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Title: Genius rewarded
The story of the sewing machine
Author: John A. Scott
Release date: June 15, 2025 [eBook #76314]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: John J. Caulon, 1880
Credits: Richard Tonsing, deaurider, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GENIUS REWARDED ***
[Illustration: _Works at Elizabeth, N.J. The Singer Manufacturing
Company_]
Genius Rewarded;
OR,
The Story of the Sewing Machine
[Illustration: The Story of the Sewing Machine]
NEW YORK:
JOHN J. CAULON, PRINTER, NO. 20 VESEY STREET.
COPYRIGHT, 1880, BY JOHN SCOTT.
THE
STORY OF THE SEWING MACHINE.
CHAPTER I.
THE SEWING MACHINE’S RIVALS.
“With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch—
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!—
She sang the ‘Song of the Shirt.’”
[Illustration:
THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.
]
In a back street of Boston two men sat one sultry August midnight upon a
pile of boards. They were penniless and friendless; they were smarting
under failure and keen and bitter disappointment. Actual want stared
them in the face and made them desperate. And yet, upon the outcome of
that midnight scene mighty issues hung quivering. All the world had a
stake in the thoughts of those poor, friendless, desperate men. One of
them had heard from across the seas the “Song of the Shirt;” he had
heard its sad echo even from the more prosperous homes of our own land,
and its dismal chords had awakened in his breast a burning desire to
still its horrible refrain, and carry relief and help to the weary
seamstress. Golden visions, too, had floated before him of the princely
reward the world would offer for such service to its great sisterhood.
With great difficulty he had persuaded two other men to join him. One
furnished the scanty capital of _forty dollars_; the other gave the use
of his machine shop, workmen and tools. Day and night he had worked to
produce a SEWING MACHINE, sleeping but three or four hours out of the
twenty-four, and eating, generally, but once a day, as he knew the
machine must be built for forty dollars or not be built at all. The hour
of trial had come that very day. The machine had been completed and put
together, and _did not work_! One by one the workmen left him in
disgust, but still the inventor clung tenaciously to his purpose, and
refused to yield to defeat. All were gone but this companion, who held
the lamp while the inventor worked. Loss of sleep, insufficient food,
and incessant work and anxiety made him weak and nervous, and he could
not get tight stitches. Sick at heart, the task was abandoned at last,
and at midnight the worn and wearied men turned their backs upon their
golden dreams and started for their lodgings. On their way they sat down
upon the pile of boards, and were gloomily discussing the sad fate of
the project, when his companion mentioned to the inventor that “the
loose loops of thread were all upon the upper side of the cloth.”
Instantly it flashed upon the inventor what the trouble was, and back
through the night the men trudged to the shop, re-lighted the lamp,
tightened a little tension screw, and in a few minutes ISAAC MERRITT
SINGER had produced the first Sewing Machine that ever was practically
successful.
[Illustration:
THE CRITICAL MOMENT.
]
It _was_ a great stake which the world had in the gloomy midnight
reflections of two desperately poor men, seated upon that pile of
boards, thirty years ago! Rarely has so much hung upon the thoughts of
two humble men. That midnight scene settled the question whether woman
should have a tireless helper in her weary task of stitching—whether or
not the world should thenceforward have a machine for sewing. Out of
that lumber-pile conference came the Sewing Machine and all the mighty
interests involved in its manufacture, sale, and use. It was the answer
to the “Song of the Shirt;” its dolorous tone had reached—not the
rich—but a poor, struggling mechanic; and his invention has done for
woman and for the home-circle what no other invention ever has done. We
look back upon James Watt, sitting before the open fireplace, watching
the pot lid rise and fall with the then undiscovered power of steam, as
the scene whence issued all the blessings which followed the
Steam-engine. We think of Franklin flying his storm-riding kite and
drawing down the lightning, as thereby bringing to us all the civilizing
influences of the Telegraph. But neither of these men, if they could
have looked down the dim vista of the coming centuries, and foreseen
what their inventions should do for humanity, could have contemplated
results more surprising than those which Isaac Merritt Singer lived to
see crowning the invention which hung trembling upon the results of that
talk upon that pile of boards!
The Telegraph and Steam-engine live daily in the broad blaze of public
view; the Sewing Machine modestly hides itself away beneath three
million of the nine million roofs of America. They are public blessings;
the Sewing Machine is a purely domestic one. It earns a woman’s dime;
they earn a railroad king’s millions. They deal with the great arteries
of trade and commerce; it deals with the fireside circle. The Telegraph
and Steam-engine proudly boast their alliance and familiarity with
Capital; the Sewing Machine contentedly takes up its humble quarters
mainly with people who never drew a dividend in all their lives. Capital
and wealth must run the former; slender and humble feet most often run
the latter. The Locomotive puffs defiantly in nearly every legislative
hall; the Sewing Machine sings its tireless tune to ears that would not
know what “_lobby_” meant. The former haughtily issues its dictum to
primaries and conventions; the latter could not control a solitary vote.
Steam and the Telegraph deal mainly with creation’s lord; the Sewing
Machine with his lowlier sister.
A certain class of people are apt to underrate domestic affairs, simply
because they are domestic, forgetting that the real progress of the
world is always made beneath the shelter of the homestead roof, not
under the resounding domes of Senate Chambers; and that a Nation’s
surest hope for greatness and for safety is found in the character of
its _homes_, rather than in the shrewdness of its merchants or the skill
of its artisans. It is the atmosphere of the boy’s early home which
clings like an indestructible and exhaustless aroma to his entire life;
it is the influence and memory of what his home and his mother were
which mould his after life, control his habits of thought, and make him
a power for good or for evil in the world. And for the most part he
remains unconscious of any such influence. He has imbibed it with his
daily sustenance and inhaled it with every breath of his native air,
until he involuntarily weighs everything, measures all affairs, and
judges all men according to the standards and traditions that prevailed
in the now hallowed precincts of his early home.
Whatever, therefore, brings added comfort to the matron and the maiden;
whatever saves the busy housewife’s time and increases her opportunities
for culture; whatever lifts any of the heavy household burdens, and
disenthralls to any degree the WOMEN of our day, contributes an
ever-augmenting influence towards the highest and best progress of the
world.
[Illustration:
“HAPPY HOMES”—EFFECTS OF THE ANSWER.
]
And so the importance of the Sewing Machine in its influence upon the
home; in the countless hours it has added to woman’s leisure for rest
and refinement; in the increase of time and opportunity for that early
training of children, for lack of which so many pitiful wrecks are
strewed along the shores of life; in the numberless avenues it has
opened for female labor; and in the comforts it has brought within the
reach of all, which once could be attained only by the wealthy few,
becomes so apparent that few, if any, will dispute its right to stand at
least beside its powerful rivals, the Steam-engine and Telegraph.
CHAPTER II.
GROWTH OF THE IDEA.
The idea of sewing by machinery had been cherished for a hundred years
before the first successful machine was built.
The earliest attempt at sewing by machinery of which any authentic
account exists was made as early as July 24th, 1755, when a machine was
patented in England by Charles F. Weisenthal, having a needle with two
points and an eye at mid-length.
The next sewing machine was that of Thomas Saint, of England, who
obtained a patent July 17, 1790. This man seems to have understood, with
remarkable clearness, the main essential features of the invention, for
his machine had a horizontal cloth-plate, an overhanging arm, at the end
of which was a needle working vertically, and a “feed” working
automatically between the stitches. These features have been preserved
in every successful machine ever made. The needle was notched at the
lower end, to push the thread through the goods, which had been
previously punctured by an awl. As the needle passed upwards, leaving a
loop in the thread, a loop-check caught the loop and held it until the
needle descended again, enchaining the thread of the new loop in the
former one.
