of production. While in colonial days every woman had sewed all the clothes for the members of her family, the rise of industry and commerce led to the establishment of the ready-made clothing business, and it was this particular line of development that made women wage-workers in this particular industry. When a young girl who was skillful with the needle could earn more by sewing shirts for a merchant than she could possibly save by making all the clothes for her father and brothers, she naturally ceased to be an individual producer for her family and became a social producer, a wage-worker. Her father and brothers, adapting themselves to the same industrial change, ceased to depend upon their women folk for the making of their clothes and began to buy them ready-made. Division of labor went hand in hand with the change from individual to social production. Where a woman formerly had made all kinds of clothing to meet the requirements of her family, she now specialized on one particular garment, making only shirts or vests or whatever her particular line might be. As early as the latter part of the eighteenth century some women were engaged in the manufacture of ready-made clothing to be traded to the Indians or to be sold to southern planters for their slaves; but it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the industry began to assume important dimensions. Then it developed rapidly and by 1835 had become a flourishing business.
From the beginning the garment trades were centered in the large cities, and from the beginning they were among the most poorly paid of all occupations resorted to by women. We have seen that in the textile trades the early conditions were favorable and the wages comparatively high because the demand for operatives exceeded the supply. No such favorable conditions ever existed in the sewing trades. Every woman knew how to ply a needle, and the coarser kinds of sewing required practically no skill and experience. 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
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