Singer introduced the installment plan of sale, to bring the machine within reach of the poor, and the sewing machine agent, with a machine or two on his wagon, drove through every small town and country district, demonstrating and selling.

Meanwhile the price of the machines steadily fell, until it seemed that Singer's slogan, "A machine in every home!" was in a fair way to be realized, had not another development of the sewing machine intervened.
This was the development of the ready-made clothing industry.

In the earlier days of the nation, though nearly all the clothing was of domestic manufacture, there were tailors and seamstresses in all the towns and many of the villages, who made clothing to order.

Sailors coming ashore sometimes needed clothes at once, and apparently a merchant of New Bedford was the first to keep a stock on hand.

About 1831, George Opdyke, later Mayor of New York, began the manufacture of clothing on Hudson Street, which he sold largely through a store in New Orleans.