Decades of Hard Work: Business Strategy and the Legacy of William Work

The transition from home-made and tailored clothing to manufactured clothing in the 19th century was enabled by the rise of the drafting system, which made clothing construction more scientific. These systems, designed to quickly and easily create sewing patterns from individual measurements, were of three types. Proportional systems theorized that the human body was routine and proportional, so that pattern drafting required only one measurement, from which all others could be derived. Direct measurement systems required the pattern-maker to take several measurements from the client to create a custom pattern. Hybrid systems were a mixture of the direct and proportional systems.

Throughout the 19th century, the number of system publications and patents increased steadily, peaking at 70 systems patented in the 1890s. Out of the hundreds of systems invented, marketed, and taught before 1950, only a handful have been explored and researched by clothing and textile historians. Although proportional systems were increasingly discredited as inaccurate as early as 1832, they continued to be invented, maybe because they were simple to use. One inventor and businessman who advocated for proportional systems was William Work, who was based in the Midwest from 1890 to the 1910s. Work thrived because his business model was as adaptable as the times in which he lived. Work's schools survived until 1929, when most other tailoring schools were either gone or on very hard times. He exemplified the saying "adapt or die." He was, at first, the proprietor of a drafting system not of his making. He then invented the eponymous "Work’s Garment Cutter” system. He distributed his system through an early franchise model, in which "trusted agents" established schools and sold the system. When trust broke down, Work established schools under his direct ownership and management. The last of these, the Work School of Dressmaking in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, became a family business, in which his youngest daughter carried on operations for over a decade after his passing in 1917.

A thorough examination of newspaper articles and advertisements, of openings and closings, of social happenings, death announcements, and even of warrants issued was conducted in to answer the following questions 1) How did Work's systems evolve over time? 2) How did his business strategy change? and 3) What was his lasting legacy? Through manuals and patents, we can begin to recover the techniques for clothing construction and the functionality of the actual system. All sources helped weave a rich tapestry of invention and inventor and a picture of American life, so often overlooked.

Work's story is one of adaptability, perseverance, and ingenuity of an inventor and businessman who survived and thrived during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. He provides an example of a single career that mixed the different tracks taken by other drafting system inventors and promoters. The poster will present background, methodology, a summary of the collected data, and the conclusions drawn, supported by photographs, patent sketches, pattern drafts, notes from instruction manuals, and news articles.