MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 81 



He pays, at least, $4 per week; hut, reckoning it at S3, the old price for 

 sewing before machines were introduced, it shows a saving, in this single 

 manufactory, of 8240,000 a year. Allowing the males of the United States 

 to wear out two shirts a year apiece, and a proportional saving would 

 amount to $11,080,000 annually in making the single article of shirts. 



James W. Millar, connected with Brooks Brothers, of New York City, 

 manufacturers of clothing, states that that house alone does a business of 

 over $1,000,000 annually, and use twenty sewing-machines in the store, and 

 patronize those that others use, and do about three-fourths of all their sew- 

 ing by machines, and pay annually for sewing labor about $200,000; $7-3,000 

 of this is saved by machines; that is, the machines save $75,000 on every 

 $200,000 paid for sewing labor. And he states that the house of Brooks 

 Brothers does not make one-hundredth part of the machine-made clothing 

 manufactured in New York. This, putting the proportion at one-hundredth 

 part, would make the business of manufacturing machine clothing in the 

 city of New York $100,000,000 annually; and, at the rate that house pays for 

 sewing, it brings the cost of sewing in this branch of manufacture in the 

 city of New York even with the assistance of the sewing-machines 

 up to $20,000,000. A saving of $75,000 on every $200,000 of this makes 

 $7,500,000. James McCall states an estimate of what proportion of the 

 clothing business of the United States is done in the city of New York, 

 and puts it at about one-tenth. Multiplying the cost of sewing in that 

 business alone in New York, as shown above, by ten, it carries the extent 

 of cost in the United States to $200,000,000 per annum; and assuming 

 that as large a portion of this is done by machines in other places as is done 

 in the city of New York, it makes the cost of sewing labor in this particular 

 manufacture in the United States the above sum of $200,000,000; and this, 

 too, by the assistance of machine sewing. $75,000 on every $200,000 of 

 this is saving, which makes the saving in the United States amount to 

 $75,000,000 annually in this branch alone. Scientific American. 



MAGIC RUFFLES. 



Ruffles have been worn from time immemorial; but " Magic Ruffles," or 

 ruffles made by magic, are a modern invention. The old lady in her frilled 

 cap, two generations ago, could hardly have believed that her granddaugh- 

 ter would, by the assistance of mechanism and steam, be enabled to make 

 ruffles at the rate of two yards a minute, and of more perfect workmanship 

 than it is possible to produce by hand. 



Two inventors, of New York city, have recently devised an attachment to the 

 sewing-machine, for the manufacture of ruffles, which bids fair to prove more 

 valuable than any other of the four hundred patented improvements on the 

 original invention. 



Through the combined genius of these hundreds of patentees, the sewing- 

 machine had gradually approached perfection, until the variety of work to 

 which it was adapted had nearly equalled that of the needle and thimble of 

 the seamstress. Stitching, hemming, and cording were done with great ra- 

 pidity, and even gathering was considerably expedited by its use; but in 

 making ruffles, puffs, and many other kinds of gathered fabrics, the ordi- 

 nary process, even with a sewing-machine, is a slow and tedious one, requiring 

 much manipulation and great care. This last invention, however, renders 

 tlvj process as simple and rapid as plain sewing. It has not yet been applied 



