GARMENTS.
“Man is a tool-using animal. Weak in himself, and of small stature, he
stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square
foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs lest the very wind
supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for
him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag.
Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools; with these the granite
mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron as if
it were paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his
unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools
he is nothing, with tools he is all.... Man is a tool-using animal, of
which truth, clothes are but one example.”--_Sartor Resartus._
In looking through the records of man’s achievements to find the
beginnings of inventions, we discover the glimmering of a change in the
form of the immemorial needle, in an English patent granted to Charles
F. Weisenthal, June 24, 1775. It was a needle with a centrally located
eye, and with both ends pointed, designed for embroidery work by hand,
and the object of the two points was to prevent the turning of the
needle end for end after its passage through the cloth. But it was not
until the 19th century that the idea was reduced to practice in sewing
machines.
To Thomas Saint, a cabinet maker by trade, of Greenhills Rents, in the
Parish of St. Sepulchre, Middlesex County, England, the world is
indebted for the first clear conception of a sewing machine. Saint’s
attention was attracted to the slow way of sewing boots and shoes and
other leather work, so he determined to improve the method. He took out
a patent September 17, 1790, and although the germs of some of the
leading parts of the modern sewing machine are there described, it does
not appear that his patent was applied to practice. In fact, it
slumbered in the archives of the British patent office for two
generations, and after the leading sewing machines of the century had
been invented and introduced, before it was rediscovered, and its
contents appreciated in the light of more recent developments. Probably
Saint’s machine, if constructed in accordance with his plans, would not
have done much good work, certainly not with woven cloth, as he proposed
to employ a hooked needle to carry a loop through the material, which
would have been snarled by the cloth threads; but from his drawings and
description it is clearly established that he was first to conceive of a
vertically reciprocating needle for forming a seam from a continuous
thread drawn from a spool; a seam in which each loop is locked, or
enchained with a subsequent loop, to form what is known as the chain, or
single thread stitch; and a horizontal sliding plate, to support the
material to be sewed, and by which the material was also moved sideways
after each stitch.
May 30, 1804, John Duncan received an English patent for “tamboring on
cloth.” He proposed to employ a series of hooked needles attached in a
straight line to a horizontal bar, which, when threaded, were first
thrust forward and their hooked ends carried through the cloth, where
each needle hook was supplied with a thread by a thread carrier. Then
the motion of the bar was reversed, which drew the thread back through
the cloth in the form of loops, and through the loops first formed, thus
producing a chain stitch. The cloth was automatically shifted to
correspond to the pattern to be produced, and thus was chain stitch
embroidery first manufactured. From this point of time successful
embroidery machines were made.
In 1807 another Englishman patented a machine for making a sort of rope
matting, in which he describes two eye-pointed, thread-carrying,
perforating needles, each held in a reciprocating needle bar, and
designed to unite several small ropes laid parallel, by a reciprocating
movement.
A German publication, the _Kunst_ and _Generbe Blatt_, for 1817, and
_Karmarsch’s History of Technology_, made mention of a sewing machine
invented by one Mr. Joseph Madersperger of Vienna, formerly from
Kuefstein in the Tyrol, and for which he received royal letters patent
in 1814. From these descriptions it appears Madersperger used a needle
pointed at both ends, and the eye in the centre, invented many years
before by Weisenthal, as above stated, which was moved vertically up and
down, piercing alternately the top and bottom of the stuff, and which
carried a short thread, enough to make about one hundred and thirty
stitches, which machine was driven by a crank and handle, on which
sewing was made of many different shaped forms, by slight changes, and
which sewed with far greater accuracy and rapidity than hand work. The
inventor was striving to simplify the machine, but to what extent it had
been used or had been improved, or what finally became of it, does not
appear. Yet it is a bit of evidence showing that Germany came next to
England in the earlier ideas, conceptions of, and struggles after a
sewing machine.
France then entered the list, and it was in 1830 that Barthelmy
Thimonnier there produced and patented a sewing machine, which he
continued to improve and to further patent in 1848 and in 1850 in
France, England, and the United States. The Thimonnier resembled in some
prominent respects the machine that had been described in the Saint
patent, but unlike Saint’s, it was reduced to successful practice, and
possessed some points in common with more modern machines. These were
the flat cloth plate, vertical post, overhung arm, vertically
reciprocating needle, and continuous thread. The crochet or barbed
needle was worked by a treadle, and upon pushing the needle down through
the cloth, it there caught a thread from a carrier, carried the loop to
and laid it upon the upper surface of the cloth. Again descending, it
brought up another loop, enchained it with the one last made, making a
chain stitch, consisting of a series of loops on the upper side.
