their homes and children, took in sewing to be done in the intervals of their housework, and ladies of aristocratic breeding, reduced to poor circumstances, did needle work at home to earn their pin money or to increase the family income. So the sewing trades have literally always been overcrowded. By 1850 no less than 61,500 women were employed in making men's and boys' clothing; in fact, women constituted 63 per cent, of all the persons employed in this industry.
The invention of the sewing machine tended to still further aggravate the conditions to which the large number of women employed in the sewing trades were subjected. The sewing machine was invented in 1850, but did not come into general use until a few years later, when perfected by the lock stitch. The introduction of the sewing machine meant a tremendous increase in output over the old manual method of production, and as a result made thousands of needle women superfluous. It has been estimated that 70,000 women employed in the sewing trades were displaced by the machine. But the invention of machinery in this line of industry did not have the same immediate result as the invention of machinery in the textile trades. It did not make the sewing of garments a factory occupation. Sewing machines being simple to operate and comparatively cheap, soon were bought by the workers themselves, and so the sewing trades have to a great extent remained a domestic industry, the old home system gradually merging into the modern sweatshop system, one of the greatest industrial evils of our day. The sewing trades were among the first to be invaded by immigrant women, and after the Civil War many Southern women who came North, having been robbed both of their breadwinners and their property, further helped to flood the labor market in this industry, since needlework, done at home, seemed less degrading to them than going to the factory. There was another factor that weighed heavily on the women in this traditional woman's occupation, and that was the invasion of men. Immigrant men invaded the sewing trades at an early date, and this competition of men tended, on the one hand, to still further lower women's wages; on the other, to compel the opening of new occupations to women.
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