Singer 's prototype sewing machine became the first to work in a practical way . It could sew 900 stitches per minute , far better than the 40 of an accomplished seamstress on simple work . This started the industrialisation of garment and textile manufacturing , as a shirt took an hour to make compared to fifteen hours previously , but these still needed finishing by hand , and the finishers worked alone on piecework terms at home , but mass over-production by factories ' machines , led to pressure on wages and to unemployment , a risk described in Karl Marx , '' Das Capital '' . In Scotland in 1861 there were 62,000 female dressmakers , thirty years later the USA had 300,000 mainly single women . In 1911 , the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed 140 people , 62 jumping to their deaths from upper floors , as doors were locked to keep out inspectors and union leaders . This led to safer working practices although sweatshops continued . Women workers sewing car seat covers in Ford Motor Company Limited 's Dagenham plant , in the UK were getting 15 % less pay than men doing the same job in 1968 . A three week strike helped win their case and in 1970 , the Equal Pay Act was passed . But in 2013 , the East Midlands area in the UK still had 11,000 textile workers paid below the national minimum wage . Textile and garment sewing is now a global industry and sweatshop factories are often employing the poorest women , children and migrants , with few labour rights . A number of non-governmental organisations are attempting to end worker exploitation in clothing industry globally , such as Clean Clothes Campaign , Global Exchange , No Sweat , Stop Child Labour , Fairtrade , Fair Wear Foundation especially raised public awareness of the exploration of sewing workers , both after the 2012 garment factory disaster in Dhaka Bangladesh resulted in 117 dead and 200 injured from at least 1,600 people working on a nine storey factory on sewing machines , unable to escape the fire in similar sweatshop circumstances to those in New York a century earlier . And again after 24 April 2013 , as more were killed at Dhaka 's Rana Plaza , another multi-story factory which housed multiple clothing manufacturing companies along with a bank and apartments , collapsed killing over 1,100 workers and injuring 2,000 more . So in November 2013 , the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh , the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the National Tripartite Action Plan , agreed to work for new workplace safety standards for clothing manufacturing factories . . In 1856 , manufacturers Grover & Baker , Singer , Wheeler & Wilson , all accusing each other of patent infringement , met in Albany , New York to pursue their suits . Orlando B. Potter , a lawyer and president of the Grover and Baker Company , proposed that , rather than squander their profits on litigation , they pool their patents . This was the first patent pool , a process which enables the production of complicated machines without legal battles over patent rights . They agreed to form the Sewing Machine Combination , but for this to be of any use , they had to secure the cooperation of Elias Howe , who still held certain vital uncontested patents . Terms were arranged ; Howe received a royalty on every sewing machine manufactured
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
Isaac Singer