Employment in the garment trades is highly seasonal and is influenced by certain causes beyond control of the manufacturer. This irregularity of work is often a real hardship for employees. The busy seasons run from January through the spring months, and from August through the fall months. Some manufacturers, however, manage to keep workers busy 11 months during the year. Efforts have been made to equalize the work, seasonally, but nothing has been definitely accomplished so far. There is much greater irregularity of employment in the women’s garment trades than in the men’s. It often occurs that only one-half of those employed in the busy season in making women’s clothes are kept at work during the dull seasons.
Factors which influence this irregularity in employment are seasonal changes, changes in style, degree of specialization required, quality of product, and method of production. In the men’s garment industries, manufacturers often utilize the dull season for making up standard goods, such as blue serge suits, but makers of women’s clothes find style such a variable factor that they dare not make up stock much in advance of the season. Employment is more regularly distributed in the industries producing waists, skirts, and under muslins than it is in the cloak and suit industry.
An Immigrant’s Trade
Garment making has long been known as an immigrant’s trade. Before the war it absorbed annually approximately 10,000 immigrants. Irish, Germans, and Italians have all worked in considerable numbers in the clothing industries, but at present the Jews predominate, not only among the workers, but as well among those exercising controlling power.
Where the Work is Done
The work may be carried on, it has been said, in any place “where there are a half dozen machines and an ironing board.” But in some places large clothing factories have been built, though much of the work is done in medium-sized shops.
The clothing industries differ from other manufacturing industries in several particulars. They are highly localized. More than half of all the clothing manufactured in the United States is made in New York City. Choice of a home is, therefore, limited for the young man who enters any one of these industries. Other cities in which the industries flourish are Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Boston, Rochester, Chicago, and Cincinnati. Because of the congestion in New York some concerns have made attempts to move away from such crowded quarters, but the character of the industries requires just those things which are not found in rural districts. It is for one thing important to be near the labor supply and near the markets, both for buying materials and for selling goods. The prestige accredited to New York manufacturers as to style is another factor holding concerns in that city.
Two Types of Employers
There are two types of employers in the clothing industries, namely, the manufacturer and the contractor or submanufacturer. Many factories, especially those where the high-grade garments are made, have their own “inside shops” where all work is done under supervision of the manufacturer or his foremen.
But there is a tendency to increase the contracting system, particularly in the making of cheaper garments. When the contracting method is employed the manufacturer or jobber purchases the material and turns it over to the submanufacturer, who has the garments made in his small shop. The manufacturer who gives his work out to contractors avoids the necessity for maintaining a large factory, and for keeping a great number of men on his pay roll. He is also relieved of the responsibility of dealing with labor, the contractor being in direct contact with the workers. On the other hand, the contractor obtains materials from the jobber, which otherwise he would not be financially able to purchase. In the contract system there is complete separation of the commercial processes from the technical. The manufacturer is responsible for the purchase of materials and for securing and filling orders for the trade, but all technical processes in the making of garments are left to the contractor, who is entirely responsible for the work. The contractor not only supervises the workers, but often works with them. He is no shirker.