A Ready-Made Business

The Birth of the Clothing Industry in America

Bibliographic Data

ID5812484
AuthorsMichael Zakim (Tel Aviv University, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume73
Issue1
Pages61-90
Publication date1999-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Business History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-6805 • E-ISSN: 2044-768X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3116101
OpenAlexW2323137319
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited57

This article recounts the birth of the clothing industry in the United States after 1815. It contends, in contrast to recent historical literature, that the clothing business was at the center of the American experience of industrialization. This was not because ready-made clothing was a novel commodity. Nor was it because of new production technologies, social innovations, or legal structures adopted by the industry. Rather, clothing entrepreneurs were significant because they integrated several important markets-a trans-Atlantic trade in cloth, an urban trade in labor, and a market for manufactured goods in the interior regions of the United States. This helped to make the ready-made clothing business among the country's largest industries by 1850

Clothing industry · Industrialisation · Textile industry · American History and Culture · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies

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