Editing Sewing machine (section)

== Social impact ==
{{See also|Category:Sewing machine brands}}
{{ multiple image
| image1   = Sewing patterns.jpg
| caption1 = Vintage sewing patterns
| image2   = Eatons Seamstresses.jpg
| caption2 = Seamstresses in 1904
| image3   = Serge-Fashion2.jpg
| caption3 = Workers using [[Brother Industries|Brother]] sewing machines at a clothing factory
}}

Before sewing machines were invented women spent much of their time maintaining their family's clothing. Middle-class housewives, even with the aid of a hired seamstress, would devote several days of each month to this task. It took an experienced seamstress at least 14 hours to make a dress shirt for a man; a woman's dress took 10 hours;<ref name="SewingMachine">{{cite web|url=http://www.moah.org/exhibits/virtual/sewing.html|title=Sewing Machines: History of the Sewing Machine |website=Museum of American Heritage |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080109065246/http://www.moah.org/exhibits/virtual/sewing.html |archive-date=2008-01-09}}</ref> and a pair of summer trousers took nearly three hours.<ref name="19thCenturyFashionandtheSewingMachine" >[http://historywired.si.edu/detail.cfm?ID=502 19th Century Fashion and the Sewing Machine]</ref> Most people except the very well-off would have only two sets of clothing: a work outfit and a Sunday outfit.

Sewing machines reduced the time for making a dress shirt to an hour and 15 minutes; the time to make a dress to an hour;<ref name="SewingMachine" /> and the time for a pair of summer pants to 38 minutes.<ref name="19thCenturyFashionandtheSewingMachine" /> This reduced labor resulted in women having a diminished role in [[household management]], and allowed more hours for their own [[leisure]] as well as the ability to seek more employment.<ref name="SewingMachine" />

Industrial use of sewing machines further reduced the burden placed upon housewives, moving clothing production from housewives and seamstresses to large-scale [[factory|factories]].<ref name="SewingMachine" /> The movement to large-scale factories resulted in a great increase in productivity; fewer workers could produce the same amount of clothing, reducing clothing prices significantly. As supply increased, prices also dropped.<ref name="19thCenturyFashionandtheSewingMachine" />

While many middle-class women enjoyed increased leisure during the Victorian era, working-class women faced intensifying demands, particularly in the clothing industry. The invention of the sewing machine, which revolutionized garment production, brought longer working hours for seamstresses, especially during peak times of the year when wealthy customers placed orders in preparation for "the Season”—the high point of the fashion season. Many women worked a minimum of eighteen hours, and sometimes up to twenty hours a day, particularly those employed by high-end London retailers. Despite the technological advancements, the industry’s seasonality left women with low wages during peak periods and no income for much of the year. Faced with such economic instability, some women turned to prostitution to survive.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Perkin |first=Joan |date=2002 |title=Sewing Machines: Liberation or Drudgery for Women? |url=https://lib.byu.edu/remoteauth/?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.byu.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=30h&AN=8567372&site=ehost-live&scope=site |journal=History Today |volume=52 |issue=12 |pages=35–41 |pmid=21033521 |via=EBSCO}}</ref>

This moral and economic tension extended to broader societal concerns. A challenge working-class women in the textile industry often faced was the notion that factory work could lead to moral decline, fueling fears of widespread prostitution. This anxiety was reflected in literature of the time, with several novels depicting female characters who fell into prostitution after entering factory work. Often, these narratives attributed their downfall to spending wages on ‘finery’ or clothing, which was seen as fostering vanity and eventual vice. Elizabeth Gaskell’s ''Mary Barton'' (1848), set in Manchester, exemplifies these themes. From the 1840s to the 1920s, such questions about the relationship between the clothing women wore and the clothing they made generated moral panics. Works like Benjamin Disraeli's ''Sybil'' (1845), Theodore Dreiser's ''Sister Carrie'' (1900), Emile Zola's ''Au Bonheur des Dames'' (1883), and Honoré de Balzac's ''Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes'' (1847) similarly explored these themes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Valverde |first=Mariana |date=1989 |title=The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3827615. |journal=Victorian Studies |volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=169–188 |jstor=3827615 }}</ref>