In 1804 an Englishman, named Duncan, made a chain-stitch machine, having
a number of hooked needles, which passed through the cloth and were
supplied with thread beneath the goods by a feeding needle, whereupon
the needles receded, each drawing a loop through the loop previously
drawn by itself through the cloth.
In 1818 Rev. John A. Dodge, of Monkton, Vt., invented, and, with the
assistance of John Knowles, an ingenious mechanic, constructed a machine
having the double-pointed needle and eye at mid-length. It made a stitch
identical with the ordinary “back-stitch,” and was furnished with an
automatic device for “feeding” the work. Mr. Dodge never applied for a
patent, nor attempted to manufacture any more machines, because of the
great pressure upon his time as a pastor, and further on account of the
bitter opposition of journeymen tailors, who denounced the machine as an
invasion of their rights.
The first patent issued in America for a sewing machine was that of a
man named Lye, in the year 1826. Lye’s device could hardly have
contained any useful or striking features, for when the fire of 1836
destroyed all the Patent Office Records, it consumed all that remained
of this machine.
In the year 1830 Barthlemy Thimmonnier, a Parisian, invented a machine
which operated much as Saint’s did, except that the needle was
crocheted, and, descending through the goods, pulled up a lower thread
and formed a series of loops upon the upper side of the goods. Eighty of
these machines, made of wood, are said to have been used at one time in
Paris, making army clothing; but though patented in France in August,
1848, and in the United States September 3, 1850, it had too many
defects to become anything more than an important step in the onward
march of this great invention.
[Illustration:
BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE GREAT SINGER FACTORY.
]
Many other machines, of more or less merit, were constructed before Mr.
Singer made his machine, but all fell short of being practical and
useful. The nearest approach to success prior to 1850 was made by Walter
Hunt, of New York City, in the years 1832–3–4. His machine had a curved
needle, with an eye near the needle-point, which was operated on the end
of a vibrating arm. A loop was formed beneath the cloth by the
needle-thread, through which a shuttle, reeling off another thread, was
forced back and forth with each stitch, making an interlocked stitch
like that now made by the best machines. George A. Arrowsmith, a
blacksmith, of Woodbridge, N. J., being of a speculative turn, bought
one-half of Walter Hunt’s invention in 1834, and afterwards acquired the
remainder. Soon afterwards, Adoniram F. Hunt, a brother of Walter, was
employed by Arrowsmith to construct some sewing machines upon the same
principle, but differing somewhat in arrangement of details from the
original. These machines were made and operated at a machine shop in
Amos Street, New York City. Arrowsmith neglected to obtain a patent upon
the machine for reasons which, in the light of events now past, make
singularly interesting reading. He assigned three reasons for not
procuring a patent: (1) He had other business; (2) the expense of
patenting; (3) the supposed difficulty of introducing them into use,
saying, it “would have cost two or three thousand dollars to start the
business.” There appeared also a prejudice against any machine which had
a tendency to dispense with female labor. A proposition made by Walter
Hunt to his daughter to engage in the corset-making business with a
sewing machine was declined, after consultation with her female friends,
principally, if not altogether, as she afterwards testified, “on the
ground that the introduction of such a machine into use would be
injurious to the interests of hand-sewers. I found that the machine
would at that time be very unpopular, and, therefore, refused to use
it.”
The neglect of Hunt and Arrowsmith to procure a patent upon this sewing
machine was fraught with momentous consequences a few years later, not
only to them but to the entire sewing machine trade and the world at
large.
John J. Greenough, on February 21, 1842, procured the first sewing
machine patent in America of which any official record now exists. His
machine sewed with two threads, both of which were entirely passed
through the cloth at every stitch, the needles being pulled by pincers
through holes previously bored with an awl. It was designed principally
for leather work.
R. W. Bean, of New York City, patented a machine, March 4, 1843, for
making a “running” or basting stitch.
Another machine, having two threads and generally like Greenough’s, was
patented December 27, 1843, by George R. Corliss, of Greenwich, N. Y. It
had eye-pointed needles reciprocated in horizontal paths, through holes
previously made by awls, the goods being fastened between clamps and fed
in front of the needles.
[Illustration: [Furnace]]
Another form of sewing machine, of which several varieties were patented
between 1844 and 1850, adopted the somewhat primitive method of first
crimping the cloth and then forcing it upon the needle, which was driven
through a number of thicknesses at the same time, making a running
stitch.
In the year 1846, or over twelve years after Walter Hunt’s machine was
built, Elias Howe, Jr., having probably ascertained that Hunt had never
patented his machine, built a sewing machine upon the Hunt plan, adding
two puerile devices (both of which were subsequently abandoned as
useless), and procured a patent thereon in his own name. These devices
were a “clipping piece” to control the unwinding of the shuttle-thread,
and a “baster-plate,” to which the work was basted, and thus hung
vertically in front of the machine. This machine never became of real
utility until the inventions of Mr. Singer, five years later, had been
added to the principles of action applied originally by Hunt and
appropriated by Howe. After Singer’s inventions had been recognized as
giving to the sewing machine a practical and immense value, Walter Hunt
testified, under oath, as follows: “ELIAS HOWE _has several times stated
to me that he was satisfied that I was the first inventor of the machine
for sewing a seam by means of the eye-pointed needle, the shuttle and
two threads, but said that he had the prior right to the invention
because of my delay in applying for letters-patent._” In the year 1853,
Hunt applied for a patent upon his invention, but was refused upon the
ground of abandonment.
Judge Charles Mason, Commissioner of Patents, in delivering his decision
in May, 1854, upon the evidence in Hunt’s application, used the
following language: “Hunt claims priority upon the ground that he
invented the Sewing Machine previous to the invention of Howe. He
_proves_ that in 1834 or 1835 he contrived a machine by which he
actually effected his purpose of sewing cloth with considerable success.
Upon a careful consideration of the testimony, I am disposed to think
that he had then carried his invention to the point of patentability. I
understand from the evidence that HUNT actually made a working machine
in 1834 or 1835. The papers in this case show that _Howe_ obtained a
patent for substantially _this same invention_ in 1846.”
Notwithstanding this, the Commissioner was forced to refuse Hunt’s
belated application, for the reason that an Act of Congress in 1839 had
provided that inventors could not pursue their claims to priority in
patents unless application was made within two years from the date when
the first sale of the invention was made. Hunt had sold a machine in
1834, and had neglected to make application for his patent till 1853.
[Illustration:
THE SINGER COMPANY’S STEAMER, “EDWARD CLARK.”
]
Thus it was that one of the grandest opportunities of the century was
missed by the man who should rightfully have enjoyed it; the honors and
emoluments of the great sewing machine invention passed to a man who
neither had invented a single principle of action, nor applied a
practical improvement to principles already recognized; and Elias Howe,
Jr., acquired the power, by simply patenting another man’s invention, to
obstruct every subsequent inventor, and finally to dictate the terms
which gave rise to the great Sewing Machine Combination about which the
world has heard—and scolded—so much.
Howe’s machine was not, even in 1851, of practical utility. From 1846 to
1851 he had the field to himself, but the invention lay dormant in his
hands. He held control of the cardinal principles upon which the coming
machine must needs be built, and planted himself squarely across the
path of improvement—an obstructionist, not an inventor—and when, in
1851, Isaac M. Singer perfected the improvements necessary to make
Hunt’s principles of real utility, Howe, after long and expensive
litigation, laid Singer and all subsequent improvers under heavy
contribution for using the principles of Hunt, patented by himself.
Morey & Johnson procured a patent February 6, 1849, for a single-thread
machine, making a stitch by a hook acting in combination with a needle.
