Throughout the ages, making clothing was ...

Throughout the ages, making clothing was the responsibility of the housewife, who sewed her family&#;s garments at home. This was still the case in the early years of the United States. In his  Report on the Subject of Manufactures, Alexander Hamilton wrote that in a number of districts two-thirds to four-fifths of all the clothes of the inhabitants were &#;made by themselves.&#; The well-to-do went to custom tailors and dressmakers or bought garments imported from Paris and London.

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The clothing industry was one of Britain&#;s oldest, traced back to the medieval guilds. In the early nineteenth century, even after the industrial revolution had begun, it was still characterized by small custom tailoring (&#;bespoke&#;) shops geared primarily to clothing for gentlemen. The English tailor was a skilled journeyman measuring the customer, cutting, sewing by hand, and then fitting the entire garment. Clothing for the lower orders was made at home.

In the s, ready-to-wear manufacturers started to set up shop in both Britain and the United States. In the United States they supplied clothes for slaves in the South or seamen in the North. Brooks Brothers, for example, started out in the whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, precisely to meet the sailors&#; needs for clothes. Another market was bachelors who had no one at home to sew for them, catered to by dealers in secondhand clothes. Unable to keep up with the demand, some dealers began to buy cloth and have it sewed by farm women working at home. Here and there such a merchant jobber might even assemble a group of women into a workshop.

The invention of the sewing machine by Elias Howe in and Isaac Singer&#;s improved model four years later paved the way for volume production of clothing in factories. The Civil War and its demand for uniforms hastened the process. Soon, most American men&#;s clothing was &#;off-the-rack,&#; that is, factory made. Women&#;s wear moved to factories somewhat later, but the industry grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century, developed by retail and wholesale dealers. In New York, the principal American center for the manufacture of women&#;s clothing, the labor force consisted largely of Irish and German immigrant women, some of them still working at home. As the major source of immigration shifted, however, Jewish and Italian immigrants, many of them men and some with tailoring experience, flooded into the expanding apparel industry.

Two types of production arose. One was the factory, where the production process broke down the garment into its constituent parts, permitting division of labor and the use of workers less skilled than the tailor artisan. In the fashion-oriented sectors, which grew with the rise of ready-made women&#;s wear, a system emerged that was something between handicraft trade and factory production. Here, the division of labor went only as far as the constituent crafts&#;cutting, machine sewing, hand finishing, and pressing. In either case, garment assembly was based on a &#;bundle&#; system. Work was delivered to the individual workstation in a bundle. The worker untied the bundle, performed the required tasks, and then retied the pieces to be passed on to the next stage. Workers were paid piece rates based on the number of items sewn.

Forces at Work in the Garment Industry

Giant factories or mills with agglomerations of huge machinery, employing thousands of workers and owned by mammoth corporations with large amounts of capital, is the typical portrait of twentieth-century industry. But the garment industry never fit that description, and even its &#;large&#; factories producing standardized items were picayune by comparison. The shops were labor intensive, employing relatively low-skilled, usually female, workers and required little capital investment. The technology was fairly simple&#;basically the sewing machine. At first, cutting was done with scissors and pressing with hand irons, until electric cutters and steam presses replaced them. To this day, apparel has one of the lowest capital-to-labor ratios of any industry. Competition among manufacturers has always been fierce, and the entire industry has been squeezed by two more powerful forces: the textile suppliers and the big retail chains that are the chief buyers.

Not being saddled with large amounts of sunken capital nor dependent upon highly skilled labor, the industry had the potential to be mobile but was, in fact, concentrated in a few urban centers. This was due to the fact that fashion, particularly women&#;s fashion, played a role in garment economics and tended to tie the industry to centers of high society. A nation&#;s leading city became the style setter and major center of production. Fashion trends were set by the rich and famous who lived there, and moved mainly from high-priced to low-priced lines, as everyone tried to emulate them. (The worldwide craze for blue jeans, a derivative of work clothing, indicates that emulation also can move upward.) Although other large cities also were garment centers, New York dominated in the United States, as did London in Britain and Paris in France.

