FIG. 147.—MCKAY SHOE SEWING MACHINE.
A buttonhole does not strike the average person as a thing of any importance whatever. The needlewoman, however, who has to patiently stitch around and form the buttonholes, knows differently, and when this needlewoman, working in the great shirt factories and shoe factories, is confronted with the many millions of buttonholes in collars, cuffs, shirts and shoes, the great amount of this painstaking and nerve destroying labor becomes appalling. For cheapening the cost of buttonholes, and reducing the hand labor, various buttonhole machines and attachments to sewing machines have been devised. Patents Nos. 36,616 and 36,617, to Humphrey, Oct. 7, 1862, covered one of the earliest forms, but the Reece buttonhole machine, which is specially devised for the work, is one of the most modern and successful. It was patented April 26, 1881, Sept. 21, 1886, and Aug. 20, 1895. These machines mark an important departure, which consists in working the buttonhole by moving the stitch forming mechanism about the buttonhole, instead of moving the fabric. An illustration of the machine is given in [Fig. 148]. Upon this machine 10,010 button holes have been made in nine hours and fifty minutes. The machine first cuts the buttonhole, then transfers it to the stitching devices, which stitch and bar the buttonhole, finishing it entirely in an automatic manner. The saving involved to the manufacturer by this machine over the hand method is several hundred per cent., but the relief to the needlewoman is of far greater consequence.
FIG. 148.—REECE BUTTONHOLE MACHINE.
Many striking applications of the sewing machine to various kinds of work have been made. A recent one is the automatic power carpet sewing machine, made and sold by the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was patented by E. B. Allen in 1894. This machine in general appearance resembles a miniature elevated railroad. It consists of an elevated track about thirty-six feet long, sustained every three or four feet upon standards, and having clamping jaws, which hold together the upper edges of the two lengths of carpet to be sewed together. A compact little stitching apparatus, not larger than a tea-pot, is actuated by an endless belt from an electric motor at one end. The little machine runs along and stitches together the upper edges of the suspended carpet lengths, and as it crawls along at its work, it strikingly reminds one of the movements of a squirrel along the top of a rail fence. This machine will sew five yards of seam every minute, fastening together evenly and strongly ten yards of carpet, and entirely dispensing with all hand labor in this roughest and most trying of all fabrics.
Probably no organized piece of machinery has ever been so systematically exploited, so thoroughly advertised, so persistently canvassed, and so extensively sold as the sewing machine. With their main central offices, their branch offices, sub-agencies and traveling canvassers in wagons, every city, village, hamlet, and farmhouse has been actively besieged, and with the enticing system of payment by instalments there is scarcely a home too humble to be without its sewing machine. The retail price of sewing machines bears no proper relation to their cost, but this price to the consumer results from the liberal commissions to agents, and the expensive methods of canvassing. In the early days of the sewing machine its sales were chiefly for family use, but this is now no longer the case. While almost every family owns a sewing machine, it is only brought into requisition for finer and special varieties of work, since nearly all the clothing of men, women and children can now be purchased ready made, at a price much less than the cost of the material and the labor of making it up. A man to-day buys a ready-made shirt for fifty cents, which fifty years ago would have cost him $2. This has largely transferred the sphere of action of the sewing machine from the family to the factory. Great factories now make ready-made clothing for men, women and children, shirts, collars and cuffs, shoes, hats, caps, awnings, tents, sails, bags, flags, banners, corsets, gloves, pocketbooks, harness, saddlery, rubber goods, etc., and all these industries are founded upon the sewing machine, which may be seen in long rows beside the factory walls, busily supplying the demand of the world. With this transition in the sewing machine foot treadles are no longer relied on, but the machines are run by power from countershafts. This, in turn, has opened up possibilities of much higher speed and greater efficiency in the machine. Inventors have found, however, that high speed is handicapped with certain limitations. Beyond a certain speed the needle gets hot from friction, which burns off the thread and draws the temper. Cams and springs, moreover, are not positive enough in action, as the resilience of the spring does not act quickly enough, and so more positive gearings, such as eccentrics and cranks, must be employed. Despite these difficulties, however, the modern factory machine has raised the speed of the old-time sewing machine from a few hundred stitches a minute to three and four thousand stitches a minute.
The United States is the home of the sewing machine, and New York City is the center of the industry, probably 90 per cent. of the sewing machine trade being managed and handled there. German manufacturers are making great efforts to compete in this field, but American machines are generally regarded as the best in the world.
Among those prominently interested in the machine in its early days were Orlando B. Potter and the law firm of Jordan & Clarke. The latter were attorneys representing some of the prominent inventors in litigation, and in this way Mr. Edward Clarke became interested in the business, and it was he who in 1856 instituted the system of selling on the instalment plan. For some years before his death Mr. Clarke was the president of the Singer Company.
Recent statistics in relation to the sewing machine industry are difficult to obtain, partly by reason of the great extent and ramifications of the business, and partly by reason of the unwillingness of the larger companies to give out data for publication. At the Patent Centennial in Washington, in 1891, Ex-Commissioner of Patents Butterworth made the statement that “Cæsar conquered Gaul with a force numerically less than was employed in inventing and perfecting the parts of the sewing machine.” The great Singer Company, with headquarters at New York, operates not only a factory at Elizabethport, N. J., employing 5,000 men, but also other factories in Europe and Canada, the one at Kilbowie, Scotland, employing 6,000 men. Of the total of 13,500,000 machines made by this company from 1853 to the end of 1896, nearly 6,000,000 have been made in factories located abroad, but directly controlled and managed by the New York office. It is stated that the present output of the American factory of the Singer Company amounts to over 11,000 weekly, or more than half a million annually. Although so many sewing machines are made abroad, the exports from the United States for 1899 amounted to $3,264,344.