CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix LIST OF TABLES xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xii 1. Ready To Go: An Industry in the Making 1 2. Ready-made: The Structure and Development of the Leeds Clothing Industry 1850–1914 20 3. Made-to-measure: Structure and Strategy 1914–1940 53 4. Unsuited to Change: Strategy and Structure 1940–1970 91 5. The Cutting Edge: The Technology of Tailoring Production 107 6. A Stitch in Time: The Organization of Production and Work 130 7. Tailor-made: The History of Trade Unionism among the Leeds Clothing Workers 154 8. Engendering Work: The Division of Labour in the Leeds Tailoring Trade 172 9. Suitable Improvements: Upgrading Resources in the Leeds Clothing Industry 194 10. Redressing the Balance: Women Workers and the Leeds Clothing Strike of 1970 209 viii Contents 11. An Industry in Tatters: The Decline of the Leeds Clothing Industry 226 Conclusion 248 APPENDIX 255 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 INDEX 325 1 READY TO GO: AN INDUSTRY IN THE MAKING THE manufacture of cloth as a central element in the process of indus- trialization has been well explored by historians. The industry that created garments from that cloth has, by contrast, been largely over- looked. The place of dress in people’s lives has fascinated social histori- ans, and the changing nature of attire and material culture have engaged fashion historians, yet the way in which the production of costume was organized—especially, surprisingly, during its expansionary period from the mid-nineteenth century—has been neglected by historians of busi- ness. The garment trade has featured in recent discussions of industrial policy, especially in the context of ‘flexible specialization’, but the back- ground to its emergence in the 1980s and 1990s as a prime example of the effectiveness of niche marketing is neglected.1 The ‘clothing industry’ encompasses a range of products and a variety of manufacturing forms. Such a heterogeneous structure has been and remains a feature of an industry influenced to an unusual extent by shifts in fashion. What is particularly challenging for the historian of business is to identify strategy and structure within such a dynamic and locationally diverse industry. One possible approach is to analyse a core component of the trade during a period of transformation, while recognizing the limited opportunities for generalizations from such an investigation. Accordingly this study focuses on the production of men’s tailored outerwear (suits) during the period in which the wearing of such garments became ubiqui- tous among British males of all social groups. The democratization of men’s apparel was a process associated with rising real incomes and changes in manufacturing and marketing of suits from the late nineteenth century. The large-scale production of men’s tailored outerwear became located in a number of British cities including Glasgow, Leicester, Colchester, London, and Leeds, but only the latter specialized in tailoring, which became a staple trade of the city during the inter-war years. 1 For discussion of flexible specialization see Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity. (New York, 1984). 2 An Industry in the Making The suit as the symbol of mass male clothing provides the key to the growth of the industry. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, woollen tailored garments were confined to the elite wardrobe. Working- class attire was more commonly constructed from cotton or a mix of cotton and other fibres.2 From the 1850s the style of men’s tailored outer- wear for all social classes began to converge. The growing popularity of the two- or three-piece business suit reflected a new male image of sobri- ety. The market for both ready-made and made-to-measure suits was also stimulated by rising real incomes and the expansion of white-collar occu- pations. Large-scale production of ready-made suits was augmented from the turn of the century by the impact of wholesale bespoke manufacture, which allowed a measured suit to be made and sold at the same price as its ready-made equivalent. It was in the production of wholesale bespoke suits that the Leeds industry specialized. Wholesale bespoke tailoring appealed greatly to working men because—for an affordable price—it allowed them to dress like gentlemen. It is not clear why—apart from the powerful force of emulation—they would wish to do this. For the lifestyle of manual workers, the tailored woollen suit was neither a comfortable nor a practical garment. Yet memories and visual sources show that most working men wore a suit for much of the time. Evidence from the foot- ball terraces from the 1920s onwards confirms this. The suit formed the basis of most male wardrobes from the 1920s to the 1960s. It became a powerful means by which the sense of place in modern society was acquired. All fighting men at the conclusion of both world wars were rewarded with a suit. This suggests that the ownership of such a garment had a special meaning in twentieth-century society. The demob suit was also a clever marketing strategy. The universal nature of suit-wearing was both a reflection of social and cultural change from the late nineteenth century and an outcome of innovation in retail- ing. The control of retail outlets by manufacturers was an essential part of making the connection between production and consumption. The manufacturers of suits came to control the market for their product. The multiple tailors—as the manufacturing retailers were known—were inno- vators, but their approach was also a component of a more widespread marketing revolution. Occupational change and rising real incomes generated demand for standardized products distributed through multi- 2 See Beverly Lemire ‘Developing Consumerism and the Ready-made Male Clothing Trade in Britain, 1750–1800’, Textile History, 15 (1984), 21–44, and Sarah Levitt, ‘Cheap Mass-produced Men’s Clothing in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, Textile History, 22 (1991), 179–92. An Industry in the Making 3 ple stores. The making of suits on a large scale and the scientific approach to manufacture confirmed the suit as part of the mass culture of the early twentieth century in which the need to conform was paramount. The manufacturers and sellers of suits played their part in the promotion of conformity. The suit was a universal feature of demotic dress for forty years from the 1920s despite its inappropriateness for many people and purposes. By 1960 a return to unstructured clothing for the working class began. This trend soon spread to other social groups. The move to less formal wear in the 1960s and the reversion to lighter fabrics in less constricting styles were practical responses to changes in working-class lifestyle. The period of the suit can therefore be seen as a temporary irregularity in the history of demotic dress. From the 1960s the suit was no longer a democratic garment, yet the multiple tailors resisted the trend away from its popu- larity. For them, suit-wearing was an integral feature of modern society. Without it society would be undermined. Yet, manufacturing tailors who failed to respond to the move towards more informal and less structured clothing from 1960 went out of business. Those who recognized the new trend either diversified into retailing or moved into the production of upmarket suits. This marked a return to the suit as an elite garment or as working apparel. By the 1980s the suit had become a component of niche marketing rather than an item of mass distribution. The purpose of this study is to place the growth of the tailoring indus- try from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and its decline thereafter, within the context of technical, structural, and strategic developments. The growth of the trade took place in two distinct phases. In the later nineteenth century technical and organizational changes in manufacturing formed the basis of the industry’s growth as factory production expanded in connection with a complementary workshop sector. Further expansion in the inter-war years, when the majority of the nation’s suits were produced in Leeds, rested heavily on innovation in marketing. Thus the principal producers of menswear became its predom- inant retailers also, so that for several decades from the 1930s over 60 per cent of all suits sold in Britain were made and marketed by a handful of Leeds ‘multiple tailors’. The gains derived from an emphasis on retailing strategy sustained the industry well into the 1960s, and beyond the point at which manufacturing itself ceased to be profitable. Despite the support provided by a sound structure of retailing outlets, and the long-term financial contribution that these provided, the manufacturing business of the multiples inevitably declined in the face of foreign competition that 4 An Industry in the Making accelerated from the 1970s. In a number of respects the tailoring industry followed the route of much British manufacturing decline since the Second World War. Employer insensitivity to changing demand and dogged pursuit of a strategy that minimized investment in skills and tech- nique permitted high levels of productivity in the context of ‘style monot- ony’, but were clear weaknesses in the context of both cheap imports and competition from more demand-responsive producers. Inadequate and inappropriate government policy merely compounded the problem. This book is organized around a thematic analysis of the structure of clothing production and its managerial strategy, the core of which was profit maximization through cost containment and intensive working practices. A hard-working yet poorly paid and inadequately trained labour force provided the support for such a strategy.