The degree of fashion orientation governed the type of ownership and the size and location of factories. Men&#;s clothing&#;less susceptible to style changes&#;was made by more substantial companies with their own factories, as well as by small firms and contractor shops located in a number of cities. Highly standardized work clothes, for which there is a steady demand not influenced by fashion, could be made almost anywhere, including southern rural locations in the United States. More fashion-oriented women&#;s wear, for which demand was more limited and also more volatile, made greater use of subcontracting and smaller workshops and was located in large cities (mainly New York).

Another factor governing the industry is that is seasonal, mostly because of the weather&#;people wear heavy coats only in the winter&#;and the trendy nature of fashion. Items less subject to the whims of changing tastes are less seasonal, for the demand is steadier and there is the possibility of producing for inventory. Seasonality helped to tie the location of firms to major centers having adequate reserves of experienced labor that could be tapped on short notice.

In the higher-priced lines, fashion was the main differentiator among competitors. Success was based on acceptance of a firm&#;s styles (a form of monopolistic competition) rather than labor costs. (1) Companies in this end of the business produced in their own shops and required a greater degree of skill from employees. Since employers were more interested in quality than speed, they paid time rather than piece rates. Their workers, therefore, enjoyed relatively high wages and good working conditions. High-fashion manufacturers were unlikely to move operations away from the fashion center because they needed to be close to resources that would allow them to respond quickly to changes in their customers&#; tastes.

All but these high-end firms, however, could specialize by function and were able to divorce the production function from design and sales. Firms using outside contractors included manufacturers, which engaged in production themselves but sent surplus work to contracting shops, and jobbers, which only cut the material and then sent it to contractors for assembly. Contractors competed for orders, and since their profits were the difference between what they received from jobbers and manufacturers and what they had to pay their workers, the system fostered low wages and poor work conditions.

Britain dealt with the problem by legislating labor standards. In , Winston Churchill piloted a bill through the House of Commons establishing minimum wage boards in four trades, including the largest part of the clothing industry. At that time in the United States, the Supreme Court would not countenance a minimum wage, but unionism was gaining strength. Two significant labor organizations emerged in the apparel industry: the International Ladies&#; Garment Workers&#; Union (ILGWU) in women&#;s wear and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) in men&#;s. (2) Through collective bargaining, they established some control over the system by making jobbers responsible for conditions in their contractors&#; shops and limiting the number of contractors a jobber could use. They were not able, however, to establish the high wages that unions won in other industries. Overall, the two different approaches&#;minimum wage regulation in Great Britain and collective bargaining in the United States&#;resulted in similar wage levels for garment workers in the two countries, improved over previous times, but still low in comparison to wages in other manufacturing jobs.

Moving out of the Big Cities

The location of garment manufacturers affects and is affected by the economics of the industry. To better understand this process, we will focus on women&#;s and children&#;s wear in the United States. For a long time contracting did not affect the geographical concentration of clothing manufacturers, because the shops had to be close both to the jobbers&#; showrooms and the labor supply. (3) The industry was located mainly in Manhattan, first on the Lower East Side, but eventually west of midtown in the section that came to be called the Garment Center. (4) Agglomeration economies also developed, as firms catering to the industry&#;embroiderers, belt makers, etc.&#;also clustered in the Garment Center. With production concentrated in a small area, the unions were able to police conditions.

The need for quick reaction to style changes had tied production to the Garment Center but advances in transportation permitted companies to look further afield for labor. In the s, the motor truck allowed firms to take advantage of the bridges and tunnels across the East and Hudson rivers. Contractor shops tapping new sources of labor, largely young women willing to work for lower wages, opened in Brooklyn and New Jersey. Weakened by internecine warfare, the ILGWU could not cope with the migration, and production grew in the outlying areas. It took until the coming of the New Deal for the union to be able to bring these shops under the union&#;s control. However, as vehicles got faster and roads were improved, trucks could travel a longer distance overnight, and shops were opened even further away. After World War II the outward movement accelerated and expanded into the old mill towns of New England that had been abandoned by the textile industry and the anthracite coal region of northeast Pennsylvania staggering from the shift to oil for home heating.

