Probably due to the termination of many of the major patents, there were 124 factories in 1880, but the yearly product value remained at sixteen million dollars. The 1890 census reports only 66 factories with a yearly production of a little less than the earlier decade. But by 1900, the yearly production of a like number of factories had reached a value of over twenty-one million, of which four and a half million dollars worth were exported annually. The total value of American sewing machines exported from 1860 to 1900 was approximately ninety million dollars. The manufacture of sewing machines made a significant contribution to the economic development of 19th-century America.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] Eighth Census, 1860, Manufactures, Clothing (United States Census Office, published Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C., 1865).
[74] Eighty Years of Progress of the United States (New York, 1861), vol. 2, pp. 413-429.
[75] George Gifford, “Argument of [George] Gifford in Favor of the Howe Application for Extension of Patent” (New York: United States Patent Office, 1860).
[76] Op. cit. (footnote 34).
[77] Eighth Census, 1860, Manufactures (United States Census Office, published Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C., 1865), “Women’s Ready-Made Clothing,” p. 83.
[78] Ibid., p. 64.
[79] National Archives, Record Group 92, Office of the Quartermaster General, Clothing Book, Letters Sent, volume 17.
[80] The author wishes to acknowledge the valuable help of Mr. Donald Kloster of the Smithsonian Institution’s Division of Military History for the preceding four references and related information.