Thimonnier made quite a large number of machines, constructed mostly of
wood, and which were used to make army clothing at Paris. They were best
adapted to work on leather and in embroidering. They were so far
successful as to arouse the jealousy and fear of the workmen and working
women, and, as in the case of Hargreaves, Jacquard, and others, a mob
broke into his shop, destroyed his machines, ruined his business, and he
died penniless in 1857.
In the meantime an English patent, No. 8948, of May 4, 1841, had been
issued to Newton and Archbold for a machine for embroidering the backs
of gloves, having an eye-pointed needle, worked by a vibrating lever,
and adapted to carry a thread through the back of the glove, held on a
frame--the frame and glove moving together after each stitch.
The germs of inventions often develop and fructify simultaneously in
distant places, without, so far as any one can ascertain, the slightest
mutual knowledge or co-operation on the part of the separate inventors.
Between 1832 and 1834, while Thimonnier was in the midst of his early
struggles in Paris, Walter Hunt was inventing a sewing machine in New
York, which he completed at that time and on which he sewed one or two
garments. But as it was experimental in form, and Hunt was full of other
inventions and schemes, he put it aside, and it probably would never
have been heard of had not Elias Howe of Massachusetts, ten years after
Hunt had abandoned his invention, but without knowledge of Hunt’s
efforts, made the first practical successful sewing machine for
commercial purposes the world had ever seen, obtained his patent, and
made claims therein which covered not only his special form of
improvements, but Hunt’s old device as well.
Howe’s patent was issued September 10, 1846. In that he claimed to be
the first and original inventor of “A sewing machine, constructed and
operated to form a seam, substantially as described.”
Also “The combination of a needle and a shuttle, or equivalent, and
holding surfaces, constructed and operating substantially as described.”
Also “The combination of holding surfaces with a baster plate or
equivalent, constructed and operating substantially as described.”
Also “A grooved and eye-pointed needle, constructed and adapted for
rapid machine sewing substantially as described.”
When the machine commenced to be a practical success this patent was
infringed, and when Howe sued upon it a few years after its issue, it
woke up Hunt and all other alleged prior inventors; and all prior
patents and publications the world over, relating to sewing machines,
were raked up to defeat Howe’s claims.
But the courts, after long deliberation, held that although, so far as
Hunt was concerned he had without doubt made a machine in many respects
like Howe’s machine, that it had a curved, eye-pointed needle similar to
Howe’s operated by a vibrating arm and going through the cloth, a
shuttle carrying the thread that passed through the loop made by the
needle thread, thus making a lock stitch by drawing it up to one side of
the cloth, and that this machine did, to a certain extent, sew, yet that
it ended in an experiment, was laid aside, destroyed, and never
perfected nor used so as to give to the public the knowledge and benefit
of a completed invention, and was not therefore an anticipation in the
eye of the law of Howe’s completed, more successful and patented
machine.
Public successful use is the fact in many cases which alone establishes
the title of an inventor, when all other tests fail. And this is right
in one sense, as the laws of all countries in respect to protection by
patents for inventions are based upon the primary condition of benefit
to society. This benefit is not derived from the inventor who hides his
completed invention for years in his closet, or throws it on a dust
heap. As to previous patents and publications, some were not published
before Howe’s inventions were made, and others were insufficient in
showing substantially the same machine and mode of operation. And as to
prior use abroad, it was not regarded under the law of his country as
competent evidence.
Seldom have the lives of great inventors presented a more striking
example of the vicissitudes, the despair, and the final triumphs of
fortune, which are commonly their lot, than is shown in the case of
Howe. A machinist with a wife and children to support, his health too
feeble to earn hardly a scanty living, he watches his faithful wife ply
her constant needle, and wonders why a machine cannot be made to do the
work. The idea cannot be put aside, and with such poor aids as he can
command he commences his task.
At last, amid the trials of bitter poverty, he brings his invention to
that stage in which he induces a friend to advance some money, by the
promise of a share in the future patent, and thereby gains a temporary
home for his family and a garret for his workshop. Day after day and
night after night he labours, and finally, in April, 1845, the rather
crude machine is completed, and two woollen suits of clothing are sewed
thereon, one for a friend, and one for himself.
Then came the effort to make more machines and place them on the market.
