Robert Zuckerkandl, Hausindustrie in der Handschuhnäherei in Dobrisch und Umgebung (Böhmen)

Robert Zuckerkandl’s study, originally published in 1899 and supplied here in a republication of undocumented date, examines domestic glove sewing in Dobrisch and surrounding Bohemian villages. It connects the organization of production with women’s earnings, household subsistence, and the consequences of transferring work from workshops into homes. Local employment belongs to a dispersed manufacturing system:

Diese Fabrikation beschäftigt nun bei dem Nähen der Handschuhe Tausende von Hausindustriellen in den verschiedensten Gegenden des Königreiches Böhmen.

English translation: This manufacture now employs, in the sewing of the gloves, thousands of domestic workers in the most various regions of the Kingdom of Bohemia.

The scale of employment contrasts with its fragmentation into households. Prague manufacturers supply prepared leather through factors, who distribute assignments, inspect completed work, and return the gloves. The material unit arriving at the intermediary already embodies manufacturers’ control over cutting and preparation:

Das Handschuhpaar kommt mit den Schichteln, dem Riemchen und den anderen für die Knopflöcher, Schlitz, Zwickel und Herzchen erforderlichen Lederstückchen, als kleines Bündel zusammengeknüpft vom Fabrikanten an den Faktor.

English translation: The pair of gloves comes from the manufacturer to the factor tied together as a small bundle, along with the Schichteln, the little strap, and the other small pieces of leather required for the buttonholes, the slit, the gussets and the quirks.

Domestic sewing is consequently one stage in an organized division of labour, not independent household manufacture. Different seams and decorative finishes require particular machines and successive manual operations. Factors generally own and lend the machines, supply thread and needles against deductions from earnings, and hold seamstresses responsible for defects. Their administrative responsibilities and capital commitments are substantial, but competition among them also carries manufacturers’ price pressure downward into piece rates.

The local history makes decentralization a specific business decision. Sewing began in a Dobrisch workshop in 1867; machinery followed during the 1870s, before machines were transferred to workers’ dwellings. Workshops were abandoned during the 1880s to save rent, heating, lighting, and insurance contributions and to reduce the visibility of business activity to taxation. Home industry thus emerges from the dismantling of workshops rather than simply surviving from an earlier craft economy.

Zuckerkandl estimates that twenty-six identified factors employ between 2,000 and 3,000 women, while acknowledging the limitations of employers’ disclosures. Workers largely come from households of smallholders, day labourers, artisans, and factory workers. Mothers and older daughters operate machines, while younger girls perform finishing tasks and acquire skills within the family. The technical description also exposes bodily demands obscured by the domestic setting:

Die Schichteln, Zwickel und Riemchen werden, damit sie während des Nähens besser an den anderen Lederstücken haften, von der Näherin mit der Zunge befeuchtet.

English translation: The Schichteln, gussets and little straps are moistened by the seamstress with her tongue, so that during the sewing they adhere better to the other pieces of leather.

Together with bent posture, inadequate lighting, and leather dust, this practice gives concrete substance to the account of working conditions. Crowded rooms serve simultaneously as kitchens, bedrooms, and workplaces; household poverty is reflected in a diet dominated by potatoes and substitute coffee.

The earnings analysis distinguishes possible output from work actually available. Factors maintain more workers than ordinary orders require, allowing for agricultural absences and urgent deliveries. Calculations based on uninterrupted employment therefore exaggerate incomes. For the common Danish seam, ordinary weekly machine-sewing earnings amount to about three gulden after materials, while hand sewing yields roughly one and a half to two gulden. Better-paid operations support only a minority.

These earnings cannot adequately be understood as additions to a dependable male wage. Stable industrial employment for men is scarce, and agricultural and forestry work pays poorly and intermittently. Sewing supplies many households with their principal cash income. Dependence on commissions explains both acceptance of reduced piece rates and exceptionally long hours when orders arrive. Export contraction reaches the household through diminished work, competition among factors, and wage cuts.

The conclusion evaluates decentralization through both social protection and productive efficiency. Competition erodes the savings initially obtained by factors and subsequently reduces manufacturers’ selling prices, while homeworkers remain largely outside industrial labour protections. Workshops could provide regulated hours, insurance, healthier conditions, improved training, and closer coordination of successive operations. Household production instead entails journeys, waiting, and delays. Zuckerkandl favours a return to workshops, conditional on retaining sewing employment for local women. His broader contribution is to show how apparent economies for individual businesses can sustain an arrangement that weakens workers’ security without delivering lasting productive advantages.