[sarchertech]

Nearly all clothing is still produced in an extremely manual process.

What was automated was the production of raw cloth.

[hudon]

This is a distinction without a difference. Even if you take a rudimentary raw cloth comparison like cotton vs heavy wool (the latter being fire resistant and used historically used by firemen, ie. “Safety critical”), the machines’ output quality was significantly lower than manual output for the latter.

This phenomenon is a general one… chainsaws vs hand saws, bread slicers vs hand slicing, mechanical harvesters vs manual harvesting, etc.

[sarchertech]

That’s just not the general case at all. Automated or “powered” processes generally lead to a more consistent final product. In many cases the quality is just better than what can be done by hand.