Adding to these discussions was the influence of William Acton, a Parisian-trained British doctor who argued that one of the primary causes of prostitution was women’s excessive love of finery, or clothing. Acton suggested that this "vanity" drove women into prostitution, although historians debate whether he meant that women engaged in prostitution to buy fashionable clothing or that admiration for the attire worn by prostitutes led them into the practice. Public debates surrounding the Contagious Disease Acts of 1864 and 1866 highlighted opposing views. For instance, Lucy Bull, a matron from the Royal Albert Hospital, rejected Acton’s moralistic interpretation and instead attributed prostitution to the poverty many women faced.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Valverde |first=Mariana |date=1989 |title=The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3827615. |journal=Victorian Studies |volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=169–188 |jstor=3827615 }}</ref>

Such interpretations reflect broader societal anxieties about women’s labor and morality during this period. Helen Rogers (1997) observes that by midcentury, the needlewoman had become an iconic figure in the Victorian imagination. She symbolized isolation, sexuality, single women’s work, wealthy women’s vanity, and even prostitution, blending labor and morality in complex ways.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rogers |first=Helen |date=1997 |title=The Good Are Not Always Powerful, nor the Powerful Always Good |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3828748 |journal=Victorian Studies |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=589–623|jstor=3828748 }}</ref> This perception of seamstresses often mirrored broader concerns about women working outside the home and the implications for societal norms.

Pam Inder (2015) highlights that such concerns fueled a push for men to receive higher wages, enabling women to remain at home and reinforcing the Victorian belief that women should not work for pay outside the domestic sphere.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Inder |first=Pam |title=Shirts, Shifts and Sheets of Fine Linen: British Seamstresses from the 17th to the 19th Centuries |date=2015 |publisher=Peter Lang. |location=Oxford}}</ref> However, seamstresses, a dominant segment of working women, remained at the center of these tensions. Their work was frequently viewed negatively, symbolizing a broader fear of women’s growing participation in the workforce and its perceived moral risks.

Despite these societal ideals, the economic reality of women’s work remained stark. Louise Tilly and Joan Scott (1987) note that nearly half of women workers in England held manufacturing jobs in 1851. Crucially, 40 percent of these women worked from home, performing non-mechanized outwork or slop-work, which was cheap, ready-made clothing.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tilly, Scott |first=Louise A., Joan W. |title=Women, Work, and Family |date=1987 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York}}</ref> Home-based production offered significant advantages to the garment industry, allowing it to rely on cheap, flexible labor. The long-standing association of needlework with women’s work reinforced this gendered division of labor, enabling industry leaders to exploit a vast network of low-cost laborers. Even as garment factories emerged in the 1850s, the industry continued to combine factory production with sweatshops and home-based labor, maintaining an exploitative and gendered system.

At the same time, economic pressures frequently forced working-class families to defy legal efforts to keep children in school. Mid-19th-century laws sought to regulate child labor and prioritize education, but these initiatives often conflicted with the realities faced by rural families. Many parents sent their daughters to work for wages, often far from home, as a necessary means of survival.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tilly, Scott |first=Louise A., Joan W. |title=Women, Work, and Family |date=1987 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |pages=107}}</ref> For working-class women, labor in the textile industry thus became both a necessity and a source of moral scrutiny, reflecting the tensions between societal ideals and economic imperatives.

Many of the women who had previously been busy at home could now seek employment in factories, increasing the income for their family. This allowed families to be able to afford more sets of clothing and items than they previously could.<ref name="19thCenturyFashionandtheSewingMachine" /> For seamstresses, home sewing machines allowed them to produce clothing for the average person during periods when demand for fitted clothes was low, effectively increasing their earnings. When industrial sewing machines initially became popular many seamstresses, either working in factories or from home, lost their jobs as fewer workers could now produce the same output.<ref name="SewingMachine" /> In the long run these now unemployed skilled workers along with thousands of men and children would eventually be able to gain employment in jobs created as the clothing industry grew.<ref name="19thCenturyFashionandtheSewingMachine" />

The sewing machine's effects on the clothing industry resulted in major changes for other industries as well. Cotton production needed to increase in order to match the demand of the new clothing factories. As a result, cotton became planted in new areas where it had not previously been farmed. Other industries involved in the process benefited as well such as metal companies who provided parts for the machines, and shippers to move the increased amounts of goods.<ref name="TheSewingMachineandItsImpactonAmerica" >[http://sewingmachine.umwblogs.org/the-sewing-machine-its-impact-on-america/ The Sewing Machine and Its Impact on America]</ref> In addition to being important for clothing production, sewing machines also became important in the manufacturing of furniture with upholstery, curtains and towels, toys, books, and many other products.<ref name="TheSewingMachineandItsImpactonAmerica" />