Many shops and department stores have been forced to give way before the onward sweep of this enterprise. The area in New York occupied most exclusively by the garment workers is about a mile long and about one-half mile wide; in this district there are thousands of workers employed exclusively in making garments of one kind and another. The Garment Makers’ Union has a membership of 60,000. How much do we know about these workers? When the Triangle Shirt Waist Company’s loft caught fire and scores of girls were burned to death or killed by jumping from the building, the country was shocked, but up to that time we had not known that thousands of girls work every day behind closed and locked doors. We have almost forgotten the incident. Where was the factory? What was done about it? The girls were, however, our servants working at the task of furnishing us with clothes! =Fashion and Clothes.= In the last chapter we considered the workers who produce the material from which clothes are made. The question that is still of vital significance to most of us is, how shall we make our clothes? “I have not a thing to wear,” is a very common statement, yet it does not mean what it says, for the people that use this complaint most frequently are the ones who have literally trunks full of clothes. What they mean is that they have nothing in the latest fashion. Fashion is a hard taskmaster. Some one has said that the length of the stay of a society woman at any hotel can be determined by the number of gowns she brings with her to the hotel. “She would no more think of wearing the same gown twice to the same place than she would think of insulting her best friends,” was a woman’s description of her companion to prove that she was a “real lady.” The frequent changes in style bring rich returns to the manufacturers of clothing and call for a ceaseless outgo by people who feel that they are obliged to follow the dictates of fashion. “I hate rich people,” said a little shop-girl. “For every time I see a woman wearing a fine dress I cannot help thinking how hard I work and how useless the dress is for any practical purpose.” =Dressmaking in the Home.= Dressmaking was at one time carried on entirely within the family. It was a domestic employment. The only garments that were made outside of the home were men’s clothes, and the journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic. He made the entire garment himself; but even in this industry very often the work was carried on in his home and all the members of the family assisted more or less.