Lerow & Blodgett patented a machine October 2, 1849, the peculiar
feature of which was that the shuttle was driven entirely around a
circle at each stitch. This took a twist out of the thread at every
revolution, and was soon abandoned, but not before Howe had sued the
proprietors and laid them under tribute.
Allen B. Wilson invented a double-pointed shuttle, making a stitch at
each passage of the shuttle, which he patented November 12, 1850.
Grover & Baker, February 11, 1851, obtained a patent for a machine using
two needles, one passing through the goods and the other operating
beneath the cloth.
[Illustration:
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
]
Other patents, of more or less value, were obtained, but not yet had a
sewing machine of any practical working value been produced. Machines
had been made by hundreds, factories had been built for their
manufacture, territorial rights had been sold for machines that
contained more or less merit, but which would not and could not do
continuous stitching. The idea of a successful substitute for woman’s
deft fingers at sewing had come to be regarded much as the member of
Parliament viewed the project of an ocean steamship, when he offered to
“_eat_ the first ship that should cross the Atlantic by steam!” The
sewing machine had bitterly disappointed those who purchased it for use
in the household; it had bankrupted those who sought to manufacture; it
had turned to ashes upon the lips of those who bought territorial
rights. If any one had profited by it, it was the vendor of territorial
rights. Indeed, a sewing machine patentee named Blodgett told Singer he
was an idiot for presuming to make sewing machines to _sell_. They would
not work, and the only money to be made out of the business was in
“selling territorial rights.” Deep-seated distrust pervaded the public
mind, and well-deserved odium had settled upon the entire invention.
Such was the state of affairs when Isaac M. Singer turned his versatile
mind towards the Sewing Machine.
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST SINGER MACHINE.
The humble origin of the first practically successful sewing machine was
told by Mr. Singer himself a few years before his death. We reproduce
the interesting narrative in his own language:
“My attention was first directed to sewing machines late in August,
1850. I then saw in Boston some Blodgett sewing machines, which Mr.
Orson C. Phelps was employed to keep in running order. I had then
patented a carving machine, and Phelps, I think, suggested that if I
could make the sewing machine practical I should make money.
“Considering the matter over night, I became satisfied I could make
them practically applicable to all kinds of work, and the next day
showed Phelps and George B. Zeiber a rough sketch of the machine I
proposed to build. It contained a table to support the cloth
horizontally, instead of a feed-bar from which it was suspended
vertically in the Blodgett machine, a vertical presser-foot to hold
the cloth, and an arm to hold the presser-foot and needle bar over the
table.
“I explained to them how the work was to be fed over the table and
under the presser-foot, by a wheel having short pins on its periphery,
projecting through a slot in the table, so that the work would be
automatically caught, fed, and freed from the pins, in place of
attaching and detaching the work to and from the baster-plate by hand,
as was necessary in the Blodgett machine.
“Phelps and Zieber were satisfied that it would work. I had no money.
Zieber offered forty dollars to build a model machine. Phelps offered
his best endeavors to carry out my plan and make the model in his
shop. If successful we were to share equally. I worked at it day and
night, sleeping but three or four hours out of the twenty-four, and
eating generally but once a day, as I knew I must make it for the
forty dollars, or not get it at all.
“The machine was completed in eleven days. About nine o’clock in the
evening we got the parts together, and tried it. It did not sew. The
workmen, exhausted with almost unremitting work, pronounced it a
failure, and left me one by one.
[Illustration:
DESERTED BUT DETERMINED.
]
“Zieber held the lamp, and I continued to try the machine; but anxiety
and incessant work had made me nervous, and I could not get tight
stitches. Sick at heart, about midnight we started for our hotel. On
the way we sat down on a pile of boards, and Zieber mentioned that the
loose loops of thread were on the upper side of the cloth. It flashed
upon me that we had forgotten to adjust the tension on the
needle-thread. We went back, adjusted the tension, tried the machine,
sewed five stitches perfectly, and the thread snapped. But that was
enough.”
Persistent efforts have been made by interested parties to create an
impression upon the public mind that it was Mr. Howe who first evolved
order out of the chaotic essentials of the sewing machine and brought it
into practical use. Of this let the reader judge for himself, after
comparing the features of each machine set forth below. Let him note the
features that are still preserved in every successful sewing machine and
those which have been abandoned as practically worthless, and he will
find little difficulty in settling for himself the merits of the
respective claims of Howe and Singer.
_HOWE’S MACHINE HAD_ │ _SINGER’S MACHINE HAD_
╭─────────1─────────╮
_A curved needle. (Now obsolete in │_A straight needle. (Now in general
machines of this class.)_ │ use.)_
╭─────────2─────────╮
_A needle arm swinging like a │_A needle bar moving vertically.
pendulum in an arc of a circle. │ (Now in general use.)_
(Now obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────3─────────╮
_A clamp, or “baster-plate,” from │_A horizontal table, upon which the
which the work was hung │ work was laid flat, by means of
vertically in front of the │ which it could be instantly and
machine. In order to make a turn │ readily turned in any direction.
in the seam, the machine had to │ (Now in general use.)_
be stopped, the goods taken off │
from the plate, and then │
readjusted to it. (Now │
obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────4─────────╮
_A feed motion imparted to the │_A feed motion imparted by means of
baster-plate by the teeth of an │ a roughened feed wheel extending
intermittently moving pinion, │ through a slot in the top of the
working into the holes of the │ table. (Replaced by the present
baster-plate, from which the work│ feed, similar in principle but
was suspended, which had to be │ improved in action.)_
readjusted every time a seam had │
been sewed the length of the │
plate. (Now obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────5─────────╮
_Two shuttle drivers, entirely │_Two shuttle carriers attached to
distinct from each other, which │ the same bar, sliding steadily
“threw” the shuttle from side to │ and regularly in a horizontal
side, producing violent │ groove. (Now in general use.)_
concussions, and liable to throw │
the shuttle drivers out of place.│
(Now obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────6─────────╮
│_A spring presser-foot by the side
│ of the needle, to hold the work
│ down. (Now in general use.)_
╭─────────7─────────╮
│_An adjustable arm for holding the
│ bobbin containing the
│ needle-thread. (Now obsolete.)_
╭─────────8─────────╮
_A single acting treadle. (Now │_A double acting treadle. (Now in
obsolete.)_ │ universal use._)
╭─────────9─────────╮
_An eye-pointed needle._ (INVENTED │_An eye-pointed needle._ (INVENTED
BY WALTER HUNT.) │ BY WALTER HUNT.)
The tests of time and actual service have been applied to the original
features of both machines, and these, at least, know no favoritism. It
matters not in these tests how broad or loud is the claim of any man;
history may be blinded for a time, but the “survival of the fittest” is
the inexorable law in useful inventions.
None of the devices used by the man who claims to have “invented the
sewing machine” can be found in any successful shuttle machine to-day.
Thirty years of actual service have swept away every vestige of Howe’s
original machine except the eye-pointed needle, invented twelve years
before by Walter Hunt, and used by both Singer and Howe. Meanwhile every
feature of Singer’s original machine has been adopted by every
successful machine builder of the class to which these machines
belonged, with the single and unimportant exception of the adjustable
arm; and in nearly every case when a device of Howe’s has been found
worthless, and been abandoned, it was Singer’s device which was
substituted, as the foregoing table explicitly shows. In the clear light
of such facts it is not difficult to understand to whom the world is
really indebted for the inestimable boon of the sewing machine.
CHAPTER IV.
GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS.
