MADE
IN HAMILTON
19TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL
SITE
10
CANADA SEWING MACHINE
MANUFACTORY, c. 1860
Hamilton
was once the sewing machine manufacturing capital of Canada. In the
1850s and
1860s, patents protecting U.S. sewing machines did not apply in Canada. The
American salesman and entrepreneur Richard Mott Wanzer came to Hamilton around
1860 to take advantage of this opportunity. He established a small machine shop
in this building to produce U.S.-designed sewing machines for the Canadian market.
Business
was modest at first. Wanzer himself went door-to-door peddling the four sewing
machines a week his half-dozen workers produced. But only three years later,
over 140 men and boys turned out over 70 sewing machines a week from this building.
Wanzer
built a large new four-storey factory at the corner of King and Catharine streets
in 1868. Inside this new plant, production was re-organized and streamlined.
One workroom sign summed up the new atmosphere: "Workmen who do not keep
up their complement of five hundred a week are expected to work at night".
The
sewing machines produced by skilled machinists in Wanzer's factory were sold
worldwide. Wanzer himself won the award for best sewing machine in the world
at the Vienna International Exposition in 1873. Overproduction and decreased
demand forced Wanzer into bankruptcy in 1892.
Wanzer's
success also benefited the city's foundry industry. Edward and Charles Gurney
built a separate shop and employed 11 moulders full time to produce castings
for the Wanzer plant. Wanzer built his own foundry sometime in the 1870s.