ABSTRACT
If American industrial history were summarized in a single text, Pennsylvania’s industrial heritage would certainly occupy several pages in each chapter. Steel, coal, lumber, oil, railroads, textiles, and manufacturers of many sorts played prominent roles in the Keystone State’s past. So, too, did apparel making. From the Great Depression through the 1960s, the making of clothing in factories, mostly by women, was an important part of the Commonwealth’s industrial capacity. When the garment industry peaked in 1969, nearly 200,000 Pennsylvanians earned their living cutting fabric, sewing, pressing, and filling orders in factories that ranged from twelve employees to two thousand or more.
