There were four tailor shops left in Badenburg. There had been eight before the Ring of Fire, and they had employed sixty-seven people between them, including apprentices. The four that were left were the best and most prosperous, and now, including apprentices, they only employed twenty-three people. It was ridiculously easy for people from Badenburg and the other towns within a day’s walk of the Ring of Fire to go to Grantville to buy cheaper clothing. Which is precisely what they had been doing. Several of the tailors from the surrounding towns had moved into Grantville seeking other work. Others had moved away, with a less than glowing view of Grantville.
The tailors’ guild in Badenburg heard of the completion of the first locally made sewing machine the day of its completion. They hadn’t been at the party, but others had, and they had been told. They called a meeting of guild members, but they could not decide what to do. If they outlawed sewing machines, all it would do was encourage people to go to Grantville to get their clothing. Assuming they could get the town council to agree to it at all, which was not likely. Badenburg’s security was now dependent on the Americans in Grantville.
Sewing machines would come into Badenburg, they would do much of the tailor’s work, so most of the tailors would be out of jobs. A few would actually do better, the ones who owned the shops that got sewing machines. They would make more profit on their clothing than they ever had. For the rest, it was move away, or find another job. In the middle of a war, where could they go? They couldn’t afford to move when they had nowhere to go. There was work in Grantville, but it wouldn’t be in the craft they had worked in for years.
Not all members of the tailors’ guild were willing to accept that. There was talk of direct action. Of destroying any sewing machine sold in Badenburg and the shop of the buyer. Only talk, however; offending Grantville by destroying its products wouldn’t do any good and might well do tremendous harm. No one had forgotten the Battle of the Crapper, nor had they forgotten what Ernst Hoffman and his soldiers had done to Badenburg before the Americans had stopped them. What would the Americans do if offended?
* * *
After the meeting had ended, Bruno Schroeder, Guild Master for the tailors’ guild in Badenburg, visited Karl Schmidt. Karl had been a long time friend. At the same time, Bruno knew that Karl was providing parts for the sewing machine company. They had discussed it casually a couple of months ago. Karl had mentioned that the company attempting to make the sewing machines was run by children. Bruno had assumed that they were unlikely to succeed. At the time, Karl had not been all that confident in their success either. Bruno wanted to know what Karl thought now that the first sewing machine had been completed. Would they get better at it? Would they eventually be able to turn out a sewing machine a month?
Bruno was a tailor, and a high-end tailor at that, not a manufacturer. He realized that the sewing machine makers had had some set up work to do on the first sewing machine, but Bruno was an artist. Making the second set of clothing was not all that much faster than the first. The same pattern could be used, and you now had experience on the individual’s fit, but the time savings were minimal. More important than that, Bruno Schroeder did not realize how quickly the Higgins Sewing Machine Company could make sewing machines because he did not want to. He had closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. He had come to Karl hoping desperately that he could continue to do so. He couldn’t.
When he explained his question, Karl looked at him as if he were an imbecile. Not for long, it took Karl only a moment to get his face back under control, but that look was a shock. Bruno was politically and economically astute, the master of his guild and a political power in his town. It had been a good twenty years since anyone had looked at him that way.