Cabinets for the world's sewing machines

1868 — 1955

The wooden half of a world machine, made here: The Singer cabinet works on the city's west side — built where the black walnut grew, begun in 1868 under Leighton Pine — made the cases and cabinets for the most widely sold machine of its age, and South Bend was, in Timothy Howard's 1907 account, "the company's cabinet distribution center for the United States and overseas." Howard gives the routing exactly: South Bend cabinets were "shipped to the Elizabeth, New Jersey plant for the American trade and directly to Glasgow, Hamburg, and Berlin for the European." The History Museum's account of the works fills in the system at its height: by 1907 the plant made 10,000 cabinet sets a day; of these, "numerous sets were shipped to Scotland 'in part white,' that is, unfinished and unassembled," while of the finished sets half went to Elizabethport to have machines installed "and to be shipped to the U.S. seaboard, South America, and Asia"; machines were likewise sent from Elizabeth to South Bend, "and the completed sewing machines distributed from here" — the cabinet work held to tolerances close enough that parts were interchangeable wherever in the world they landed.

The Division Street plant, on some sixty acres, was reputed the largest sewing-machine cabinet factory in the world when built, though Singer's Scottish works later exceeded it. Production peaked in 1914 with about 3,000 employees. The Singer researcher David Pollack's estimate, printed as an estimate, is that three-quarters of all sewing machine cases and cabinets in the world were made in South Bend, with a yearly output of 2,000,000 cabinets. Discover Indiana's account adds that the South Bend works served as the model for Singer's duplicate cabinet plant at Moscow, which supplied the Russian, Balkan and Japanese markets. The trade ended with the forests and the furniture era together: the closing was announced in April 1954 and the works closed in 1955. The firm is carried in full in the Businesses section.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) — South Bend as Singer's cabinet distribution center for the United States and overseas; shipments to Elizabeth for the American trade and directly to Glasgow, Hamburg and Berlin for the European.
2. The History Museum, South Bend, "Singer Sewing Machine Company" — 10,000 cabinet sets a day by 1907, the Scotland shipments "in part white," the finished sets routed through Elizabeth to the U.S. seaboard, South America and Asia, completed machines distributed from South Bend, the 1914 peak of about 3,000 employees, and David Pollack's estimate of three-quarters of the world's cabinets and 2,000,000 a year.
3. Discover Indiana (Indiana Historical Society / IUPUI), "Singer Sewing Machine Factory" — the works the largest of its kind in the world in 1901 and the model for Singer's Moscow cabinet plant; the closing announced 1954 and completed in March 1955.
4. Businesses — the Singer works in full, cross-referenced and not retold here.