People admired the machines as a curiosity, but none were induced to buy
them or help him pecuniarily. Finally, in September, 1846, he obtained
his patent, but by that time his best friends had become discouraged,
and he was compelled to return with his family to his father’s house in
Cambridge, Mass. To earn his bread he sought and found employment on a
railway locomotive. By some means his brother sold one of his machines
to Mr. William Thomas, a corset maker of London, and Howe was induced to
go there to make stays, and his machines. He took his wife and children
with him. The arrangement made with his employer was not such as to
enable him to keep his family there, and he soon sent them home.
Unable to sell his machines, he was soon reduced to want. He pawned his
patent and his last machine, and procured money to return to New York,
where he arrived penniless in 1849. He then learned that his wife was
dying of consumption at Cambridge. He was compelled to wait until money
could be sent him to pay his passage home, and reached there just before
his wife’s death.
He then learned that during his absence his patent and machine had
attracted attention, that others had taken the matter up, added their
improvements to his machines, and that many in various places were being
made and sold which were infringements of his patent. A great demand for
sewing machines had sprung up. He induced friends to again help him.
Suits were commenced which, although bitterly fought for six years, were
finally successful.
Now fortune turned her smiling face upon him. Medals and diplomas, the
Cross of the Legion of Honour, and millions of money became his. When
the great civil war broke out in 1861, he entered the army as a private
soldier, and advanced the money to pay the regiment to which he
belonged, when the Government paymaster had been long delayed. His life
was saddened by the fact that his wife had not lived to share his
fortune. He died in Brooklyn, New York, October 3, 1867, in the midst of
life, riches, and honour, at the comparatively early age of forty-eight.
In referring to the early inventors of sewing machines in America who
entered the field about the same time with Howe, mention should be made
of J. J. Greenough and George Corliss, who had machines patented
respectively in 1842 and 1843, for sewing leather, with double pointed
needles; and the running stitch sewing machine used for basting, made
and patented by B. W. Bean in 1843. About this time, both in England and
America, machines had been devised for sewing lengths of calico and
other cloths together, previous to bleaching, dyeing or printing. The
edges of the cloths were first crimped or fluted and then sewed by a
running stitch.
The decade of 1849-1859, immediately following the development of the
Howe machine, was the greatest in the century for producing those
successful sewing machines which were the foundation of the art,
established a new industrial epoch, and converted Hood’s “Song of the
Shirt” into a lament commemorative of the miseries of a slavish but
dying industry.
It was during that decade that, in the United States, Batcheller
invented the perpetual feed for moving the cloth horizontally under and
past the needle. In Howe’s the cloth could be sewed but a certain
distance at a time, and then the machine must be readjusted for a new
length. Then Blodgett and Lerow imparted to the eye-pointed needle what
is called the “dip motion,”--the needle being made to descend completely
through the material, then to rise a little to form a loop; the shuttle
then entered the loop, the needle descended again a short distance,
while the shuttle passed through the loop of the needle thread, and then
the needle was raised above the cloth.
It was then that Allen B. Wilson invented the still more famous
“four-motion feed” for feeding the cloth forward. He employed a bar
having saw like teeth on one edge which projected up through a slotted
plate and engaged the cloth. He then first moved the bar forward
carrying the cloth; second, dropped the bar; third, moved it back under
the plate; and fourth, raised it to its first position to again engage
the cloth. These motions were so timed with the movement of the needle
and so quickly done that the cloth was carried forward while the needle
was raised, the passage and quick action of the needle was not
interfered with, and the feeding and the sewing seem to be simultaneous.
The intermittent grasp and feed of the cloth were hardly perceptible,
and yet it permitted the cloth to be turned to make a curved seam.
Wilson also invented the rotating hook which catches the loop of the
upper thread, and drops a disk bobbin through it to form the stitch. The
shuttle was thus dispensed with, and an entirely new departure was made
in the art. These with other improvements made up the celebrated
“Wheeler and Wilson” machine.
Now also appeared “the Singer,” consisting chiefly of the invention of
T. M. Singer. He improved the operation of the needle bar, devised a
roughened feed wheel, as a substitute for Wilson’s serrated bar,
introduced a spring presser foot, alongside the needle, to hold the work
down in proper position while permitting it to be moved forward or in
any other direction. A “friction pad” was also placed between the cloth
seam and the spool, to prevent the thread from kinking or twisting under
the point of the descending needle. He was the first to give the shuttle
an additional forward movement after it had once stopped, to draw the
stitch tight,--such operation being taken while the feed moved the cloth
in the reverse direction, and while, the needle completed its upward
motion, so that the two threads were simultaneously drawn, and finally a
spring guide upon the shuttle to control the slack of the thread, and
prevent its catching by the needle.