Starting with a capital of _forty dollars_, and that borrowed from
another man, this poor mechanic launched upon the stormy sea of
commercial life. Discouragements and disappointments met him at every
turn. People had learned to look upon the Sewing Machine very much as we
look upon the “Keely Motor.” Every man who pretended to have a working
machine was considered an impostor. Thousands had bought machines on the
faith of inventors’ statements, which they were obliged to throw aside
as useless. Whoever now attempted to introduce the Sewing Machine must
face all the consequences of previous failures, and this Mr. Singer
quickly learned to his sorrow. Everywhere he found people unwilling to
believe that a successful sewing machine had actually been built, and
repeatedly he was shown to the door the moment he had stated his
business.
Mr. Blodgett advised him to give up manufacturing, and sell territorial
rights. He said he was a tailor by trade and knew more about sewing than
Singer possibly could; that the Blodgett machine had been the leading
machine in the market, and he could rest assured that “sewing machines
would never come into use.”
Still the undaunted mechanic struggled on in poverty, bearing up under
reverses and disappointments, resolved to _force_ an unwilling public to
recognize the fact that a successful sewing machine could and actually
had been made. Slowly he gained ground; gradually he obtained access to
the public ear; by degrees he induced people to at least give his
machines a test. A few hundred dollars borrowed from friends expedited
the work of introduction, and just as the skies seemed to brighten, a
new and formidable trouble appeared. The news that Singer had made a
machine which would actually do continuous stitching brought Elias Howe,
Jr., to his door with the patent he had obtained upon another man’s
invention (as before stated), who claimed that Singer infringed his
patent, and must pay him the modest sum of $25,000 or quit the business.
It did not take long for a man who had recently borrowed forty dollars
to begin business, to decline paying twenty-five thousand dollars
tribute-money, and the consequence was that Singer found himself
burdened with litigation that threatened to swamp him.
[Illustration:
YARD OF THE GREAT SINGER FACTORY.
]
At this juncture he called in the aid of Mr. Edward Clark, whose
recognized legal and financial skill were taxed to the utmost to prevent
the utter ruin of the inventor. Mr. Clark became an equal partner, and
business was thenceforward conducted under the firm name of “I. M.
Singer & Co.”
Other inventors were stimulated by Singer’s success to vigorous efforts
at making machines of practical utility, and the consequence was a
series of infringements upon existing patents, resulting in a perfect
epidemic of litigation. Principal among the litigants was Elias Howe,
Jr., whose patent enabled him to bring all the rest under contribution,
and this he did, sueing right and left for several years. The patent of
1846 had made Howe complete master of the situation, and enabled him to
dictate the formation of a combination, by the terms of which licenses
were issued to manufacturers upon the payment of a heavy royalty for
each machine manufactured. From this royalty Howe received the monstrous
stipend of over two millions of dollars, not because he had invented
anything useful to the world, but simply because he had obtained a
patent upon the inventions of another man!
From the outset, Singer & Co. resisted, at great expense, the demands
and pretensions of Howe, fighting single-handed the battle of the
inventors and the great world which was waiting for cheap machines. Howe
was endeavoring to establish a monopoly, strong and compact, which meant
dear machines to the weary-fingered women who were still singing the
dreary “Song of the Shirt;” Singer & Co. were struggling to throw the
business open to fair and honest competition at moderate prices. For
three years the unequal contest was continued against the monopoly. All
the other manufacturers had yielded to Howe at the first, and were
conducting their business without interruption under his licenses. They
viewed the contest between Howe and Singer & Co. much as the traditional
frontiersman’s wife regarded a terrible struggle between her husband and
a grizzly, merely remarking that “it didn’t make much odds to her which
won, but she allers loved to see a right lively fight.” If Singer & Co.
won, all the others would reap the full benefit of the victory without
cost to themselves; if Howe should win, they would be no worse off than
they were before, and he would probably cripple their most formidable
competitor. Meanwhile the business of Singer & Co. was suffering every
possible obstruction, while that of their competitors, now wholly
uninterrupted, was making great strides.
[Illustration:
SCREW DEPARTMENT.
]
At last, in May, 1854, self-preservation dictated a withdrawal from such
a contest, and an agreement was made by which Singer & Co. were to pay
Howe a royalty upon each machine manufactured by them. Thus was taken
the last and most important step towards the great Sewing Machine
Combination, into which Singer & Co. were the last to enter, and then
only when driven into it for self-preservation, after a long and
exhaustive drain upon their means. In settlement of this suit, Howe
received $15,000 royalty, and the total sum paid to Howe by Mr. Singer
and his associates, up to 1877, was over a quarter of a million dollars.
By the year 1863, the annual sales of Singer machines amounted to
21,000, and agencies were established in the principal cities of the
United States. In that year the firm was merged into an incorporated
company, bearing the title of “The Singer Manufacturing Company,” and
both the original partners retired from the active management of the
business, though they remained the heaviest stockholders, and had seats
in the Board of Directors.
In four years’ time the yearly sale of machines had more than doubled.
In two years more even this large figure had been doubled. Two years
more and the annual sales had again doubled, the sales of that year
(1871), amounting to 181,260 machines. In seven years more even this
amount of business was doubled, the number of Singer machines sold in
the year 1878 being 356,432. It would seem as if the extreme limit of
business must now have been reached. But still the yearly sale
increased, and, in the single year, 1879, the world bought the immense
number of 431,167 Singer Sewing Machines, and, at the time of writing,
it appears as though even this figure might be surpassed for the year
1880. Three-fourths of all the sewing machines sold throughout the world
in 1879 were “Singers.”
Perhaps no company ever before was officered as the Singer Manufacturing
Company was at its organization in 1863. The business had been
originally started by a penniless man upon a borrowed capital of forty
dollars, and had brought to him and his partner a golden harvest. Both
were now rich, and in stepping out they placed the control of the new
Company in the hands of men who had risen to notice solely by their own
merits and exertions. The new President, Mr. Inslee A. Hopper, had been
an entry clerk with I. M. Singer & Co.; the Vice-President and General
Manager was found in the person of Mr. George R. McKenzie, who had been
a joiner and cabinet maker for the old firm at eleven and a half dollars
a week. He was a hard-working mechanic, whose solid business worth and
prodigious ability as an organizer and an executive took him by degrees
to the post of General Manager of a business giving employment to forty
thousand men, which post he fills to-day with eminent and acknowledged
skill. The Secretary was Dr. Alexander F. Sterling, a physician of New
York City, who possessed an unusual tact for business; and the
Treasurer’s post was assigned to Mr. William F. Proctor, who had spent
years at a machinist’s bench, and whose practical judgment and skill in
mechanics are important elements to this day in the management of the
business.
In 1876 Mr. Hopper resigned, and Mr. Edward Clark was unanimously called
to the Presidency of the Company, and the active management of the
business to whose early days he had devoted his abilities with such
signal success.
Nor are these the only instances where men have risen from the ranks to
high position in the Singer Company. Many years ago, when the old firm
was battling with poverty, Mr. Singer sent a bright, energetic, but poor
young man, to New Haven, Conn., to open an office and try to establish a
business in Singer machines, saying to him, “Jim, we will send you all
the machines you want, but not a cent of money.” It was the practical
application of the polite Southern phrase, “Root, hog, or die.” The
young man fought his way to business with desperate energy, and to-day
is manager of the Central Office at Chicago, having a district covering
several States and Territories, and has, within a single year, sold over
two million dollars worth of Singer Sewing Machines.
Another young man, who worked as a clerk at six dollars a week in this
same New Haven office, is now manager of the immense office at London,
which manages the Company’s business in Great Britain and Ireland,
France, Spain, and Western Europe generally, also Africa, Australia,
South America and the British Possessions of Asia.
