This critical study traces the connections between the rising economic importance of the garment industry and the advent of a powerful movement towards literary realism in American fiction. Examining the works of Henry James, Theodor Dreiser, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, and Willa Cather and the shifting of the American ideal from the "homespun" to the "ready made," it explains how that cultural and psychological change appeared in the new literature of the nation.