes where no intelligent needlework has ever been done—where frequently a darning needle is unknown—they teach the mother and older sisters how to sew, until whole families, under the influence of one school child, improve their wardrobe and reduce their cost for clothing. ”