The Industrial Miracles of the World, and their Workers : The House of Singer and the Sewing Machine.

Progress, Volume III, Issue 9, 1 July 1908, Page 296

The Industrial Miracles of the World, and their Workers : The House of Singer and the Sewing Machine.

This is an industry unique in the history of the world's work. In iU universality it has one competitor in the oil business controlled by Rockefeller. In everything else it stands alone. It dates from the year 1852, the date of its first patent. That was secured just about a year after the discovery of gold at Bathurst by Hargreaves ; a discovery, the forerunner of an industry which has sent some three hundred millions of Australasian gold round the world, and into every corner of the habitable globe. The Singer industry has not sent as many millions round perhaps, but wherever the gold goes, there the Singer goes also. The reason is easiry assigned. It is, that the hunger for gold is not greater than the desire for the sewing machine. That is why gold and the Singers are inseparable fellow travellers. The great house stands out prominent in another respect. It began with thoroughness, reliability, and inventive genius beyond the average, of the highest order, indeed, and it has maintained that tradition from the first day to the present time. That is attested by the unanimous opinion of the world of work. Many others have maintained the tradition of good business capacity, as every one knows who remembers the histories of the great houses of Vanderbilt, Astor, Rothschild, and Baring, each of which has remained in the forefront of good business methods for something over a century. But the Singer industry is the only one that has maintained from the beginning unimpaired the tradition of brilliancy of opportune invention. So much the ordinary practice of this institution proves comprehensively. There is at the head office a staff of experts whose duty it is to look after all that pertains to the mechanical department, not only watching the working of the many hundreds of machinetypes on their list, but adding to that list as the occasion requires. When a new kind of work, with which the Company is quite unfamiliar, is brought in, the pattern of the new work required is turned over to the experts and these are set to work to invent a machine which will turn out that new work as well and truly, as simply and cheaply, as all the other outputs of the factories. There is we believe, no instance of failure to meet such demands, and all record of undue delay is conspicuous by its absence. This point is the one on which this/inn is not only pre-eminent, but unquestioned.

Tho Singer Company has another unique record. It has no middleman in any of the many countries to which its machines are regularly taken. The Company has established its own shops all over the world, and runs then all. The number of these retail

places of business runs into many thousands, the list of which fills a catalogue of nearly pages. From this it will be readily seen that the undertaking is huge and difficult, necessitating familiarity with different lan-

guages, and the requirements, usago^ and habits, of a great variety of people. Nevertheless the local customer is safe from the profit that in other businesses belongs to the middleman, pays no toll, in other wcrds, for the benefits of the Company's work ; and on the other hand is in touch with the principals as closely as if they lived in his own town. Such a record as this is unprecedented. It helps to explain the cheap rate, quality considered, at which the truly wonderful examples of the company's output are placed in the home. The history of the invention is brief in words, and comprehensive in its experience. There were other sewing machine men before the man whose name is now the household word of the sewing world. Just before Isaac Merrick Singer was born in 181 ] , the idea of abolishing the terrible hardships of the sewing trade by giving the business of sewing a new and mechanical sphere, had attracted many minds, and there some patents by the time that youug Singer came, to man's estate. He was a born inventor. To him an engineering drawing was of the deepest attraction, while mechanical problems inspired him with a positive passion. He soon saw that the inventors of the sewing machine had (with one exception, as will be shown presently) failed, and he set to work to find perfection where they had found failure. He was poor, and his business aptitude was in inverse ratio to his mechanical genius. Fortunately he fell into the hands of a good lawyer who piloted him through all the difficulties of the patent stage ; past the rocks of company promoting ; and into the harbour of steady achievement. By that time the best business brains of the woild had become associated with the best inventor of his day. Once in the harbour of steady achievement, developments proved easy. It is only another way of saying that the merits of the perfected mochine (we use the word in comparison between the abortive preceding patents and the Singer first success) were irresistible. As an example of the class of work turned out in the early days, attention was invited, at the recent exhibition in Christchurch, to a machine sold to a Victorian lady in the year 1859. Year in and year out this machine has done good work for that lady for 40 years, with a stitch unimpaired by time or the ravages of use. At the exhibition in question it produced as good a stitch as ever, as good indeed as many of the

