Seamstress Document Analysis 1 Essay

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Seamstress Document Analysis

Germany is one of the world's leading industrial powerhouses; its industrial growth and success is, however, interesting, having moved from periods of oppression of workers to unionization and social democracy. This text analyzes the autobiography of one of the women who faced gender-based oppression and manipulation at the workplace in Berlin in the 19th century.

Document Analysis: 'Seamstress'

In the generations before WW1, Germany emerged as Europe's industrial powerhouse, evident in some basic facts including rising exports, urbanization, lengthening railroad lines and increasing industrial output. Behind the shadows, however, are the millions of the now-forgotten men and women who carried the bricks, printed the books, sewed the shirt cuffs and collars, hacked down the coal and put down railroad ties that made Germany the industrial powerhouse it was and still is today. The resource selected for this analysis is the autobiography of one of those now-forgotten men and women - Ottilie Baadar. Baadar was the oldest daughter of a sugar refinery worker in Berlin[footnoteRef:2]. Having lost her mother at the age of 7, she was forced to work in the sewing industry in Berlin to support her siblings and her ailing father[footnoteRef:3]. She worked as a seamstress in different companies in Berlin in the 1860s and 70s, and in her memoir details how female workers were manipulated by Berlin sweatshop owners, being forced to work under strenuous conditions at a degrading pay, and how they finally learned to say 'no' to maltreatment. The memoir was composed in Berlin in 1921 and was targeted at working women across the world, to inspire them to stand up against gender-based oppression at the workplace[footnoteRef:4]. [2: Alfred Kelly, The German Worker: Working-Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 64. ] [3: Ibid., 67] [4: Ibid., 64]

This historical document gives insight into the oppression of women in the sewing industry in Berlin in the 19th century, and the development of their ability to stand up against their oppressors. It covers this in four major sections. The first focuses on the specific roles that were allocated to women by sweatshop owners, and what the same indicated about the German culture, values and the place of the woman. The second part focuses on the compensation paid to female workers for their effort, and the work conditions under which they worked. The third section dwells on the reprieve; that is the introduction of the concept of unionization among the working women in the sewing industry in Berlin, and the factors that possibly contributed to slow union activity among female workers in Germany. The final section discusses the specific questions raised by the text that only future research could answer.

Background

The number of female employees in the different sectors of the German economy grew tremendously in the second-half of the 19th century. The textile industry particularly witnessed significant growth in the number of women workers following the invention of the sewing machine, which meant that more and more women in both rural and urban areas could be employed to work from home[footnoteRef:5]. Most of the work in the textile industry began to be done outside factory walls. The opening chapters of Baader's memoir recount her roles and duties as a seamstress in various sewing companies across Berlin. They document the countless hours she spent on a sewing machine doing the same monotonous and boring character of work. The author also demonstrates how challenging it was to organize working women at the time and get them to stand up against gender-based oppression at the workplace. [5: " The German Worker," 70]

Women and the Sewing Industry

Women began to be more involved in industrial activities in the late 18th century, when urbanization began in Europe. Their involvement in the textile industry remained, however, severely limited until the 1860s, when the sewing machine was invented[footnoteRef:6]. I strongly believe that this is because women were considered homemakers; their place was in the home, nurturing children and receiving their husbands when they came home from work. It is possible, therefore, that the German society, like most of their European counterparts, believed that employing women to do factory work was a recipe for child neglect and broken homes. As such, the only women that could be employed in the textile industry were those who did not have young children to take care of, or who were unmarried, without husbands to wait home for. I believe that Baader's family arrangement perfectly demonstrates the German culture's respect for family values -- her mother stayed at home with the children as the father went out to fend for the family, and sent money home for them to use. Even when Baader and her sister were old enough to work for themselves, they had to stay unmarried because getting married and having children meant giving up work in the industry to commit oneself to family rearing - the author mentions that she had to sit long hours at the sewing machine, which made her nothing more than a work machine, denied her the glamour of her youthful years, and made her see no value in life[footnoteRef:7].

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[6: Ibid.] [7: The German Worker," 73]

The invention of the sewing machine in 1860 facilitated decentralization in the garments industry as women with children got the opportunity to get more involved in the textile industry by carrying out sewing work from home[footnoteRef:8]. They, however, still remained subsidiaries to their male counterparts, and were assigned secondary roles such as assembly and preparative roles as the men took care of the main sewing roles. Working in the Schwendy Wool Factory in Gitschinerstrasse, for instance, Baader and her sister were responsible for assembling gloves, footwear, feather decorations and garments as their male counterparts carried out the main embroidery work[footnoteRef:9]. Women were, therefore, largely viewed as casual, temporary employees, who were inferior to men and who, therefore, deserved to be treated differently from them. In my view, this gender stereotyping was central to the recognition of women's roles in the industry as secondary. [8: Ibid., 70] [9: Ibid., 69]

The Work Conditions

Historically, the place of women in society was in the home. A number of qualities, however, made women more attractive prospects for employers than men. First, it is possible that owing to their mothering nature, women were naturally meticulous, careful, dexterous, nimble-fingered and quick. These qualities would have made them more attractive employees than men. Moreover, since they were historically inferior to men, female workers were likely to be paid lower wages than their male counterparts. Female workers were thus cheaper to handle, and it is no wonder that more and more sweatshop owners began to prefer hiring female employees to male ones[footnoteRef:10]. This threatened the superiority of the male species as their control and status were largely undercut. As a way of enhancing their position and control, men in the sewing industry in Europe constituted trade unions and developed the 'family wage' concept to ensure that women's work remained inferior and less well-paid than that of men. It was because of these two issues that women such as Baader often found themselves working for starvation wages in textile factories for the better part of the period documented in the memoir. [10: The German Worker," 69]

Baadar mentions that in her first job, she made only between three and five talers a month, and was forced to carry double-stitching work home in order to make some extra money[footnoteRef:11]. The pay was by far less than proportional to the time and effort she was putting into her work -- she worked twelve hours a day with only a short lunch break[footnoteRef:12]. Most of her colleagues turned to prostitution in the evening as a way of making additional coins[footnoteRef:13]. Moreover, chances of promotion for female employees were rare, and Baadar mentions that she stayed at five talers a month for years despite putting the effort she put in her work[footnoteRef:14]. It was feared that the rise of women in the industrial sphere would threaten the position and control of the male species in society; as such, women were often retained in the same position for years and tied to the same repetitive work[footnoteRef:15]. [11: Ibid., 68] [12: Ibid.] [13: Ibid. ] [14: The German Worker," 68] [15: Ibid., 73]

The work conditions were no better; as a matter of fact, they were so horrible that anyone who worked in textile factories for multiple years risked developing galloping consumption[footnoteRef:16]. At Schwendy Wool Factory, for instance, Baadar and her fellow workers were forced to work with toilets right adjacent to the workroom and there being no sewers, they had to bear the awful smell from the toilets throughout the day[footnoteRef:17]. Moreover, she and her colleagues ran a significantly high risk of injury in the factory -- for instance, they were not supposed to turn off the machine when the wool tangled and needed straightening; instead, they were supposed to use their hands….....

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