Sewing Machine

SEWING MACHINE

SEWING MACHINE. After almost one hundred years of trials, failures, and partial successes in Europe, the sewing machine in its practical form evolved as a mid-nineteenth-century American invention. Elias Howe, Jr., usually credited as the inventor, was not the first person to patent an American sewing machine. John J. Greenough, Benjamin W. Bean, and several others patented ideas for sewing machines in the early 1840s, before Howe was granted the first patent for the two-thread, lockstitch sewing machine in 1846. Howe's machine was far from adaptable for commercial production, and he met with little success in America at the time. The machine stitched only straight seams for the length of the baster plate, which then had to be reset. Taking his machine to England, Howe was unable to adapt it to British manufacturing needs, and he finally sold the patent rights in that country to William Thomas, a corset manufacturer.

When Howe returned home, he found that several other inventors had entered the field. John Bachelder had patented a continuous-feed, vertical-needle machine in 1849; Isaac M. Singer had used earlier ideas with his heart-shaped cam to move the needle and received a patent

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in 1851; and A. B. Wilson patented the stationary rotary bobbin in 1852 and the four-motion feed in 1854. The principal technical problems had been solved, but no single manufacturer could make a practical machine without being sued for infringement of patent by another. In 1856, Orlando B. Potter, lawyer and president of the Grover and Baker Sewing Machine Company, suggested the idea of pooling the patents. This was accomplished, but each company maintained itself separately, and there was competition in the manufacturing and improving of the various machines. The four members of the "sewing-machine combination" were Elias Howe, Jr.; Wheeler and Wilson Manufacturing Company; I. M. Singer and Company; and Grover and Baker Sewing Machine Company. All four members had to agree on which companies would be licensed to build sewing machines, and a fee of fifteen per machine was charged. Howe received five dollars of this amount, a portion was held in reserve for possible litigation costs, and the money left was divided equally among the four parties. In 1860, the fee was dropped to seven and Howe's share to one dollar. In 1867 Howe's renewed patent expired, and only the three companies were left. The combination remained active until 1877, when all the major patents expired. Although the combination had been accused of retarding the development of the sewing machine, hundreds of thousands of good machines were produced in the 1850s and 1860s.

The sewing machines were used by manufacturers for shirts, dresses, aprons, cloaks, collars, and many other items. Details such as pleating and tucking could be produced by machine very quickly and were popularly added to many costumes. While the sewing machine revolutionized the ready-made garment industry, it produced mixed results for workers. It initially reduced the number of laborers required, and it attracted unskilled men into sectors of the garment industry formerly reserved for women. Already poorly paid, women who subcontracted piece work at home now bore the additional expense of purchasing or renting equipment, and unscrupulous subcontractors often deducted payments on machines from meager wages, causing women to default. Contractors would then repossess the machine and "sell" it to the next job applicant. Those who could not afford a machine sought work in large shops where their work habits and productivity could be tightly controlled. By 1900 tents, awnings, sails, books, umbrellas, mattresses, hose, trunks, shoes, and flags were all stitched by machine.

The sewing machine was the first widely advertised consumer product. Because of the high initial cost of the machine, the Singer company introduced the hire-purchase plan, and installment buying placed a sewing machine in almost every home. Competition for this ready market encouraged more and more manufacturers to enter the field. At the height of this competition in the 1870s, there were well over two hundred American sewing machine companies. But foreign competition began to invade the field in the twentieth century. The high cost of skilled labor in America made it difficult to compete. Nevertheless, ingenious sewing machines are still in production, including those that "sew" without thread, but most of the machines produced in the United States are highly specialized manufacturing machines.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bissell, Don. The First Conglomerate: 145 Years of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Brunswick, Maine: Audenreed Press, 1999.

Brandon, Ruth. Singer and the Sewing Machine: A Capitalist Romance. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1977.

Brewer, Priscilla J. The Queen of Inventions. Pawtucket, R.I.: Slater Mill Historic Site, 1986.

Cooper, Grace R. The Sewing Machine: Its Invention and Development. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1976.

Godfrey, Frank P. An International History of the Sewing Machine. London: R. Hale, 1982.

Grace R. Cooper / l. t.

See also Clothing Industry ; Industrial Revolution ; International Ladies Garment Workers Union .