most modern of its successors. It is known in' the trade as "The Singer Letter A" machine. This proves very strikingly how practical were the views of the inventor, who directed his whole attention at the outset to the perfection of the stitch, which after all is the main thing in the sewing machine. It was the perfection of the stitch which sent the Singer away through the world, as the fellowtraveller of the gold for which men sell their souls. The stitch disposed of, the inventor and his successors had the way clear to the other points of the machine, and the support of the world of sewers while they followed it. Here it will be well to refer to the exception to the general rule that all sewing machines had failed before Singer succeded. Allan B. Wilson had patented a machine in 1851 (August Bth) having a rotary hook and bobbin, and four-motion feed. This proved the foundation of the sew ing machine connection known in the history of this trade, as the " Wheeler and Wilson." That combination proved a formidable and aggressive competitor. This film had a career, but the superiority of the Singer methods, and the unique character of its wide circle of work, proving irresistible, the rival combination was duly absorbed, and the field went entirely into the possession of the Singers. The latter now push the "Wheeler and Wilson" with the same "vim" as they do the Singers. To-day the Singer interests turn out, from various factories, fully two million machines a year. This immense output is, as before observed, distributed all over the world, not through dealers, but by means of the Companys' own shops, of which there are some 6,000 all told, in nearly 5,000 towns. New York and Brooklyn have 90, Chicago 40, Philadelphia more than 60, London 24, Great Britain 6 19, France 220, Germany 644, Australasia 194 : the organisation also covering Canada, Mexico, Europe, India, South Africa, Turkey, and many other lands. It has been well said that "each Singer shop, wherever found, is controlled absolutely by the Company, and is a centre for sewing machine supplies, and sewing machine troubles of every sort. No matter who the woman is or what language she speaks, or what make of sewing machine she owns, the nearest Singer shop is the place for her to apply to for help, and women all over the vvorld know this." The improvements effected since the output of the first machine are divided into the following groups: — ( 1 . ) Simpler mechanism and manipulation. (2.) Speed and lightness of running. (3.) Silence in action. (4.) Greater range and working capacity. As to what they do, the catalogue of performances is exceedingly varied. Those familiar with the wonderful old "Song of the Shirt" once had an idea that they saw in the fabrics special to that field of work, the limit of the usefulness of the sewing machine. It was not long, however, before the sewing machine had sprung out over every class of clothing, and great factories aro^e for the

wholesale manufacture of garments, while the family use of the machine was spreading through town and country all over the civilised world. Canvas carpets and saddlery soon acknowledged the power of the American wizard of industry, and when the boot trade did the same, the astonishment of mankind was prodigious, and still is every time one of the uninitiated strolls into a boot factory. Of these there are many all over Austialasia, as over the rest of the world, provided in every instance with the famous machines

from the Company's factories. In these "King" Singer sews the lightest leather with the most delicate thread, and has no difficulty with the toughest boot, neither does he delay appreciably with anything before him whether great or small. The plainest shapes are to him no easier than the most complicated ; his stitches run round all curves and angles, and hold as well at the end ; and when

adjustments are required to varying thicknesses of leather, the adj ustment is automatic and certain, as well as prompt ; the work going on without stoppage of any kind at any point. Above all things the simplicity of the movements surprises the average onlooker. The versatility of the machine did not stop

