The Dress Industry (A Study of the Impact of Fashion on the Ways of Business). Part II.
[Washington, D.C.]: Consumers' Project Under Supervision of the U.S. Department of Labor, 1936. 10½” x 8”. 89 leaves, mimeographed rectos only, steel prong-fastened at side (numbered pp. [101]-185) + typed letter on Project stationery laid in. Very good: mild foxing, wear and insect predation to first and last leaves; oxidation from paper clip to letter and abutting edges; letter moderately edge worn; faint corner dogears throughout.
This is a portion of a rare report on labor and the shifting fashion industry. Written by a noted economist, Helen Everett, it was issued as part of a New Deal-era project by the United States government.
Helen Everett (later Meiklejohn) graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1915 and earned advanced degrees in economics from Radcliffe and Washington University of St. Louis. She taught at Vassar, published widely in scholarly journals, worked at the American Association for Labor Legislation in New York and the Institute of Economics in Washington, D.C. She later moved to Berkeley, and with her husband founded and taught in the San Francisco School of Social Studies. She died in 1982.
This report was issued by the United States Department of Labor's Consumers' Project, one of several New Deal initiatives to survey and improve upon the nation's economic state. In this second of two parts, Everett notes that the “fusing” of immigration with “the development of the Garment Trades constitutes one of the most dramatic episodes of our industrial history.” She recounts the “grim” reality of the labor struggle, led primarily by women and “almost every nationality of our conglomerate civilization,” citing low quality of life and other obstacles to “efficiency” and “productivity.” The report covers wage and time scales, costs of machinery and finished product in a period of rapid transition to massmanufactured fashion. It notes “the dilemma of reform,” posing questions on “the best possible instrument for supplying the nation with dresses” and the “play of the profit motive.” Everett acknowledged that “the stake of the workers in the industry is immediate and crucial. They do not win from their work today a decent standard of living . . . They have too often failed to reap where they have skillfully sewn.”
Thorough, research-driven data on the fashion industry at a crucial juncture in its history, compiled by an adept female economist. OCLC shows four holdings of the complete report, and a Google search revealed Part I at one other institution. Very good. Item #9385
Price: $500.00