What the Workers Produce
All sorts of wearing apparel, from children’s rompers to opera cloaks, make up the product of these industries, which are naturally divided into two classes—those making men’s garments and those making women’s. The two groups of industries are sharply differentiated, and in each group processes are highly specialized.
Men’s clothes are made in three separate types of shops—the coat shop, the pants shop, and the vest shop.
Women’s garment trades fall generally into the following groups:
(1) Custom tailoring.
(2) Manufacture of cloaks, suits, and skirts.
(3) Manufacture of dresses and waists.
(4) Manufacture of misses’ and children’s dresses.
(5) Manufacture of muslin underwear.
(6) Manufacture of house dresses, kimonos, etc.
About 77 per cent of the workers in the cloak, suit, and skirt industry are men; a smaller percentage being found in the other groups.
Garments made by custom tailors are usually of the highest grade in women’s clothing, and include cloaks, suits, opera cloaks, evening gowns, waists, and dresses. These tailors make up garments on individual orders, allowing customers to select materials and designs.
Manufacturers in the cloak, suit, and skirt industry make a number of models, but their product is usually limited to cloaks, suits, skirts, one-piece woolen or worsted dresses, and linen suits and skirts. Dresses and waists cover a wide range of many styles for evening wear, street wear, and sporting uses. Under muslins, misses’ and children’s dresses, house dresses and kimonos, dressing sacques and aprons are made in separate establishments largely by women workers.