at boots. It rose to the regions of art, giving us tapestry of many kinds, pictures of artistic effect, lace curtains, drapes, tea-cloths, work that emulates the feather work of the islands of the south seas, rivals the beautiful delicacy of Moorish arabesques, aird makes use with equal facility of all the colours in the range of the manufacturer. There are exhibitions in every country of many kinds, industrial, pastoral, and mechanical every year, where the Singer is always strongly in evidence. He is shown in battalions, working at high speed on tables arranged for the convenience of the power supply. In this display there is often a skeleton machine with parts so cut away that the beautiful, simple, and perfectly balanced mechanism which operates the needle at lightning speed can easily be watched and understood. Then to show how the thread brought down by every descent of the eye-pointed needle is engaged and looped by the shuttle below so that every stich is securely locked or knitted, and thereby cannot rip or give way, a mirror is pivoted on cross braces between the uprights midway between the pediments and the base of the machine. On its polished surface every motion of the vibrating shuttle is clearly reflected, and by watching the displayed movements in the opened arm of the machine and those of the base reflected in the mirror, any intelligent person is able to understand literally at a glance why the Singer is such a favourite in the world of work. Such is the nature of the invading power which has annexed so many countries. The invasion is carried merrily on upon the satisfactory principle — beneficent in industrial war, malicious in all other rivalries — of making war support war. The material is prepared in nine factories. Of these, three only are in the country of the inventor, namely at Blizabethport, N.Y., South Bend, Ind., and Cairo, 111., a proof that protective tariffs have been over-leaped by the Singer genius without any undue difficulty. Instead of lvinff down before the tariff wall and howling complaint, Singer and Co. simply jumped at it and landed all right. Thus we see factories of theirs in St. John's, Quebec, Canada ; Wittenberge, in the ancient kingdom of Prussia ; at Florisdorf, in the- centre of the Austrian Empire ; and Poldosk, in much backward Russia. On the other hand freetrade presents as little difficulty to the advance of Singer and Company, the largest factory of all (established early in their victorious career) is Kilbowie, near the great city of Glasgow, employing over 20,000 hands ; from this factory New Zealand draws its supplies. About this factory system it is to be specially noted that every part of every machine manufactured in any factory is interchangeable. Thus anyone travelling with a machine can get a duplicate part, in case of breakdown, anywhere he may be without having to send to the head factory. It is the finishing touch of as splendid a service as has been devised bv the wit of man.

The leading feature of the work of these factories from the profit point of view, is that they cannot keep pace with the demand for their output. Every year the plant of each factory is added to, and every year the demand out-tops the addition. When the manager draws up an " advertisement his assistants come to him with a despairing request either to leave off advertising, or to show them some new way of getting more work out of the factories. Advertising has

always been thoroughly well understood by the management of this warily enterprising firm, as many know who are familiar with its enormous output in the shape of "business talks" as they were called, which

used to fill the newspapers and magazines of the world some quarter of a century ago. Those who are not aware of that episode, still are aware of the Napoleonic character of the advertising policy of this company, for they are always hearing of the great Singer Building in New York, with its tower 41 stories above ground, and its imposing

height of 612 feet. They are never allowed to forget that this tower is the highest building in the world, dwarfing even the biggest things in the United States. For Dominion readers there is an easy method of realising the stupendous height of this structure. We have nearly all seen the spire of Christchurch cathedral, which rises 200 feet in the air. Place" three Christchurch steeples on the top of one another, the three together windfall short of the" Singer Building! f by

sixteen feet. No one can ever imagine that the firm that put up the highest building in the universe for advertising purposes does not understand the value of adver-

Still it occurs to the critical to wonder why the practice of going slow in advertising which followed the era of the "business talks" is now being departed from, seeing that the reason is still in force that was given for the shorter method of merely stating names and addresses. This has been explained by the business manager in New York, who

contends that there are imitations against which he must warn his clients, things unreliable and not to be trusted by the prudent. The day will come, he hopes, when the working power of the factories will overtake the demand and then, if the fort has not been well held by enterprising advertising in the meantime, it will have been stormed by the unworthy. Advertising then, is almost on the borders of a philanthropic project with the Singer people. At all events if the policy is selfish, it is a selfishness enlightened enough to know that the advantage aimed at is as much for the client as for the purveyor. However, be that as it may, the Singer Company's industry is a splendid example to a young country like the Dominion of New Zealand, of everything that a good, up-to-date, manufacturing project ought to be. As a combination of inventive genius, organising power, cheap distribution, commercial aptitude, diplomatic skill, and unfailing soundness of simple constructive work, there could be nothing better. If the workers of the Dominion will manage to take a leaf out of that magnificent book, it will be a good day for their industries.