Story: Factory industries

Mass production

Mass production

Lane Walker Rudkin was a 20th-century success story. Its owners built a large business through mass production of standard items of clothing such as uniforms and nightwear. This is the cutting room at the company’s Christchurch knitwear factory, probably in the 1940s. The women cutting out sleeve, yoke and jacket pieces, and piling the fabric, were doing a job usually done by men. The stacked pieces would be taken off and sewn in another part of the factory.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library, National Publicity Studios Collection
Reference: 1/2-034150; F

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page:

Ian Hunter, 'Factory industries - Gathering strength, 1900 to 1945', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/25567/mass-production (accessed 18 April 2024)

Story by Ian Hunter, published 11 Mar 2010