Not many years since, a bright German boy was employed in the factory,
carrying water for the men and doing odd jobs. He did his trivial duties
well, however; so well that he was rapidly pushed forward. Step by step
he was promoted, and now is manager of the great Singer office at
Hamburg, Germany, which does a vast business throughout Central and
Eastern Europe, and is pushing its way into Western Asia. Like the
others, he began without friends or influence, and has won his present
proud position by faithful adhesion to duty in the humblest post, by
modest energy and strict integrity.
[Illustration:
ASSEMBLING ROOM.
]
The Central Office managers at Cincinnati and St. Louis, each doing a
large business and entrusted with great interests and responsibilities,
began at the lowest round of the ladder, and have climbed unaided to
their present positions. Surely there has been no royal road to position
in this remarkable company.
It is doubtful if the history of the entire world can furnish an
instance in which any single house, doing a legitimate business, has had
a growth so stupendous within an equal length of time. The reader will
remember that Arrowsmith, the purchaser of Hunt’s first machine, failed
to patent the invention because, among other reasons, it would require
“at least three thousand dollars” to begin the business of manufacturing
and selling sewing machines. Little did he dream that within thirty
years a single company would have millions of dollars invested in the
manufacture of one form of sewing machine! Arrowsmith urged for his
fatal delay in procuring the patent to which he was then entitled, that
the fees were so heavy—some $60! And now one company spends thousands of
dollars annually in the various forms of advertising!
Still another reason urged by this enterprising smithy was that he “had
other business.” Yet, within thirty years a single company finds itself
with over ten thousand employés under regular salaries or wages, and
thirty thousand more working the whole or part of the time on
commission. And this Company, investing many millions of money in its
business, spending thousands every year in advertising, employing some
forty thousand persons, eight thousand horses, and having its own
locomotive and steamboat busy in transporting its machines and materials
between New York and its great factory at Elizabeth, is, as the reader
may have surmised, The Singer Manufacturing Company.
[Illustration:
JAPANNING FURNACES.
]
Its system of agencies embraces the entire civilized world, and even
pushes its outposts across the boundaries into semi-civilized lands. All
of the United States and Canada are covered with this grand network of
agencies; Mexico, the West Indies, and South America are familiar with
the name “Singer.” Every nook and corner of Europe knows the song of
this tireless Singer, too, and so do the colonized portions of Africa,
Asia, and Australasia. An immense business is done in Singer machines in
Australia; thriving agencies and sub-agencies may be found throughout
China, Japan, and the Islands of the Indian Ocean. Calcutta has a large
business in Singer machines, and even Cape Town and Transvaal, in South
Africa, are giving the Singer agents an increasingly large patronage.
On every sea are floating the Singer Machines; along every road pressed
by the foot of civilized man this tireless ally of the world’s great
sisterhood is going upon its errand of helpfulness. Its cheering tune is
understood no less by the sturdy German matron than by the slender
Japanese maiden; it sings as intelligibly to the flaxen-haired Russian
peasant-girl as to the dark-eyed Mexican Señorita. It needs no
interpreter, whether it sings amid the snows of Canada or upon the
pampas of Paraguay; the Hindoo mother and the Chicago maiden are
to-night making the self-same stitch; the untiring feet of Ireland’s
fair-skinned Nora are driving the same treadle with the tiny
understandings of China’s tawny daughter; and thus American machines,
American brains, and American money are bringing the women of the whole
world into one universal kinship and sisterhood.
[Illustration:
CASTING IN THE FOUNDRY.
]
The Principal Office of the Company is finely located in New York City,
overlooking Union Square. From this office the general business of the
Company is directed all over the world. The American business is
transacted from twenty-five centres, located in the larger cities, such
as Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Pittsburgh, New
Orleans, Richmond, Cincinnati, St. Louis, etc. Each Central Office is
controlled by a manager, under whose direction Branch Offices are
located throughout the territory assigned to his care. Under the Branch
Office agent, again, are located subordinate offices in every town or
village within his district where business seems to warrant it. The
territory controlled by a Central Office often embraces an entire State,
and, in some cases, several States. In other instances two or more
Central Offices are located within the same State. While the Central
Office manager is charged with the general direction of all his
Branches, and the Branch Office agent with the care and management of
all his subordinate offices, yet the reader should not suppose these
superior offices to be nothing but a sort of head-quarters for the
officers of higher rank. Every Central Office is equipped with its force
of canvassers, collectors, etc., and is expected to accomplish as much
of the actual work of canvassing and selling as though it were the only
office the Company ever opened. The same is expected of the Branch
Office, and woe to that manager who cannot do duty as a private soldier,
and make his own office an example in all respects to the smallest
“sub!” It were better for him that the General Manager had never been
born! The Canadian business is similarly managed from two Central
Offices: one at Montreal, the other at Toronto. All these twenty-seven
Central Offices report to New York, and receive their instructions
direct from the officers of the Company.
The London office has immense interests confided to its care, as before
stated. The South American business is managed from London, principally
because England enjoys facilities of communication with that continent
which even Yankee enterprise has thus far neglected to secure for our
own country.
[Illustration:
NEEDLE DEPARTMENT.
]
The business of Middle and Northern Europe and of Western Asia is
managed from the Hamburg office, which, like the London office, makes a
consolidated report to the principal office in New York. The total
number of the Company’s offices throughout the world is over 4,500, of
which over one-third are in the United States.
The foregoing are but a few of the interesting details of the
organization and management of this remarkable Company. It is doubtful
if any public or private corporation in the world can show so complete
an organization. No bank is more scrupulously exact in every detail; no
army has a more systematic discipline. And while such a complete system
is necessary to prevent so enormous a business, covering so much ground,
from falling to pieces by its own weight, yet it is also true that the
very completeness and compactness of this organization are themselves
the best possible guarantees for the permanence and indefinite
prosperity of this gigantic corporation.
CHAPTER V.
THE GREAT FACTORY.
Our lady friends may like to know how and where the “Singer” was made
which has done such valued service in their homes, and as it is a most
natural desire, we are glad to be able to gratify the same. We,
therefore, cordially invite all who feel disposed to come along while we
take a hurried, but, we hope, interesting glance at the various parts of
this mammoth workshop.
[Illustration:
FORGING SHOP.
]
[Illustration:
CLOCK TOWER.
]
Leaving the City of New York by the New Jersey Central Railroad, we dash
through a dozen pretty Jersey villages, cross Newark Bay upon a bridge
which lacks but a few feet of being two miles long, rush past the walls
of the great Singer Factory, and alight at the Elizabethport Station,
just beyond. This is one of the seven railroad depots of the beautiful
City of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Looking back down the track, we see a
finely laid-out park, with well-kept walks, handsome shrubbery and
trees, and a profusion of flowers, in the centre of which stands a large
fountain. This is the private park of the Factory, and is by far the
handsomest in the city. The Singer Company bought an entire block in
front of the Factory, and transformed it into a park which they maintain
at their own expense. Beyond “Singer Park” loom up the massive
proportions of the Singer Factory, four floors high, the upper story
having a massive Mansard roof. The building is built of brick, iron and
slate, with iron beams and girders, and is proof against those
conflagrations which so often destroy human life in large manufactories.
The front is constructed of handsome pressed brick, and the structure is
adorned with a tower in which a large clock shows the “hours as they
fly” to all the neighborhood.
[Illustration:
SHIPPING SHEDS.
]
Passing through the light and handsome offices, we find ourselves in
what at first sight appears to be another park, shut in on three sides
by long lines of high buildings. This is, however, not designed for a
park, but is nothing more than the superbly-kept Factory Yard, embracing
ten or twelve acres. Asphalt walks run down and across, connecting the
various buildings that skirt the yard with each other, and with the dock
at its foot. Beside and between the walks, every square foot of ground
in this immense yard has been seeded with grass, whose green and
well-kept borders are here and there fringed with shrubs and flowers.