By reason of these improvements it is thought by many that Singer was
the first to furnish the people with a successful operating and
practical sewing machine. At any rate, the world at last so highly
appreciated his machines, that it lifted him from poverty to an estate
which was valued at between eight and ten millions of dollars at the
time of his death in 1875. Singer was also the first to invent the
“ruffler,” a machine for ruffling or gathering cloth, and a device which
laid an embroidering thread upon the surface of the cloth under the
needle thread.
The “Grover and Baker” another celebrated American machine, was invented
by William O. Grover and William E. Baker in 1851. By certain changes
they made in the thread carrier and connections, they were enabled to
make a double looped stitch. This required more thread, but the stitch
made was unexcelled in strength.
And so the work went on, from step to step, and from the completion of
one machine after another, until when the Centennial Exhibition came to
be held in Philadelphia in 1876, a fine array of excellent sewing
machines was had, from the United States, principally, but also those of
inventors and manufacturers in Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany,
Belgium, Sweden and Denmark.
Up to that time about twenty-two hundred patents had been granted in the
United States, all of which, with the exception of a very few, were for
inventions made within the preceding quarter of a century. And during
the last quarter of the century about five thousand more United States
patents have been issued for devices in this art. This number includes
many, of course, to inventors of other countries. When it is remembered
that these patents were issued only after an examination in each case as
to its novelty, and although slight as may have been the changes or
additions, yet substantially different they must have been in nearly all
respects, it may to some extent be realized how great and incessant has
been the exercise of invention in this useful class of machines.
On this point of the exercise of invention in sewing machines, as well
as on some others growing out of the subject, Knight, writing in his
_Mechanical Dictionary_, about twenty years ago, remarks: “If required
to name the three subjects on which the most extraordinary versatility
of invention has been expended, the answer would be without hesitation,
the _sewing machine_, _reaping machine_ and _breech-loading firearm_.
Each of these has thousands of patents, and although each is the growth
of the last forty years, it is only during the last twenty-five years
that they have filled any notable place in the world. It was then only
by a combination of talents that any of these three important inventions
was enabled to achieve remarkable success. The sewing machine previous
to 1851, made without the admirable division of labour which is a
feature in all well conducted factories, was hard to make, and
comparatively hard to run. The system of _assembling_, first introduced
in the artillery service of France by General Gribeauval in 1765 and
brought to proximate perfection by Colonel Colt in the manufacture of
the revolver at Hartford, Connecticut, has economised material and time,
improved the quality as well as cheapened the product. There is to-day,
and in fact has been for some years, more actual invention in the
special machines for _making_ sewing machines than in the machines
themselves. The assembling system, that is, making the component parts
of an article in distinct pieces of pattern, so as to be
interchangeable, and the putting them together, is the only system of
order. How else should the Providence Tool Company execute their order
for 600,000 rifles for the Turkish Government? How otherwise could the
Champion Harvesting Machine Company of Springfield, Ohio, turn out an
equipped machine every four minutes each working day of ten hours? Or,
to draw the illustration from the subject in hand, how by any other than
the nicest arrangement of detail can the Singer Sewing Machine Company
make 6,000 machines per week at Elizabethport, New Jersey?”
When sewing machines were so far completed as to be easily run by a hand
crank, or treadle, the application of power to run them singly, or in
series, and to run machines of a larger and more powerful description,
soon naturally followed--so that garment-making factories of all kinds,
whether of cloth or leather, have been established in many countries--in
which steam or electric power is utilised as the motor, and thus human
strain and labour saved, while the amount of production is increased.
No radical changes in the principle or mode of operation of sewing
machines have been made in the last twenty-five years; but the efforts
of inventors have been directed to improve the previously established
types, and to devise attachments of all kinds, by the aid of which
anything that can be sewed, can be sewed upon a machine. Tucking,
ruffling, braiding, cording, hemming, turning, plaiting, gaging, and
other attachment devices are numerous. Inventors have rivalled one
another in originating new forms of stitches. About seventy-five
distinct stitches have been devised, each of which must of course be
produced by a change in mechanism.
When sewing machines were in their infancy, and confined to sewing
straight seams and other plain sewing, it was predicted that it was not
possible to take from the hands of women the making of fine embroidery
from intricate patterns, or the working of button-holes, and the
destruction of the quilting party was not apprehended. Nor was it
expected that human hands could be dispensed with in the cutting out of
garments. And yet these things have followed. Machines, by a beautiful
but complex system of needles, working to some extent on the Jacquard
system of perforated card boards, and by the help of pneumatic or
electrical power, will work out on most delicate cloths embroidery of
exquisite patterns.
