10,000 garments per week. Despite the fact the working conditions in a garment factory during the Civil War could hardly have been worse, they were able to produce, without electricity, ten percent of the output of a modern factory. Still yet, one of my professors told me that he was sent overseas to supervise production. He said the noisiest factories in the world are in India, because they still use foot operated treadle sewing machines. He said the clanking sound generated in a room with over one hundred of these machines was deafening. Therefore, not only were uniforms produced on a large scale during the Civil War, there are in fact still factories operating in the world that use the same equipment as was used during the Civil War.
In more recent military history, the Waffen-SS during World War II, selected the center of European garment production as one of the areas of relocation of the Jewish population. The largest of these areas of concentration would grow into what was later called the Warsaw Ghetto. Clothing is still mass-produced in this area.
When one speaks of a revolutionary concept, it is an idea that is moving forward. Reproduction items can also be viewed in this manner. At one point in re-enacting, simply having a wool uniform made one authentic. Much like the hands of a clock, our knowledge moves forward, makes a full revolution and returns to the point of origin. The point of origin of Civil War uniforms was professional military mass production. Any accurate reproduction must begin with a retracing and sensitivity of the history of the garment industry.
The Garment Industry.
Directly relate to the concept of mass production, is the notion that todayxs ferment industry is ultra modern. There is a misconception that the construction of clothing has radically changed from the time of the Civil War. Because of the erroneous acceptance of unauthentic reproductions being produced utilizing supposedly xmodernx techniques, there has followed a misconception that the items produced during the Civil War are unique unto themselves, and it has somehow become a lost art. The recent phenomenon of replica uniform xkitsx, professional sewing is not viewed as a profession and trade by re-enactors. In re-enacting today, garment construction for the most part being interpreted by people who are self taught and have no professional training. It is not so much the lack of training that has impacted re-enacting, but rather the fact that they are perceived as being experts and ironically having the last word on what is correct and what is not. For one to be able to compare xmodernx versus Civil War techniques the person must be expert, or at and sewing techniques, it is requisite that the person lived and was trained in that time period. There is no re-enactor, living, that can boast this. To that end, they only viable method available is to compare original manuals and artifacts to what are now being done in garment production. The history that emerges about the Civil War is not “granny’s sewing circle” or “old time Amish craftsmen”, but rather, the garment industry as a trade and the role of factory work in garment production. The 1860’s and the 1990’s are not two ends of the spectrum, which are radically different; rather, they are stages of evolution. The mechanization and electrical power of today’s factories have indeed brought about changes, but it still bears a strong family resemblance to the red brick three story buildings of the 1860’s.
Although there has never been anyone directly credited with its invention, the most pivotal tool in the evolution of garment production was the invention of the tape measure. Surprisingly, this occurred a mere forty years prior to the Civil War. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, strips of paper were taken for the various lengths required, and correspondingly marked chest, neck, sleeve, etc. With numerical measurements, it was found that the human body could be measured in sets of proportions. Ironically, to this day, there are tailors that do not use a tape measure, but rather, a piece of string, and use this for all of the measurements.
It was the invention of the tape measure that brought a degree of sophistication to the drafting of patterns. In Claudia Kidwell’s Cutting a Fashionable Fit, she states that the tape measure brought about a difference, in “technique, (and) the substitution of ‘scientific principles’ for the tailor’s individual judgment, or genius”. Prior and in some cases, up to the Civil War, tailoring was self engineered trade, despite the fact that is remained locked into the apprenticeship system. It was not until the 1880’s that a relatively universal system was accepted by both the custom and ready-made industries. This system was designed and written by Jno. Mitchell, and is the text that is still used at the Fashion Institute of technology. Prior to this, and very much so during the Civil War, tailors and cutters in the garment trade were coming up with their own solution to the problem of cutting clothes to fit the human body. This individualized approach is where the various “depot styles” came from during the Civil War.
Professor Caffarelli of the Fashion Institute of technology recalled a system where the tailor simply traced around his hand to form the curves of the pattern. This relied almost completely upon the experience and judgment of the tailor. Professor Caffarelli told me about this system in 1993, shortly thereafter, I obtained a copy of a book The Art of Cutting written by Edward Giles in 1896. The book is basically a timeline and comprehensive study of pattern making systems and manuals up to that time. He mentions this, as well as another system which used horseshoes to form the curves. Giles dates this system of making patterns, not from time of the American Civil War, but the late 18th century. Professor Caffarelli’s training was not academic, but, as they say in the trade, “on the bench”. His training was a continuation of the tradition where the apprentice inherited the skills of the master, and in this case, it predated the Civil War.
Directly following the invention of the tape measure came a boom in publishing systems for drafting patterns. Each one was claiming to be different in approach and result. Some required special instruments to measure the customer and special drafting implements. Others, which we have in our collection, consisted of expanding brass templates which you enlarged to the customer’s measurements. Many of these systems simply did not work, Genio Scott’s The Cutter’s Guide, published in New
