THE REASON WHY.
There is a valid reason for everything in this world, whether we are
able to find it or not, and for all this wonderful growth and
Aladdin-like success there is a reason too. In 1872, when the great
Chicago fire had impoverished thousands of the residents of that city,
the Relief Committee undertook to furnish sewing machines to all the
needy sewing-girls who might apply. Each girl was permitted to choose
her machine from among the sixteen different kinds kept by the
Committee. The total number of women who took machines was 2,944, and of
this number 2,427 chose Singer machines, and the other 517 women
distributed their choice among the fifteen other kinds of machines.
These poor women expected to earn their living on these machines, and
there must have been some reason why such an overwhelming majority of
them took “Singers” instead of machines of other make, each of which was
loudly proclaimed by its manufacturers to be the “best in the world.”
The Singer Machines have been awarded the first premium over all others
more than two hundred times, at great World’s Fairs, at State Fairs, and
at County Fairs in every part of the United States.
As we have before stated, three-quarters of all the sewing machines sold
throughout the world in 1879 were “Singers,” and there must be a reason
for that. When any one style of machine, used in millions of homes,
leads all the other kinds to such an extent as that, there must be some
way of accounting for it all, and if our readers choose to read on they
will shortly discover why.
An interesting fact in this connection was related to the writer
recently by Mr. Galland, a large manufacturer of ladies’ garments, whose
factories are located at Scranton, Pennsylvania. The Gallands use
several hundred sewing machines in their factories, operating them by
steam. They had machines of many different makers originally, but
gradually, as these machines wore out, had been replacing them with
“Singers.” The reason assigned was that they had noticed, from time to
time, that when a Singer machine became vacant, the girls who worked on
machines of other kinds were clamorous to obtain the Singer and leave
their own; and, when machines of other make were vacant, the girls were
full of excuses for not taking them, but seemed desirous of waiting for
the next vacancy, in hope of getting a “Singer.” These observations led
to inquiry from their master mechanic, who explained that the girls
working on “Singers” lost less time in repairing, and in those peculiar
sewing machine “fits,” than the girls who operated other machines. At
this point the pay rolls were consulted by the inquiring proprietors,
and there the whole secret lay exposed to view; for the work was paid
for by the piece, and the rolls showed that the girls operating Singer
machines were earning from one dollar to two-and-a-half dollars a week
more than the other operators!
[Illustration:
TESTING THE MACHINES.
]
Here then is the open secret of the Singer Machine’s favor with the
people. It is so simple that a child can understand it; it is so strong
that a bungler can hardly get it out of order, and every part (as we
have seen) is made with such scrupulous exactness out of the best
materials, fitted in its place to the _thousandth part of an inch_, and
tested and re-tested so many times before it is permitted to leave the
factory, that it does not get the “fits” which try a woman’s patience,
destroy the fruits of her labor, and consume her time in vexing attempts
to coax the machine back to duty. A gentleman wrote to the Company quite
recently that he had a Singer Machine bought twenty-three years ago, and
in use all that time, which sews perfectly to-day.
Many people sit bewildered by the immensity of the Sewing Machine trade,
and wonder what becomes of all the machines. The answer is very simple.
If the trade is large, the world is larger still. Carefully prepared
statistics show that the entire world contains at the present time not
over six million sewing machines, good, bad, and indifferent. The United
States alone contain nearly ten million families. But fully one million
machines are not in homes but in factories, operated by steam, driven at
the highest possible speed, and consequently wearing out in a few years.
Therefore, if all the machines in the world were brought here they would
supply only half the families of our own land. The civilized countries
of the globe, where sewing machines are now being introduced, have over
seventy million families, not including China, Japan and India, where a
trade is being rapidly developed. In a word, the sewing machine is now
being offered to a population of not far from a hundred million
families, and the world contains not more than six per cent. of the
number of machines necessary to supply them, without considering the
enormous consumption of machines in shops and factories.
It is plain, from these figures, that great as the trade has grown from
the small beginning, it is yet in its infancy. Nevertheless, it has
proved, except in a few instances, one of the most hazardous of
enterprises. Probably as much money has been lost in the sewing machine
business as has been made. The introduction of steam into manufactures
and commerce has wrought changes so marked and rapid that none but keen
and careful students of their own times could keep track of them, and
thousands of good men have gone down because they had not considered the
new elements introduced, particularly into manufacturing industries, by
steam and improved machinery. These have brought in a subdivision of
labor which our forefathers scarcely dreamed about, and which we have
seen in our trip through the factory. It is almost incredible what speed
a mechanic acquires whose task consists in performing one single brief
operation, and repeating it over and over a hundred times an hour for
months and years. We watched, with wondering interest, a man varnishing
the under surface of the machine bed-plate. The space to be varnished
was about a square foot in area, filled with obstructions and angles,
every one of which must be touched with his brush. The operation was
reduced to an exact science. His left hand caught the machine arm in
just such a place every time; his brush went into the pot in just such a
way; just so many sweeps it gave this way, exactly so many that way, and
with precisely such a toss every time it was spun across the table to
his assistant. Spring and summer, fall and winter, that man did nothing
but wipe that brush just so many times across that square foot of iron,
and he did it with a precision and rapidity that was marvelous. The
quickest painter we ever saw could not do one machine while he would
finish five.
[Illustration:
PUNCHING THE NEEDLE EYE.
]
And this is but a type of several hundred different operations into
which labor is subdivided here, and which, by such subdivision, is so
cheapened that employers whose capital and business will warrant it, can
pay labor a good price and yet drive out competitors who are without
large capital, large business and skill to use the advantages which are
thus available. On this rock many sewing machine manufacturers have
split without, perhaps, knowing that it was only the lack of a large
demand for their machines, and the absence of a large and well-directed
capital which wrecked them. In the last few years over fifty sewing
machine companies have failed, and swamped large nominal capital in the
aggregate.
The lesson is almost too obvious to justify the formulating of a
prophecy that the sewing machine business of the future is likely to
concentrate in a comparatively few corporations, whose skill, capital
and facilities will be sufficient to bring out the best machines, made
of the best materials; paying their skilled operatives liberal wages,
and yet enabled, by this subdivision of labor, to offer them to the
people at a price within the reach of all.
Such is the story of the Sewing Machine from its paltry and inauspicious
beginning. Such were the struggles and trials of the man to whose genius
the world owes the vast, incalculable, and forever accumulating benefits
of this great invention. And when we try to conceive what the world
would be to-day if the Sewing Machine and all its concomitant blessings
were suddenly removed from among its inhabitants, we look at this record
of his achievements and rich triumphs, and rejoice that the common
experience of inventors was not realized in the Sewing Machine
invention, but that in this instance, at least, a great mechanician
lived to see his
──┤Genius Rewarded├──
[Illustration:
SINGER’S ORIGINAL MACHINE.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
18 “_cat_ the first ship that “_eat_ the first ship that
should cross the Atlantic by should cross the Atlantic by
steam!” steam!”
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.