“They will have another sewing machine complete in less than a week,” said Karl, as gently as he could. “Then it will get faster. There will be occasional slowdowns, especially at first, but over all it will get faster. Till there is a sewing machine for everyone who wants one, and can afford one.”
For Bruno it did not mean that he had to go out of business. A lot of tailors would, but not necessarily Bruno. He had the money to buy a sewing machine; he could remain in business. What it did mean, was that the basis for his political power was dying. His guild was dying. There would be fewer tailors in the future, fewer guild members. As its numbers decreased, so too would its power. Much of the time-consuming work of tailoring would be done by the new machines. People who had worked all their lives to learn a trade would have to start over, and to the best of Bruno’s knowledge, no one was taking on fifty-year-old apprentices. Nor was his concern just for the political power, he also cared about the members of his guild.
October 20, 1631: Rudolstadt
Bruno Schroeder had heard that a sewing machine had been sold to the last of the tailor shops in Rudolstadt. There was not much he could do about it and he understood the reasons. With Rudolstadt even closer to Grantville, and a smaller town, it had been hit harder by the new competition. Warner Rudolen had to be hurting. Still, Bruno wanted to see how it was working out. What Warner thought.
What Warner thought, was that he might just stay in business after all. Grantville was becoming a very crowded town. Not everyone wanted to go there. Now he could sell clothing for as little and sometimes less than they sold for in Grantville, and some of his customers had come back. He was saving on cloth because, with sewing so cheap, he cut using up-time patterns. He showed Bruno what he meant. Generally a pair of pants was cut in two sections, one for each leg, which meant you only had to sew the inner seam. But that meant the sections were shaped in such a way that more of the cloth was wasted. The up-timers cut the cloth in four sections, two for each leg, which saved on cloth, but meant more sewing. With the sewing machine he could do it the up-timer way and get an extra pair of pants out of a bolt of cloth.
He didn’t have enough work, though. Not nearly enough. He could take a customer’s measurements and have a full set of clothing for them the same day. He could do that by himself, and he didn’t get a customer a day. He was encouraging his younger apprentices and journeyman to look for work in other trades. Without the sewing machine he would be looking for another trade.
That was when Bruno Schroeder really realized that he could not win a fight against the sewing machine. Tailors would buy them no matter what he did.
October 22, 1631: Grantville
Bruno discussed it with the rest of the Tailors’ Guild. They agreed they didn’t have much choice. He then asked Karl to provide him with an introduction to the sewing machine makers. When he met Delia Higgins, he knew that even the last bit he had been hoping for would not be forthcoming. They would not agree to limit their sales to members of the tailors’ guild. All that was left was to be first in line to buy one. The Higgins Sewing Machine Company got five orders that day. More than they had the machines in stock to fill. After Bruno left, they wondered why he had given in so easily.
Suddenly it occurred to David that they had been looking at it from the wrong angle. They had all read about the riot that had ruined Barthélemy Thimmonier, the Frenchman who had built the first recorded sewing machine. They had assumed that the rioting tailors who had burned him out and almost killed him had objected to sewing machines. But he now realized that things were more complicated than that.