The use of a more standardized production system, akin to that used for men&#;s clothing, contributed to the ability of shops that made women&#;s wear to relocate. In the manufacture of better dresses, coats, and suits, one worker performed all the machine sewing and another all the hand sewing, but standardized products, which eventually included lower-price dresses and coats and suits, could be made by &#;section work.&#; Tasks were subdivided&#;one worker set the sleeves, another stitched the lapels, and so on&#;making it feasible to employ less-skilled and lower-paid workers. The New York locals&#; ban on the use of section work only encouraged shops to locate outside the city. The union pursued these &#;runaway shops,&#; but even as it brought them within the fold, it was careful to push wages up only high enough not to induce employers to move into new territory. As a result, although all unionized shops working for Manhattan jobbers came under the same collective agreement, workers outside Manhattan were paid less than those in the city.

Manhattan remained the prime design and sales center for women&#;s and children&#;s apparel, but as a production center it was in decline. Immediately after World War II, the city accounted for two fifths of national employment and the metropolitan area for almost half. By the mid-s, the city&#;s share had dropped to less than one third and that of the metropolitan area to 43.5 percent. Since most of the jobs lost in Manhattan had moved to Pennsylvania and New England, the northeast region as a whole still saw no decline in its overall share of national employment. (5) But outward movement quickened in the s as the new interstate highway system made the South, with abundant supplies of cheap female labor, very attractive.

In , the South accounted for only one sixth of employment in the apparel industry; by , however, it was up to one fourth and after that its share soared. Southern production historically had been confined to the most standardized products, such as men&#;s work clothes, but gradually more sectors joined the migration, and soon the South became the leader in apparel production. The unions ran into formidable roadblocks to organizing in the South. Right-to-work laws, especially, were a serious obstacle in an industry with high labor turnover, since shops that had been unionized could be decertified as the workforce changed. So the unions began to rely on increases in the federal minimum wage to mitigate its weakened bargaining power.

The Challenge from Imports

Until the middle of the 20th century, most advanced nations were self-sufficient with respect to clothing and apparel imports were insignificant. In the mid-s, some standardized types of apparel began to arrive in the United States from Japan and Hong Kong. Imports received a lift in , when the customs law was changed to allow products to be assembled offshore and then sent back to the United States with duties applied only to the &#;value-added&#; part of the product. (6) Pressure from unions and employer associations induced the U.S. government to lean on other countries to limit their exports, but this was only a delaying action as some less developed Asian nations began to concentrate on increasing their exports. They built on their comparative advantage&#;abundant supplies of cheap labor&#;to specialize in low-capitalized, labor-intensive manufactures such as clothing and electronic assembly

Now facing competition from low-wage economies, the advanced nations sought an international solution. The Multifibre Arrangement (MFA), established by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in , was intended to control the rate of increase of exports from less developed countries in order to give the clothing industries of the advanced nations time to restructure while allowing the LDCs to continue to develop. The removal of the MFA in led to increased imports and a spread of garment production to more, even lower-wage countries.

Despite competition from imports, U. S. production continued to grow until the s when it started a sharp descent. Employment in the clothing industry declined accordingly, and there are now fewer than 400,000 production workers in the clothing industry in the U.S, as against 1&#; million in the s. (Part of the job loss is attributable to some increase in productivity.) Although Los Angeles has a strong hold on sportswear, New York remains the nation&#;s leading fashion design and marketing center, but most garments are assembled abroad. In a sense, this represents another step in the widening of the New York labor market, to Brooklyn and New Jersey in the s, to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in the s and s, to the South in the s and s, and to the entire world today.

The movement to freer trade has facilitated this new global division of labor. The success of Hong Kong and Korea in using the garment and electronic industries as starting points toward industrial economies led to emulation by others (e.g. Thailand, the Philippines) and today most developing nations follow this model. China, with a population of 1.3 billion, has become fertile ground for manufacturing all types of labor-intensive products, including clothing. In fact, China now accounts for about one fifth of world garment exports, and its share is expected to rise to half within a few years, at the expense of higher-wage LDCs.

