Garment Industry

Dressmaking
Dressmakers worked for all kinds of customers. As early as 1840 there were dressmakers in New York who catered specifically to domestic servants. High society patronized fashionable dressmakers with shops on Fifth Avenue, while New Yorkers of lesser means settled for Division Street on the Lower East Side. But the majority of dressmakers set up shop in their own tenement apartments.

By the time of the Civil War, the garment industry had expanded significantly and most Americans bought their clothing rather than make it themselves. With an ample supply of cheap labor and a well-established distribution network, New York was prepared to meet the demand. During the 1870s, the value of garments produced in New York increased six-fold. By 1880, New York produced more garments than its four closest urban competitors combined.

Men's ready-to-wear clothing was produced through a "putting out" system for much of the nineteenth century. Factories produced the fabric, which was then handed over to contractors on credit. The contractors then distributed the material to women who made the actual pieces of clothing in their own homes. The contractor paid by the piece, though he (it was almost always a "he") could refuse to pay for work he considered shoddy. As factory machinery became more sophisticated in the 1870s and 1880s, parts of a piece of clothing could be mass produced and women working at home did finishing work rather than making whole pieces of clothing from scratch.

Female housework satisfied the desire of most husbands for their wives to remain at home and allowed the women to supervise their children. Homework also eliminated commuting time and left more time for household chores. Women from different apartments would often work together in one of their kitchens or best rooms (the room fronting the street or rear yard and therefore receiving the most sunlight) to keep each other company. In warmer weather, women often moved into the hallways or onto the roofs and fire escapes (when they existed).

In the twentieth century the putting-out system gave way, for the most part, to "sweat-shops." In this system, manufacturers provided the raw materials, designed the clothes, and marketed the final product, but the work of making the clothes was again handed over to contractors. The contractors would now secure a workspace, sewing machines, and from three to thirty workers, frequently female immigrants. Each worker had a specific task to perform but was paid on the basis of how many garments the group was able to produce. By the turn of the century, most ready-to-wear clothing came from such shops.