The walks are neatly kept, and though over two thousand workmen tramp
daily through the yard, we will not see a bit of dirt as big as a
filbert anywhere.[1] Up and down run railroad tracks from the main gate
to the dock, with branch tracks to each shop door. These tracks
aggregate over five miles in length, and are in constant use in bringing
coal, iron, and lumber from the Central Railroad track outside, or the
dock at the foot of the yard, or carrying car loads of machines to one
or the other outlet. For this purpose the Company owns a locomotive, the
“I. M. Singer,” which puffs away busily at its work from morning till
night. Here are long sheds, beneath which cars are being loaded with
Singer machines for Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco. There are long
trestles opposite the foundry doors, upon which coal cars, direct from
Pennsylvania mines, are pushed by the “I. M. Singer,” and their contents
deposited “where they will do the most good.” Iron, sand, and lumber
cars are sent similarly to the exact spot where they are to be worked
up, and so an immense cost of handling is saved. At the dock, which lies
along Staten Island Sound nearly a thousand feet, the Company’s steamer
“Edward Clark,” is taking on board a cargo of machines for New York
City, or perhaps for some European steamship lying in New York Bay.
Footnote 1:
An amusing instance recently occurred in a Southern State of the use
to which these grass plats could be put by persons whose tender
consciences would not permit outright lying. A man interested in
selling a cheap imitation “Singer,” sent a letter to a Southern paper,
enclosing a spear of grass which, he said, he “had plucked in the yard
of the Singer Factory,” as evidence that the Singer Company was
falling into decay, and its great factory being overgrown with grass
and weeds.
Taking it for granted that all women are methodical, we must ask our
fair visitors to go with us to the foot of the yard, and begin studying
the manufacture of sewing machines just where the manufacturer is
obliged to begin making them—at the foundry.
[Illustration: [Furnace]]
[Illustration:
BRASS FURNACE.
]
Passing the great piles of pig-iron and the greater heaps of coal, we
enter the foundries. Upon yonder high platform two men are throwing
great lumps of coal into the blazing, roaring mouth of a fiery furnace;
and presently they stop throwing in coal, and begin to pitch in heavy
bars of pig-iron, while the furnace hisses aloud with its fervent heat
till it reminds us of Nebuchadnezzar’s. At the foot of this furnace or
“cupola” two or three men are catching the molten iron in a huge pot on
wheels which, when full, is drawn to another part of the foundry, and
there another lot of men surround it, their hand ladles are poured full,
and away they hurry with their hot and heavy burden to fill the long
rows of moulds which cover the floor. Four such cupolas are breathing
out great blasts of fire at their tops, and running streams of fiery
liquid iron at their bases. Three of them have a capacity for melting
eight tons of iron each per hour, and the other converts six tons of
pig-iron into liquid each hour. The morning hours are occupied by the
moulders in making moulds in sand of the various parts to be cast; and
for about two hours in the afternoon the cupolas send out their
sparkling streams, and the men fill the moulds with molten iron. When
sufficiently cooled, the moulds of sand are knocked to pieces and the
iron taken out and thrown into piles about the floor, while the sand is
shoveled up and moistened for another day’s moulding. Four hundred men
are employed in this immense foundry, which melts up sixty-five tons of
iron every day in the week. The ground floor of the foundry has an area
of over _two acres_. Imagine a two-acre field filled every day with iron
castings of Singer sewing machines!
And this is only a part of the iron work composing the machine. Much of
the machine is composed of steel and wrought iron, which starts on its
trip from the Forging Shop, instead of the Foundry. The portions cast in
the foundry embrace the machine legs or “stands,” the “arm” and “bed,”
the balance-wheel, band-wheel and a few minor parts. These parts, after
cooling and being removed from the moulds, are taken to the Rumbling
Room, 50 feet wide and 200 feet long, and put into revolving barrels
filled with small five-pointed cast iron stars, which tumble about the
barrels among the castings for hours together, and by the constant
friction wear off all the sand and roughness.
The machine legs or stands then go to the Drilling Room, where the
screw-holes are drilled out, and thence to the Japanning Room, where a
set of grimy men, in half undress costume, souse them into a vat of
liquid japan, after which they are put into great brick ovens, and left
for several days for the japan to thoroughly bake and harden. This gives
them a handsome, black, glossy finish and prevents rust. The other cast
iron parts are similarly treated, except the “arm” and “bed;” these,
after being firmly secured together, are japanned and scoured down; then
japanned again, and again scoured down. A third japanning and scouring
is then given and they go to the Ornamenting Room, of which we shall see
something shortly. The wheels, and other parts which work against other
portions of the machine, go before japanning to the Milling Department,
an immense shop 1,250 feet long, upon two floors, and 50 feet wide,
where they are put upon a lathe and shaved off with steel knives to the
exactness of a hair.
Next above the Rumbling Room we come to the Forging Shop. Here numbers
of great drop hammers are stamping out, at a single blow, the steel and
wrought iron parts of the machines. These hammers weigh from three
hundred to fifteen hundred pounds each. They are made with a “die” on
their face, and the bed or anvil on which they drop has a corresponding
die, so that a bar of hot iron held on the anvil is, by a single blow of
the falling hammer, converted into a shuttle, a feed driver or a
completely formed lever. Even the shuttle, which looks so much like a
little boat, is made with a single blow of a huge drop hammer, which
converts a square bar of iron in an instant of time into a perfectly
formed shuttle. It is afterwards taken to another room, where another
machine, with just one vigorous _push_, forces the shuttle through a
sharp-edged aperture in a steel die, which trims off all unevenness and
every bit of steel that may have projected beyond the edges of the die
in the drop hammer. In another room the shuttle is drilled with holes
for the thread; in another it is polished on an emery wheel, and in yet
another is fitted with the little check spring, and then, after
receiving the bobbin, it is ready for service in _your_ Singer machine.
The Forging Shop is 423 feet long and 50 feet wide.
[Illustration:
STOCK ROOM.
]
Leaving the Milling Department, each article is passed to the Inspection
Department for “Parts,” where every piece or “part” is examined and
measured with an accurately made steel gauge, and only such as are found
to be exact and true to the thousandth part of an inch, are permitted to
go on to the Stock Room. The rejected parts (and such is the accuracy of
the machinery that these are comparatively few) go again into the
furnace to be made over from the beginning. It is largely owing to the
impartial rigidity of these inspections that the Singer machine has
become so famous for evenness of work and for immunity from the
periodical “fits” of misbehaving which so often afflict machines of
other makes.
And so the Singer Company makes no second grade articles, and puts
nothing but the very best material and workmanship into any of its
machines, finding, by practical experience, that it pays to put just as
good parts into its cheapest as into the highest priced pearled and
ornamented cabinet machine. Indeed, the only difference between the
cheapest genuine Singer and the most costly machine is in the finish,
decorations and cabinet work. All the working parts are exactly the
same.
The carefully inspected parts, after passing muster, are sent to the
General Stock Room, where long rows of cases, extending nearly to the
high ceiling, receive each sort into its appropriate box or shelf.
Thence they are distributed in due proportions to the Assembling
Department when called for. The Stock Room is 50 feet wide and 180 feet
long.