Transportation changes also have played a role. Shipment by boat took weeks, which did not matter too much for highly standardized products such as men&#;s shirts. But other products required faster turnaround time. The advent of the jumbo cargo plane not only cut the cost of shipping by air (apparel has a high value relative to weight), but its speed made it possible to produce even fashion-oriented apparel abroad. Transportation costs are not insignificant. In , the costs of importing to the United States, including transportation, importers&#; markups, and tariffs, varied from one fifth of total costs for men&#;s dress shirts to one third for women&#;s coats. Even so, while transportation charges add to the cost of assembly abroad, they are more than offset by lower wages in the LDCs.

Finally, the fairly static nature of the industry&#;s technology and manufacturing process has facilitated geographic dispersal, since setting up a workshop does not require much technical know-how or capital or a skilled workforce. There was once some thought that microelectronic technology would allow advanced nations&#; clothing industries to restructure and become competitive again. Indeed, technological advances and work restructuring&#;for example, abandoning the bundle system and using work teams in standardized product lines&#;have led to improved productivity. For the most part, however, new technology has been applied to the design and cutting stages of the production process, not assembly, and although assembly wages are much lower than those in the design and marketing end of the business, they account for most of total labor costs. Innovations, moreover, can be applied in foreign as well as domestic workshops, and information technology has made it easier to coordinate production at sites all over the world.

Advanced nations do enjoy productivity advantages, but they are not great enough to overcome wage differentials. A report by the Asian Productivity Organization offers an example: American workers could make a shirt in 14 minutes while it took 25 minutes in Bangladesh, but the average U.S. wage was $7.53 an hour compared with 25 cents in Bangladesh. Another study found that in Mexican garment productivity was 40 percent that of the United States, but its wages were only 21 percent of U.S. wages.

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The sewing machine, though much improved, is still the basic production tool of garment manufacture, and it continues to be relatively easy for new firms to enter the industry, as capital requirements remain modest. Despite the rise of some large companies, they have not eliminated small shops. There are still 17,000 apparel firms in the United States. In many countries, large retail chains have come to dominate much of the industry and have been able to exercise a degree of oligopsonistic power. They coordinate consumption and production, guiding the selection of goods to be produced. Swedish fashion retailer H&M, for example, designs all its merchandise in Stockholm but outsources production to 900 workshops in 21 mostly low-wage countries, constantly shifting production to get the best deal. The businesses actually manufacturing the garments, however, remain small-scale undertakings.

This, then, is the scenario against which one of the most interesting problems of globalization is being played out. The unique characteristics of garment manufacturing&#;particularly how cheaply shops can start up and their ability to provide employment to many low-skilled workers&#;make it a dynamic engine for industrialization in many less developed countries. But these same characteristics often lead to poor working conditions and leave apparel companies using contractors in LDCs vulnerable to criticism regarding labor rights and low wages, as was discussed in the previous article.

Sources

• Business Week, November 11,
• The Economist, February 15,
• Roy B. Helfgott, &#;Women&#;s and Children&#;s Apparel,&#; in Made in New York: Case Studies in Metropolitan Manufacturing, Harvard University Press,
• Kurt Hoffman and Howard Rush, Micro-Electronics and Clothing: The Impact of Technical Change on a Global Industry, Praeger,
• Michael Scheffer, Trading Places: Fashion, Retailers, and the Changing Geography of Clothing Production, Royal Dutch Geographical Society/Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University,

Footnotes

1. A business survival strategy recently adopted by domestic manufacturers in high-wage countries has been the development of &#;designer labels&#; (e.g. Calvin Klein), to compete with imports on the basis of style and quality rather than price.
2. The ILGWU was established in . The Amalgamated formed in as a split-off from the AFL&#;s United Garment Workers. Regarding it as a &#;dual&#; union, the AFL refused it admittance, but it came to dominate the industry. It was admitted in with jurisdiction over suits and overcoats and the UGW over work clothes, but it soon left the AFL for the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
3. Cut goods were delivered to the contractor and finished products returned by young men pushing carts through the streets and up and down the elevators.
4. The center of Manhattan&#;s men&#;s industry was a mile south, around Union Square.
5. The availability of lower wages elsewhere was not the only factor contributing to Manhattan&#;s decline as a manufacturing center. Consumer demand shifted away from traditional dresses, coats, and suits, a segment dominated by Manhattan, to more informal sportswear. Also, affordable loft space needed to accommodate section work in the larger shops was in short supply. Finally, while Manhattan garment wages were high relative to those in other locations, they were low relative to wages in general. The industry found itself facing labor shortages as the old male tailors retired and young women turned to other employment opportunities in white-collar positions.
6. Later, the European Union adopted a similar policy, known as outward processing trade (OPT). Many firms, particularly in Germany, have taken advantage of it to have clothing produced in Eastern Europe.

