“Ready-made clothing!” It sounds so simple—just like that. Mrs. Fine Lady saunters into a shop, puts up her lorgnette, and lisps, “I'd like to see something in a satin afternoon dress.” A plump blonde in tight-fitting black with a marcel wave trips over to mirrored doors, slides one back, takes a dress off its hanger—and there you are! “So much simpler than bothering with a dressmaker.”
But whatever happened to get that dress to the place where the blonde could sell it? “Ready-made,” indeed! There has to be a start some place before there is any “made” to it. It was at that point in our dress factory when the French designer first got a notion into her head—she who waved her arms and gesticulated and flew into French-English rages just the way they do on the stage. “_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_”—gray-haired Madame would gasp at our staid and portly Mr. Rogers. Ada could say “My Gawd!” through her Russian nose to him and it had nothing like the same wilting effect.
Ready-made—yes, ready-made. But first Madame got her notion, and then she and her helpers concocted the dress itself. A finished article, it hung inside the wire inclosure where the nice young cutter kept himself and his long high table. The cutter took a look at the finished garment hanging on the side of his cage, measured a bit with his yardstick, and then proceeded to cut the pattern out of paper. Whereupon he laid flat yards and yards of silks and satins on his table and with an electric cutter sliced out his parts. One mistake—one slice off the line—_Mon Dieu!_ it's too terrible to think of! All these pieces had to be sorted according to sizes and colors, and tied and labeled. (Wanted—bright and useful girl right here.)
Next came the sewing machine operators (electric power)—a long narrow table, nine machines at a side, but not more than fourteen operators were employed—thirteen girls and one lone young man. They said that on former piece rates this man used to make from ninety dollars to one hundred dollars a week. The operators were all well paid, especially by candy, brass, and laundry standards, but they were a skilled lot. A very fine-looking lot too—some of the nicest-looking girls I've seen in New York. Everyone had a certain style and assurance. It was good for the eyes to look on them after the laundry thirteen-dollar-a-week type.