Our fair friends will remember that we left the machine heads and bed
plates in the Japanning Room, being scoured down after japanning. We
must go back to them in order to keep up the connection. After being
carefully scoured, the heads are sent to the Ornamenting Department,
where skillful workmen pencil out, with a fine camel’s hair brush, the
designs of flowers and scroll work which ornament that portion of the
machine which rests upon the table. The rapidity with which these pretty
and often intricate designs are traced is wonderful. Look at your
machine at home; observe all the gilded ornamentation and design, and
then fancy a man doing such a machine head “offhand,” without the least
guide for hand or brush, at the rate of 100 machines a day! As quickly
as the penciling is done the machine is seized by another man, holding
in his hand a book of gold leaf, which he deftly lays over every
pencil-line. The gold leaf firmly adheres to the “sizing” laid on by the
brush and the rest is rubbed off by a single touch of another man who
passes a piece of soft cotton batting over it. The whole is then
varnished with the best quality of white varnish and placed in a huge
oven, where it bakes till it has become perfectly dry, hard and glossy.
The Ornamenting Room is 125 feet long and 75 feet wide.
[Illustration:
ORNAMENTING THE MACHINE.
]
The larger parts of the machine having now been japanned and ornamented,
are brought to the “Assembling Room,” and at the same time the small
working parts are brought from the Stock Room, and here all these parts
are “assembled,” or brought together, and each placed in its proper
position within or upon the machine head. Each of these parts has been
so nicely fitted, and so accurately worked by the machinery which made
it, that when the numerous and varying pieces come together in the
assembling process, it requires little and often no adjustment whatever,
and each fits in the place made for it, resulting in a complete and
harmonious whole. Connecting with this Department is the Adjusting
Department, where long rows of machines on benches are being run by
steam at a very high rate of speed. This is yet another of the many
testing processes through which your family “Singer” has gone in order
to insure the absolute perfection of its working parts. Up and down
these long rows of humming machines, skillful and patient mechanics are
passing, narrowly watching each machine to see if it runs smoothly and
properly. If a wheel revolves unevenly here, or a “bearing” pinches or
is too loose there, back goes the machine to have the deficiency
remedied, after which it must again pass the same ordeal. The Assembling
and Adjusting Departments are 50 feet wide, and occupy a length of 1,100
feet on two floors. The views in these rooms cannot be adequately
described, and we therefore give our readers accurate full page
representations of the same.
Next comes the Machine Inspection Department, 200 feet long and 50 feet
wide. Here the machines are again inspected by competent artisans, and
if perfect in every respect are passed over to long rows of girls, who
put them through the further test of stitching, and see that they are
capable of producing an absolutely perfect stitch. Over fifty girls are
constantly employed in this particular work.
[Illustration:
“SETTING UP” THE MACHINES.
]
The next process is what is technically known as “setting up.” The
Setting Up Department is 460 feet long and 60 feet wide, and here the
stands and tables are put together and placed in long rows; the complete
machine head is properly fastened in its place, the belts and treadle
are adjusted, and the machine stands on its table ready for duty.
Only one more operation is necessary for transportation, and that is
packing or crating the machine. This is all done in the Shipping
Department, which is 230 feet long by 60 feet wide. The boxes and crates
have already been completely made up in the Box Shop, and nothing
remains but to put the machine into the box or crate, as the case may
be, drive three or four nails, mark the package with a stencil plate for
its proper destination, on New England’s shores, on the great prairies
of the West, amid the savannas of the South, or, perhaps, across the
seas, lower it upon the elevator to the great shed, where it is loaded
upon the cars. If its route lies _via_ New York, it is placed upon a
platform car, which the Company’s own locomotive, the “I. M. Singer,”
draws to the dock to be shipped on board the Company’s boat, the “Edward
Clark.”
A few parts of the machine require to be smoothly polished in order to
secure the very best working capacity, and these are sent to the
Polishing Room, which is a study of itself. Black wheels of all sizes
are here revolving with great speed; some are rolling around on a
horizontal axis, some are whizzing rapidly on a perpendicular axis, and
from all of them the streams of fiery sparks are flying in unceasing
currents, throwing the grimy room and the darkened forms of the busy
workmen into a still darker background. This Department is 125 feet long
and 50 feet wide.
[Illustration:
POLISHING ROOM.
]
Another room is devoted to the manufacture of the steel springs used in
the machine. In another large department, 200 feet long, screws are
being made by automatic machinery. In another room, 100 feet long, the
tools are made and repaired, and here a large force of skilled workmen
is constantly employed. In still another room, filled with electro
baths, the silver plated attachments are covered with their silver
coats.
The Button Hole Department is 150 feet long and 50 feet wide, and here
the new Singer Button Hole Machine is put together. This is an intricate
and wonderful piece of mechanism, by which an expert operator can make
from 1,500 to 2,200 button holes a day, and sew the same thoroughly.
This machine has but recently been introduced into general use, but has
come rapidly into favor with manufacturers, especially tailors and
makers of shoe uppers. It makes and works a complete button hole in
either cloth or leather, and has come so extensively into favor that the
Button Hole Department has outgrown its original quarters, and must be
considerably enlarged. This, indeed, is true of almost every Department
in the entire factory. When this great establishment was built, in 1873,
it was thought a good week’s work to turn out 4,000 complete machines;
but at this time its weekly product is upwards of 8,000 complete
machines. Besides these, the Singer Company’s other factory at Glasgow,
Scotland, is turning out between 4,000 and 5,000 complete machines each
week, and yet the offices throughout the United States and Canada are
complaining of the injury their business receives because they cannot
get enough machines. The factory at the time of writing is largely
behind its orders. Enlargements of various departments have been made
from time to time, but the demand is yet far ahead of the capacity for
production.
The Needle Department is one of the most interesting features of the
entire establishment. Here a coil of steel wire of fine quality is put
into a machine, which straightens, then grooves it on both sides above
and below the spot where the eye of the needle should be, and cuts it to
proper length. A girl then takes a handful of needles, and, feeding them
into a machine, punches the needle eye at a single blow. Then they are
ground down to a point; after which they are tempered, and then the
inside of the needle eye is polished out to prevent its cutting the
thread. The whole needle is finally polished, and nothing more then
remains but counting the shining bits of steel and packing them away in
boxes for the trade. The Needle Department gives employment to 100 men
and 50 women.
Below the main building is a three-story brick building 200 feet long,
in which the cabinet work is partly done. The Company has a large
factory at South Bend, Indiana, where most of the black walnut tables,
covers, and cabinet cases are made. Portions of these are sent to
Elizabethport in a partly finished condition, and all such receive their
finishing in this shop.
Still below is another similar building, the “Box Shop,” where some
sixty men are employed in making the packing boxes and crates in which
the machines are shipped from the factory. The Box Shop cuts up for this
purpose no less than 300,000 feet of pine and spruce lumber every month.
To run this immense establishment, six stationary steam engines are
required, which have a combined strength of one thousand horse power. It
takes twenty-two boilers, averaging seventy-five horse power each, to
furnish the steam for running these engines and heating the buildings.
The floors of the buildings have a combined area equal to _thirteen
acres_ of ground; and every square foot of the entire area is in
constant use. The whole premises, including the fine dockage, covers no
less than thirty-two acres of ground.
Such, in brief, is the factory where your Singer machine was made, dear
reader. It is believed to be the most complete, systematic, and
best-equipped in the world. It is believed to be the largest
establishment in the world devoted to the manufacture of a single
article. It gives employment to over 2,300 men and women, and when it
“shuts down” to take the annual account of stock, it takes 200 men to do
it; and this they call “shutting up the factory!” The men are paid off
every _Monday_, instead of every Saturday, and thus in more than one
family the wife and children have had cause to bless the kind
forethought which removed temptation from the path of some easily
persuaded man, and saved him and his week’s earnings to themselves.
[Illustration: [Pouring Molds]]
The Singer operatives are among the most thrifty of mechanics. In every
case of injury to any of its employés, the Company has dealt with great
generosity, and many are the households from which much of the black
shadow caused by sickness has been chased by the substantial aid it has
afforded. Nor do the hands leave this work alone to their employers.