GARMENT INDUSTRY. As early as the manufacture of ready-to-wear clothing became one of Cleveland's leading industries. The garment industry probably reached its peak during the s, when Cleveland ranked close to New York as one of the country's leading centers for garment production. During the Depression and continuing after World War II, the garment industry in Cleveland declined. Scores of plants moved out of the area, were sold, or closed their doors. Local factors certainly played their part, but the rise of the ready-to-wear industry in Cleveland, as well as its decline, paralleled the growth and decline of the industry nationwide. Thus the story of the garment industry in Cleveland is a local or regional variant of a much broader phenomenon.

In the early 19th century clothing was still handmade, produced for the family by women in the household or custom-made for the more well-to-do by tailors and seamstresses. The first production of ready-to-wear garments was stimulated by the needs of sailors, slaves, and miners. Although still hand-produced, this early ready-to-wear industry laid the foundations for the vast expansion and mechanization of the industry. The ready-to-wear industry grew enormously from the s to the s for a variety of reasons. Increasing mechanization was one factor. In addition, systems for sizing men's and boys' clothing were highly developed, based on millions of measurements obtained by the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Eventually, accurate sizing for women's clothing was also developed. The Depression of contributed to the growth and growing acceptance of men's ready-to-wear, because men found in off-the-rack garments a satisfactory and less costly alternative to custom-made clothing. The production of ready-made men's trousers or "pants," separate from suits, stimulated during the depression of the s, allowed men to supplement their outfit without having to purchase a complete suit. In general, however, the great expansion of the ready-to-wear industry coincided with and was partly the result of the tremendous urbanization and the great wave of immigrants that came to the U.S. in the last decades of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th. Industrial cities such as Cleveland also experienced rapid growth, and it was during this period that Cleveland's ready-to-wear clothing industry blossomed.

The early entrepreneurs of the clothing industry in Cleveland were often JEWS of German or Austro-Hungarian extraction. Their previous experience in retailing prepared them for the transition to manufacturing and wholesaling ready-to-wear clothing. One example was Kaufman Koch, a clothing retailer whose firm eventually evolved into the JOSEPH & FEISS CO., a leading manufacturer of men's clothing. The company still exists in the early s, although it is no longer locally owned. The entry-level manufacturer needed relatively little capital to launch a garment factory. H. Black & Co., which would become a major Cleveland manufacturer of women's suits and cloaks, started out as a notions house. The Black family, Jews of Hungarian origin, decided to produce ready-to-wear clothing based on European patterns in their own home. Later, fabric was contracted out to home sewers and then returned to the factory for final assembly. This system of contracting was widely practiced at this stage of the garment industry's development, but by the close of the 19th century home work had been generally superseded by factory production. Garment manufacturing started in the FLATS, but in the early 20th century, it was concentrated in what is now called the WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, an area bounded by W. 6th and W. 9th streets and Lakeside and Superior avenues. L. N. Gross Co., founded in , was one such firm in the growing garment district, specializing in the production of women's shirtwaists. Many women wore suits, and the separate shirtwaist provided a relatively inexpensive way to modify and vary their wardrobe. L. N. Gross also pioneered in the specialization and division of labor in the manufacturing process. Instead of having one person produce an entire garment, each garment worker specialized in one procedure, and then the entire garment was assembled.

