When we got new school shirts, my mum used to take all the buttons off and sew them back on by hand. She reckoned it was a more efficient way to do it than letting us lose the buttons when they inevitably fell off, having to go and buy replacement buttons, and sewing them back on one at a time over a period of a few weeks/months.

Anyway. They could afford to pay one barely competent monkey to sew the buttons on to your coat -- well, it would probably be a small brown child rather than a monkey, but they'd probably still pay them peanuts. Which would at least mean that they had something to eat. The problem is, Mr Coat-Manufacturer wouldn't make such a huge profit if he started paying people when he could get away with using machines. And machines don't do awkward things like demanding time to eat, or sleep. Aren't machines great? Hurrah for the industrial revolution.