The Clothing Revolution

In early America, unlike Europe,  it was difficult to tell a person's class or occupation from the clothes they wore.  Americans were accused of being over-dressed according to the Europeans traveling in early America.  Eventually before the end of the 19th century clothes would even come to identify a community, a way for a person to show that they were "just a good as the next person."  By the 20th century, Americans would be the best-clothed and probably the most "homogeneously" dressed of all industrial nations.

All that could never have happened without the sewing machine whose story is quite an interesting tale.  Along with interchangeable parts, it is the reason that we no longer wear "homespun" hand-me- downs from our brothers and sisters.  It's story began in America in the early 1800s with Walter Hunt, who first patented the safety pin by bending wire all because he needed to repay a debt of $15.  The safety pin patent sold for $400.

Hunt was an inventor, obsessed by inventing novelties like a flax-spinning machine, a knife sharpener, a yarn twister, a nail making machine, paraffin candles, paper collars and more.  By the early 1830s Hunt had made several machines that sewed in his workshop on Amos Street in New York City.  They were very basic, sewing a straight stitch,  but some basic features would make a fortune for others in later years.

Hunt's early revolutionary idea was a eye-pointed needle moved by a vibrating arm and a shuttle which carried a second thread that made an interlocking stitch. Unfortunately Hunt didn't have the money to make money from his invention.  But others did...

The war of the sewing machine began and over the next 20 years was fought for not only the money but for the right of being the inventor of the sewing machine.  Those battling?  Elias Howe and Issac Singer.

Next time...Elias Howe
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On June 17, 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of America, arrives in New York Harbor after being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces packed in more than 200 cases. The copper and iron statue, which was reassembled and dedicated the following year.