As the garment industry spread to other areas of the city, the CLEVELAND WORSTED MILLS dominated the skyline on Broadway near E. 55th St. First organized in the s and controlled after by KAUFMAN HAYS, the Worsted Mills produced fabric for Cleveland manufacturers, as well as for garment manufacturers in other parts of the country. The company owned and operated a total of 11 mills in Ohio and on the East Coast. During the first 3 decades of the 20th century, the garment industry spread from downtown to the east side along Superior Ave. between E. 22nd and E. 26th streets. The RICHMAN BROS. CO. built a large plant on E. 55th. near St. Clair. Founded in Portsmouth, OH, the company moved to Cleveland in the late s, specializing in the production of men's suits and coats&#;an activity in which Cleveland was a close runner-up to New York. In order to reduce the risk of large cancellations by wholesalers, Richman distributed its product directly to the customer in its own retail outlets. The plants of other garment manufacturers dotted the east side well into the s, including BOBBIE BROOKS on Perkins Ave. and the Dalton Co. at E 66th and Euclid. The PRINTZ-BIEDERMAN CO. was founded in by Moritz Printz, for many years the chief designer for H. Black & Co. Printz-Biederman specialized in the production of women's suits and coats, a branch of the garment industry in which Cleveland ranked second to New York. In the company left the St. Clair area to build a modern factory on E. 61st between Euclid and Chester avenues. The large knitwear firm of Bamberger-Reinthal built a plant on Kinsman at E. 61st St.; Joseph & Feiss was located on the west side on W. 53rd St.; Federal Knitting had a plant on W. 28th and Detroit,; and the Phoenix Dye Works was still located on W. 150th St. in .

For approximately 50 years after the s, about 7% of Cleveland's workforce toiled in the garment factories. The ethnic origins of those who worked in the industry were as varied as the immigrants who flowed to the U.S. in the early decades of the 20th century. Although Jewish workers played a prominent role, other immigrant groups such as CZECHS, POLES, GERMANS, and ITALIANS were also employed in large numbers, and many of the garment factories were located in the ethnic neighborhoods from which they drew their workforce. Small workshops also proliferated in the ethnic neighborhoods, and many garment workers labored in sweatshop conditions. Unlike in New York, however, where the majority of shops employed 5 or fewer workers, 80% of Cleveland's approximately 10,000 apparel workers were employed in large and well-equipped factories by . Although working conditions were somewhat better in Cleveland than in New York, Cleveland garment workers generally received low wages and worked long hours with few, if any, benefits. Like garment workers elsewhere, they sought to improve their wages and working conditions by organizing. In a number of small craft and trade unions joined together in New York City to form the INTERNATIONAL LADIES GARMENT WORKERS UNION, and in Cleveland garment workers staged a massive strike. On 6 June the employees of H. Black & Co. walked out, and up to 6,000 of Cleveland's garment workers followed them. The ILGWU sent officials from New York to encourage the strikers, but in spite of considerable support for the workers in the community at large, the owners resisted. Attempts to negotiate a settlement failed, and by October those who could returned to work. The strike had been lost (see GARMENT WORKERS STRIKE OF ).

During World War I, the garment industry produced a variety of apparel for the armed forces, and in wartime inflation and prosperity prompted the ILGWU to organize another strike in Cleveland, involving approximately 5,000 workers. To avoid the disruption of local production of military uniforms, secretary of war and former Cleveland mayor NEWTON D. BAKER intervened, prevailing on both sides to accept a board of referees, which gave the workers a substantial increase in wages. This event marked a watershed in relations between management and labor in Cleveland's garment industry. The threat of unionization and the influence of "Taylorism" or "Scientific Management" persuaded the large Cleveland garment factories to provide increased amenities for their workers, which reached a peak in the s. PAUL FEISS, of Joseph & Feiss, was a convinced exponent of scientific management, and time and motion studies were implemented in order to make production more efficient and cost-effective. Working conditions also were improved in order to reduce employee turnover and to provide the best possible environment for maximum productivity. The local garment factories began to provide clean and well-run cafeterias, clinics, libraries, and nurseries for children. Employees of both sexes were urged to participate in sports, theatricals, and other activities, and the factory was also a place where immigrants learned English and a variety of homemaking skills. One consequence of paternalism was a brake on the growth of unionism.