Hardly a man is stricken by disease among their ranks but his comrades
interest themselves in his case; and if pecuniary aid is required, the
subscription list goes around till every want is supplied at the sick
man’s home.
These kindly offices are not confined even to these ample limits. When
the ghastly Yellow Fever Spectre was carrying dismay and death
throughout the Southern States, the employés of this great factory made
up, in less than four days, the splendid sum of $4,100, and sent it out
on its errand of mercy to men whom they had never seen nor known.
The factory hands have organized among themselves several very
creditable associations. One is a fine Rifle Team, to which the Company
contributed a handsome badge for an annual prize; another is a Brass
Band of excellent reputation, besides several Ball Clubs having very
good records.
CHAPTER VI.
THE REASON WHY.
There is a valid reason for everything in this world, whether we are
able to find it or not, and for all this wonderful growth and
Aladdin-like success there is a reason too. In 1872, when the great
Chicago fire had impoverished thousands of the residents of that city,
the Relief Committee undertook to furnish sewing machines to all the
needy sewing-girls who might apply. Each girl was permitted to choose
her machine from among the sixteen different kinds kept by the
Committee. The total number of women who took machines was 2,944, and of
this number 2,427 chose Singer machines, and the other 517 women
distributed their choice among the fifteen other kinds of machines.
These poor women expected to earn their living on these machines, and
there must have been some reason why such an overwhelming majority of
them took “Singers” instead of machines of other make, each of which was
loudly proclaimed by its manufacturers to be the “best in the world.”
The Singer Machines have been awarded the first premium over all others
more than two hundred times, at great World’s Fairs, at State Fairs, and
at County Fairs in every part of the United States.
As we have before stated, three-quarters of all the sewing machines sold
throughout the world in 1879 were “Singers,” and there must be a reason
for that. When any one style of machine, used in millions of homes,
leads all the other kinds to such an extent as that, there must be some
way of accounting for it all, and if our readers choose to read on they
will shortly discover why.
An interesting fact in this connection was related to the writer
recently by Mr. Galland, a large manufacturer of ladies’ garments, whose
factories are located at Scranton, Pennsylvania. The Gallands use
several hundred sewing machines in their factories, operating them by
steam. They had machines of many different makers originally, but
gradually, as these machines wore out, had been replacing them with
“Singers.” The reason assigned was that they had noticed, from time to
time, that when a Singer machine became vacant, the girls who worked on
machines of other kinds were clamorous to obtain the Singer and leave
their own; and, when machines of other make were vacant, the girls were
full of excuses for not taking them, but seemed desirous of waiting for
the next vacancy, in hope of getting a “Singer.” These observations led
to inquiry from their master mechanic, who explained that the girls
working on “Singers” lost less time in repairing, and in those peculiar
sewing machine “fits,” than the girls who operated other machines. At
this point the pay rolls were consulted by the inquiring proprietors,
and there the whole secret lay exposed to view; for the work was paid
for by the piece, and the rolls showed that the girls operating Singer
machines were earning from one dollar to two-and-a-half dollars a week
more than the other operators!
[Illustration:
TESTING THE MACHINES.
]
Here then is the open secret of the Singer Machine’s favor with the
people. It is so simple that a child can understand it; it is so strong
that a bungler can hardly get it out of order, and every part (as we
have seen) is made with such scrupulous exactness out of the best
materials, fitted in its place to the _thousandth part of an inch_, and
tested and re-tested so many times before it is permitted to leave the
factory, that it does not get the “fits” which try a woman’s patience,
destroy the fruits of her labor, and consume her time in vexing attempts
to coax the machine back to duty. A gentleman wrote to the Company quite
recently that he had a Singer Machine bought twenty-three years ago, and
in use all that time, which sews perfectly to-day.
Many people sit bewildered by the immensity of the Sewing Machine trade,
and wonder what becomes of all the machines. The answer is very simple.
If the trade is large, the world is larger still. Carefully prepared
statistics show that the entire world contains at the present time not
over six million sewing machines, good, bad, and indifferent. The United
States alone contain nearly ten million families. But fully one million
machines are not in homes but in factories, operated by steam, driven at
the highest possible speed, and consequently wearing out in a few years.
Therefore, if all the machines in the world were brought here they would
supply only half the families of our own land. The civilized countries
of the globe, where sewing machines are now being introduced, have over
seventy million families, not including China, Japan and India, where a
trade is being rapidly developed. In a word, the sewing machine is now
being offered to a population of not far from a hundred million
families, and the world contains not more than six per cent. of the
number of machines necessary to supply them, without considering the
enormous consumption of machines in shops and factories.
It is plain, from these figures, that great as the trade has grown from
the small beginning, it is yet in its infancy. Nevertheless, it has
proved, except in a few instances, one of the most hazardous of
enterprises. Probably as much money has been lost in the sewing machine
business as has been made. The introduction of steam into manufactures
and commerce has wrought changes so marked and rapid that none but keen
and careful students of their own times could keep track of them, and
thousands of good men have gone down because they had not considered the
new elements introduced, particularly into manufacturing industries, by
steam and improved machinery. These have brought in a subdivision of
labor which our forefathers scarcely dreamed about, and which we have
seen in our trip through the factory. It is almost incredible what speed
a mechanic acquires whose task consists in performing one single brief
operation, and repeating it over and over a hundred times an hour for
months and years. We watched, with wondering interest, a man varnishing
the under surface of the machine bed-plate. The space to be varnished
was about a square foot in area, filled with obstructions and angles,
every one of which must be touched with his brush. The operation was
reduced to an exact science. His left hand caught the machine arm in
just such a place every time; his brush went into the pot in just such a
way; just so many sweeps it gave this way, exactly so many that way, and
with precisely such a toss every time it was spun across the table to
his assistant. Spring and summer, fall and winter, that man did nothing
but wipe that brush just so many times across that square foot of iron,
and he did it with a precision and rapidity that was marvelous. The
quickest painter we ever saw could not do one machine while he would
finish five.
[Illustration:
PUNCHING THE NEEDLE EYE.
]
And this is but a type of several hundred different operations into
which labor is subdivided here, and which, by such subdivision, is so
cheapened that employers whose capital and business will warrant it, can
pay labor a good price and yet drive out competitors who are without
large capital, large business and skill to use the advantages which are
thus available. On this rock many sewing machine manufacturers have
split without, perhaps, knowing that it was only the lack of a large
demand for their machines, and the absence of a large and well-directed
capital which wrecked them. In the last few years over fifty sewing
machine companies have failed, and swamped large nominal capital in the
aggregate.
The lesson is almost too obvious to justify the formulating of a
prophecy that the sewing machine business of the future is likely to
concentrate in a comparatively few corporations, whose skill, capital
and facilities will be sufficient to bring out the best machines, made
of the best materials; paying their skilled operatives liberal wages,
and yet enabled, by this subdivision of labor, to offer them to the
people at a price within the reach of all.
Such is the story of the Sewing Machine from its paltry and inauspicious
beginning. Such were the struggles and trials of the man to whose genius
the world owes the vast, incalculable, and forever accumulating benefits
of this great invention. And when we try to conceive what the world
would be to-day if the Sewing Machine and all its concomitant blessings
were suddenly removed from among its inhabitants, we look at this record
of his achievements and rich triumphs, and rejoice that the common
experience of inventors was not realized in the Sewing Machine
invention, but that in this instance, at least, a great mechanician
lived to see his
──┤Genius Rewarded├──
[Illustration:
SINGER’S ORIGINAL MACHINE.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
18 “_cat_ the first ship that “_eat_ the first ship that
should cross the Atlantic by should cross the Atlantic by
steam!” steam!”
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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