[sarchertech]

That’s a misconception.

The machines we’re talking about made raw cloth not clothing and it was actually higher quality in many respects because of accuracy and repeatability.

Almost all clothing is still made by hand one piece at a time with sewing machines still very manually operated.

[hudon]

“ …by the mid‑19th century machine‑woven cloth still could not equal the quality of hand‑woven Indian cloth. However, the high productivity of British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth to undersell hand‑spun and woven fabric in low‑wage India” [0]

“…the output of power looms was certainly greater than that of the handlooms, but the handloom weavers produced higher quality cloths with greater profit margins.” [1]

The same can be said about machines like the water frame. It was great at spinning coarse thread, but for high quality/luxury textile (ie. fine fabric), skilled (human) spinners did a much better job. You can read the book Blood in the Machine for even more context.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_loom

[sarchertech]

The problem with those quotes is the lack of definition of “quality”. Machine woven cloth in many ways is better because of consistency and uniformity.

If your goal is to make 1000 of the exact same dress, having a completely consistent raw material is synonymous with high quality.

It’s not fair to say that machines produced some kind of inferior imitation of the handmade product, that only won through sheer speed and cost to manufacture.