The Depression and the New Deal had a major impact on the garment industry. Those manufacturers who survived the Depression were faced with a powerful new labor movement bent on organizing the unorganized garment industry. Bolstered by the provisions of the NRA and the National Labor Relations Act, both the ILGWU and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, which represented workers in the men's garment factories, successfully waged organizing campaigns (see AMALGAMATED CLOTHING AND TEXTILE WORKERS). Some owners acquiesced; others resisted or simply closed their doors. The process of decline in Cleveland's garment industry began during the s. During World War II, the industry was once again geared for war production. Factories produced uniforms, knit scarves, and parachutes. LION KNITTING MILLS was famous for its production of the knitted Navy watch cap. Following the war, a number of garment manufacturers were unable to adjust to new market conditions and to new price levels. But while some companies fell by the way, new and vigorous garment factories grew, especially in the s. Among them was Bobbie Brooks, founded by MAURICE SALTZMAN, and the Dalton Co., organized by Arthur Dery. In fact, the Cleveland garment industry was still so large and influential in the s that Cleveland manufacturers were able to convince the Phoenix Dye Works of Chicago to relocate in Cleveland, where many of its customers were located. Throughout the years other businesses ancillary to garment manufacturing also flourished in Cleveland.

Since World War II, the once-vigorous Cleveland garment industry has dwindled considerably, especially since the s and s when the decline accelerated. In some instances, management has transferred manufacturing operations elsewhere while retaining offices in Cleveland. In some cases an entire operation moved from the Cleveland area, usually to the South. Many companies sold off all or part of their businesses or simply closed. The reasons for this shift are complex and varied, some deriving from local conditions and some from conditions that are national or even global in nature, affecting the industry as a whole throughout the U.S.

The garment industry is traditionally a low-paying industry, and rising labor costs aggravated the industry's problems. Although most of the large Cleveland manufacturers were unionized, unionization itself did not necessarily mean that one company had an unfair advantage over another. The city's garment unions, however, generally sought and received wage settlements above the national minimum. Labor costs were considerably less in the South, and Cleveland manufacturers as well as garment and textile workers throughout the U.S. faced growing competition from lower-paid workers in other parts of the world. For example, knitwear and other textile products produced in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore could be sold in the U.S. at substantially less than the same products manufactured in this country. Another factor that may have discouraged some Cleveland manufacturers was the changing workforce. Until the s and s, many women workers had a limited number of employment opportunities, particularly the European immigrant women who dominated the workforce of the garment industry. During the postwar period, there was a new generation of women working who had many more employment opportunities at wages much higher than could be earned in the garment industry. However, while labor costs in Cleveland were relatively high in comparison with some regions, there were some industry authorities who contended that additional factors contributed to the industry's decline. For example, some family-owned concerns were sold or simply dissolved when family shareholders could no longer agree on management decisions. In other cases, the heirs preferred some profession or occupation outside the garment industry.

The apparel industry was also subject to changes in technology and to the rapidly changing conditions of the marketplace. Cleveland firms often did not or could not respond with sufficient alacrity or astuteness to such changing conditions. Cleveland was perhaps too divorced from the center of the market in New York. It lacked a regional market of importance, and thus many manufacturers lost touch with what consumers wanted, and when the competitive price structure changed after World War II, some companies could not adapt to a shifting and rapidly changing marketplace. In the s New York came to dominate the industry as both a marketplace and a manufacturing center, and substantial Cleveland manufacturers must constantly study and test the marketplace trends in New York City. In addition, there are other important regional markets, such as Dallas and Los Angeles, which served to move the focus of the industry away from Cleveland. Perhaps that is part of a larger underlying transformation of the American economy resulting in the loss of preeminence of the older industrial centers of the Great Lakes region and Middle West. On the other hand, Cleveland garment manufacturers who take advantage of new technologies, who learn to cut costs, and who learn to respond effectively to the marketplace may still survive and even flourish.

Stanley Garfinkel

Kent State Univ.

Finding aid for the Stanley Garfinkel Oral History Collection, WRHS.

Finding aid for the Stanley Garfinkel Photograph Collection, WRHS.

Finding aid for A Stitch in Time: The Cleveland Garment Industry Collection, WRHS.

View more on Cleveland Historical

Sean Martin. A Stitch in Time: The Cleveland Garment Industry. Western Reserve Historical Society,

See also LABOR.

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