The button-hole machines will take the garment, cut the button-hole at
the desired point, and either, as in one class of machines, by moving
the fabric about the stitch-forming mechanism, or, as in another class,
moving the stitch-forming mechanism about the button-hole, complete the
delicate task in the nicest and most effective manner.
Quilting machines have their own bees, consisting of a guide which
regulates the spaces between the seams, and adjusts them to any width,
and a single needle, or gang of needles, the latter under the control of
cams which force the needles to quilt certain desired patterns.
And as to cutting, it is only necessary to place the number of pieces of
fabric desired to be cut in cutting dies, or upon a table, and over them
an “over-board” cutter, which comprises a reciprocating band-saw, or a
rotary knife, all quick, keen and delicate, in an apparatus guided by
hand, in order to produce in the operation a great pile of the parts
formerly so slowly produced, one at a time, by scissors or shears.
If men were contented with that single useful garment of some savages, a
blanket with a slit cut in it for the passage of the head and neck, not
only would a vast portion of the joys and sorrows of social philosophy
have been avoided, but an immense strain and trouble on the part of
inventors of the century would have been obviated.
But man’s propensity for wearing clothes has led to the invention of
every variety of tools for making them faster, cheaper, and better.
No machine has yet been invented that will take the place of the deft
fingers of women in certain lines of ornamentation, as in final
completion and trimming of their hats. The airy and erratic demands of
fashion are too nimble to be supplied by the slow processes of
machinery, although the crude ground-work, the frame, has been shaped,
moulded and sewed by machines; and women themselves have invented and
patented _bonnet frames_ and _patterns_.
But no such difficulty in invention has occurred in _hat-making_ for
men. From the treating and cutting of the raw material, from the outer
bound edge, and the band about the body, to the tip of the crown, a
machine may be found for performing each separate step. Especially is
this the case with the hard felt and the high silk hats.
Seventy-five years ago the making of hats was by hand processes. Now in
all hat factories machines are employed, and the ingenuity displayed in
the construction of some of them is marvellous. It is exceedingly
difficult to find many of the old hand implements existing even as
relics.
Wool and fur each has its special machines for turning it into a hat.
The operations of cleaning and preparing the material, felting the fur,
when fur is used, shaping the hat body, and then the brim, washing,
dying, hardening and stiffening it, stretching, smoothing, finishing,
sizing, lining, trimming, all are now done by machines devised for each
special purpose. A description of these processes would be interesting,
but even in an abbreviated form would fill a book.
The wonderful things done in the manufacture of boots and shoes and
rubber goods will be referred to in subsequent chapters.
Although it was old from time immemorial to colour cotton goods, and the
calico power printing cylinder was invented and introduced into England
in the latter part of the 18th century and began to turn out at once
immense quantities of decorated calicoes and chintz, yet _figured_ woven
goods were a novelty sixty years ago.
In 1834, Mr. Bonjeau, a prominent wool manufacturer in Sedan, France,
and an _élève_ of the Polytechnic School, conceived the idea of
modifying the plain cloths, universally made, by the union of different
tints and patterns. This he was enabled to do by the Jacquard loom. The
manufacture of fancy woven cloths, cassimeres, worsted coatings, etc.,
of great beauty, combined with strength of fabrication, followed in all
civilised countries, but their universal adoption as wearing apparel was
due in part to the lessening of the expense in the making them into
garments by the sewing machine.
As to the effect of modern inventions on wearing apparel, it is not
apparent that they were necessary to supply the wardrobes of the rich.
The Solomons and the Queen of Sheba of ancient days, and all their small
and great successors in the halls of Fortune, have had their rich robes,
their purple and their fine linen, whether made in one way or another;
but modern inventions have banished the day when the poor man’s hard
labour of a long day will not suffice to bring his wife a yard of
cheapest cloth. Toil, then, as hard as he and his poor wife and children
might, their united labours would hardly suffice to clothe them in more
than the poorly-dressed skins of animals and the coarsest of homespun
wool.
Now, cottons and calicoes are made and sold at a profit for three cents
a yard; and the poorest woman in the land may appear in neat,
comfortable and tasteful dress, the entire cost of material and labor of
which need not exceed fifty cents. The comfort, respectability and
dignity of a large family, which depend so much on clothes, may be
ensured at the cost of a few dollars.
And as to the condition of the sewing woman, trying and poor as it is in
many instances, yet she can earn more money with less physical
exhaustion than under the old system.
The epoch of good clothes for the people, with all that it means in the
fight upward from degradation, began in this century, and it was due to
the inventions which have been above outlined.