The Sewing Machine

Every now and then I come across a book I had at one point wanted to read but for some reason let get off of my radar.  Such was the case this past week as we traveled to Oklahoma to spend time with family.  I found Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell sitting on my father-in-law’s bookshelf and decided I would read it.  I enjoyed the book a great deal, and think it’s worth the read.

There is a section in the book on Jewish immigrants to the US in the late 19th and early 20th century that I found really interesting.  In particular, there is a section on a family by the name of Borgenicht, who emigrated to the US from Hungary.  Both the husband and wife were workers in the garment industry in the old country, and brought their craftsmanship to the US when they came.  One paragraph in particular jumped out at me as I read the section.  It reads:

“The threshold for getting involved in the business was very low.  It’s basically a business built on a sewing machine, and sewing machines don’t cost that much.  So you didn’t need a lot of capital.  At the turn of the twentieth century, it was probably fifty dollars to buy a machine or two.  All you had to do to be a contractor was to have a couple sewing machines, some irons, and a couple of workers.”

This, for some reason, jumped off the page at me.  I went and did some research and determined that fifty dollars in 1900 is about $1300 in 2010 ( using the CPI as the measure of inflation ).  How cool is that?  The sewing machine in 1900 is the computer of today.  As I read that paragraph, I thought about the fact that you could substitute the word “computer” for the phrase “sewing machine” and pretty accurately describe starting a business today.  All you really need is a computer or two, and a couple of workers.  And it costs about the same amount of money as it did in 1900 to start a business worth having.

It makes me wonder what people will say about this time in history.  It would not surprise me if the historians say much the same about the revolution we are living through.