Seamstresses formed the main labor force, outside tailoring, which fueled the

expansion of clothing production and related trades from the seventeenth

century onward. This expansion was not dependent initially on technological
developments or the introduction of a factory system, but on the pool of
women workers. Their expendability and cheapness to their employers was
effectively guaranteed by the sheer number of available women able and
willing to use a needle, their general lack of alternative employment, and by
the fact they then worked outside the control of guilds and latterly have been
under-unionized. These seamstresses sewed goods for the increasing market
for ready-made basic clothes such as shirts, breeches, waistcoats, shifts, and
petticoats for working people, or slops as they were known (after the practice
of sailors who stored their working clothes in slop chests). Their history is
largely anonymous. However, social and economic historians with an interest
in gender are now extending the knowledge of seamstresses' central role in the
historical growth of clothing production and consumption.