To satisfy my mind on this subject, I have looked into such books as I have had time and opportunity to consult, and have found evidence of the fact, that, the more we increase our facilities for performing work with speed and cheapness, the more we shall have to do, and so the more hands will be required to do it. The time was when it was considered so great an undertaking for a man to farm a hundred acres, that very few persons were found cultivating a larger tract. But now, with every farming process facilitated by the use of labor-saving machines, there are farms of ten thousand acres better managed than were formerly those of only a hundred acres. There would be no penny paper brought daily to our door, unless the same wonderful revolution had been made in all the processes of the paper-mill, and in the speed of printing-presses. If I had doubted what was to be the consequence of bringing machinery into competition with the sewing-women, it was owing to my utter ignorance of how other great revolutions had affected the labor of different classes of workers.
This doubt thus satisfactorily resolved, it very soon became with me a question for profound wonder, what became of the immensely increased quantity of clothing which was manufactured by so many thousands of machines. I could not learn that our population had suddenly increased to an extent sufficient to account for the enlarged consumption that was evidently taking place. I had heard that there were nations of savages who considered shirts a sort of superfluity, and who moved about in very much the same costume as that in which our primal mother clothed herself just previously to indulging in the forbidden fruit. But they could not have thus suddenly taken to the wearing of machine-made shirts. There was a paragraph also in our paper which stated that the usual dress in hot weather, in some parts of our own South, was only a hat and spurs. This, however, I regarded as a piece of raillery, and was not inclined to place much faith in it. But I had never heard that any other portion of our people were in the habit of going without shirts or pantaloons. If such had been the practice, and if it had on the instant been renounced, it would have accounted for the sudden and unprecedented demand which now sprang up for these indispensable articles of dress. Or if the fashion had so changed that men had taken to wearing two shirts instead of one, that also might account for it,—though the wearing of two would be considered as great an eccentricity as the wearing of none.
I found that others with whom I conversed on the subject were equally surprised with myself. Even some who were concerned in carrying on the establishment in which we were employed could not account for the immediate absorption of the vastly increased quantities of work that were turned out. Few could tell exactly why more was wanted than formerly, nor where it went. The only fact apparent was that there was a demand for thrice as much as before sewing-machines were brought into use. My own conclusion was eventually this,—that distant sections of our country were supplied exclusively from these manufactories in the great cities, which combined capital, energy, and enterprise in the creation of an immense business. Yet I could not understand why people in those distant sections did not establish manufactories of their own. They had quite as much capital, and could procure machines as readily, while the population to be supplied was immediately at their doors.
I had always heard that the South and West had never at any time manufactured their own clothing. I knew that the Southern women, particularly, were so ignorant and helpless that they had always been dependent on the North for almost everything they wore, from the most elaborate bonnet down to a pocket pin-cushion, and that the supplying of their wardrobes, by the men-milliners of this section, was a highly lucrative employment. As it is a difficult matter to divert any business from a channel in which it has long flowed, I concluded that our Northern dealers, having always commanded these distant markets, would easily retain them by adapting their business to the change of circumstances. They had the trade already, and could keep it flowing in its old channels by promptly availing themselves of the new invention.
They did so without hesitation,—indeed, the great struggle was as to who should be first to do it,—and not only kept their business, but obtained for it an unprecedented increase. In doing this they must have displaced thousands of sewing-women all over the country, as their cheaper fabrics enabled them to undersell the latter everywhere. I know that this was the first effect here, and it is difficult to understand how in other places it should have been otherwise. These sewing-women must have been deprived of work, or the consumers of clothing must have immediately begun to purchase and wear double or treble as much as they had been accustomed to. I do not doubt that the consumption increased from the mere fact of increased cheapness. I believe it is an invariable law of trade, that consumption increases as price diminishes. If silks were to fall to a shilling a yard, everybody would turn away from cotton shirts. As it was, shirts were made without collars, and the collars were produced in great manufactories by steam. They were made by millions, and by millions they were consumed. They were sold in boxes of a dozen or a hundred, at two or three cents apiece, according to the wants of the buyer. He could appear once or twice a day in all the glory of an apparently clean shirt, according to his ambition to shine in a character which might be a very new one. Judging by the consumption of these conveniences, it would seem, that, if one had only a clean collar to display, it was of little consequence whether he had a shirt or not.
To digress a moment, I will observe, that, when I first saw these ingenious contrivances to escape the washerwoman's bill, as well as the cuffs made by the same process for ladies' use, they both struck me so favorably, while their cheapness was so surprising, that my curiosity was inflamed to see and know how they were made. In company with my sister, I visited the manufactory. It was in a large building, and employed many hands, who operated with machinery that exceeds my ability to describe. They took a whole piece of thin, cheap muslin, to each side of which they pasted a covering of the finest white paper by passing the three layers between iron rollers. The paper and muslin were in rolls many hundred feet long. The beautiful product of this union was then parted into strips of the proper width and dried, then passed through hot metal rollers, combining friction with pressure, whence it was delivered with a smooth, glossy, enamelled surface. The material for many thousand collars was thus enamelled in five minutes. It was then cut by knives into the different shapes and sizes required, and so rapidly that a man and boy could make more than ten thousand in an hour. Every collar was then put through a machine which printed upon it imitation stitches, so exactly resembling the best work of a sewing-machine as to induce the belief that the collar was actually stitched. Two girls were working or attending two of these machines, and the two produced nearly a hundred collars per minute, or about sixty thousand daily. The button-holes were next punched with even greater rapidity, then the collar was turned over so nicely that no break occurred in the material. Then they were counted and put in boxes, and were ready for market.
Besides these shirt-collars, there was a great variety of ladies' worked cuffs and collars, adapted to every taste, and imitating the finest linen with the nicest exactness, but all made of paper. Some hundreds of thousands of these were piled up around, ready for counting and packing, sufficient, it appeared to me, to supply our whole population for a twelvemonth. They were sold so cheaply, also, that it cost no more to buy a new collar than to wash an old one. Like friction-matches, they were used only once and then thrown away; hence, the consumption being perpetual, the production was continuous the year round.
I inquired of the proprietor how he accounted for the immense consumption of these articles, without which the world had been getting on comfortably for so many thousand years.
"Why," said he, "we have been fortunate enough to create a new want. Perhaps we did not really create the want, but only discovered that an unsatisfied one existed. It is all the same in either case. Any great convenience, or luxury, heretofore unknown to the public, when fairly set before them is sure to come into general use. It has been so, in my experience, with many things that were not thought of twenty years ago. I have been as much puzzled to account for the unlimited consumption of cuffs and collars as you are to know why so much more clothing is used now than before sewing-machines came into operation. But the increased cheapness of a thing, whether old or new, and the convenience of getting it, are the great stimulants to enlarged consumption,—and as these conditions are present, so will be the latter."
"But when you began this business, did you expect to sell so many?" I inquired.