A Coat of Many Colors : : Immigration, Globalization, and Reform in New York City's Garment Industry / / ed. by Daniel Soyer.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• MitwirkendeR: Abram, Ruth J.,; Bao, Xiaolan,; Boris, Eileen,; Carnevale, Nancy C.,; Chin, Margaret M.,; Green, Nancy L.,; Hernández, Ramona,; Kosak, Hadassa,; Palpacuer, Florence,; Soyer, Daniel,
• HerausgeberIn: Soyer, Daniel,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2022]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (296 p.)

For more than a century and a half—from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 20th—the garment industry was the largest manufacturing industry in New York City, and New York made more clothes than anywhere else. For generations, the industry employed more New Yorkers than any other and was central to the city’s history, culture, and identity. Today, although no longer the big heart of industrial New York, the needle trades are still an important part of the city’s economy—especially for the new waves of immigrants who cut, sew, and assemble clothing in shops around the five boroughs. In this valuable book, historians, sociologists, and economists explore the rise and fall of the garment industry and its impact on New York and its people, as part of a global process of economic change. Essays trace the rise of the industry, from the creation of a Manhattan garment district employing immigrants from nearby enements to the contemporary spread of Chinese-owned shops in cheaper neighborhoods. The tumultuous history of workers and their bosses is the focus of chapters on contractors and labor militants and on the experiences of Italian, Chinese, Jewish, Dominican, and other ethnic workers. The final chapter looks at air labor, social responsibility, and the political economy of the offshore garment industry.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface What’s the Use of History? -- Introduction The Rise and Fall of the Garment Industry in New York City -- 1 From Downtown Tenements to Midtown Lofts. The Shifting Geography of an Urban Industry -- 2 The Globalization of New York’s Garment Industry -- 3 The Geographical Movement of Chinese Garment Shops. A Late-Twentieth-Century Tale of the New York Garment Industry -- Part II Workers and Entrepreneurs: Home and Shop -- 4 Cockroach Capitalists Jewish Contractors at the Turn of the Twentieth Century -- 5 Tailors and Troublemakers. Jewish Militancy in the New York Garment Industry, 1889–1910 -- 6 Culture of Work. Italian Immigrant Women Homeworkers in the -- 7 On Dominicans in New York City’s Garment Industry -- 8 Expanding Spheres. Men and Women in the Late Twentieth-Century Garment Industry -- Part III Taking Responsibility for Conditions in the Industry: Unions, Consumers, Public -- 9 ‘‘Social Responsibility on a Global Level’’ The National Consumers League, Fair Labor, and Worker Rights at Century’s End -- Notes -- Contributors -- Index