Domestic use

“ The Economic Function of the Home.—Up to this point the domestic function of the family has been under consideration. Marriage and parenthood must hold first place, because they are fundamental to the family and to the welfare of the race. But the family has an economic as well as a domestic function. ”

“ Reclamation of lands, public works, farm labour, buildings, carpentry, and smith work are therefore most suitable; and the more domestic industries—tailoring, shoemaking, and house service—the least so. ”

“ The Government established schools of housekeeping, where the girls learned domestic economy in every branch; they were sent to market, for instance, with six cents to buy the materials for a meal, which they afterwards cooked and served. ”

“ In civilized communities, property, as well as personal rights, is an essential object of the laws, which encourage industry by securing the enjoyment of its fruits,—that industry from which property results, and that enjoyment which consists, not merely in its immediate use, but in its posthumous destination to objects of choice and of kindred or affection. ”

“ And there is a peculiar advantage in markets of this kind, at a distance from navigable waters; that, the consumption being at home, the expense of carriage is saved. But, there is a kind of manufacture, domestic in the strictest sense, the benefit of which is inestimable, because while it adds to the stock of the family, it protects their morals.—I allude to spinning, weaving, and such things as are done by the hands of the husband, the wife, or the children, without leaving their home. ”

“ There must be scientific training and investigation in economic theory, history, and statistics, especially in their application to the household, and an increased popular knowledge of all scientific subjects concerning the home, those which secure the prevention of economic and material waste in the household as well as those which concern the questions of production for it. The educational forces must “pull from the top” and draw domestic service into the general current of industrial development. ”

“ In the country and in families where the larger part of the domestic labor is done without servants, it is very easy to keep up an interest in domestic industrial employments. The tending of a small garden in summer—the preparation of fuel and food, the mending of household utensils—these and many other occupations of the hands will keep alive activity and interest, in a man ”

“ Domestic Economics covers the whole care and government of the household; the maintenance of peace, health, order, and morality; the care and nourishment of children as far as done at home; the entire management of the home, as well as the spending and saving of money; are included in it. Saving is the least and poorest part of it; especially as in mere abstinence from needed things; most especially when this abstinence is mainly "Mother's." How best to spend; time, strength, love, care, labor, knowledge, and money—this should be the main study in Domestic Economics. ”

“ The reader, therefore, must be content with the information that this part of the work appears to be very amply stored with the good things of this world, and, what is more to the purpose, a very cursory glance has convinced us that the colonist family might avail themselves of the greater part of this division of the book with advantage and profit. The truly valuable portions of the work are those which relate to domestic management. ”

“ She has charge of the communal house, which often shelters a clan of more than one hundred individuals; she prepares clothing from skins and other raw materials; she charges herself with the cultivation of the garden, the rearing of domestic animals and the manufacture of household utensils ”

“ Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain, the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own. ”

“ The family library, family pictures, school books, a seat or pew in a house of worship, a lot in a burial ground, necessary wearing apparel, a limited amount of furniture and household utensils, some of a farmer’s domestic animals and agricultural implements, and the wages of a labouring man who is a householder are exempt from levy or distress. ”

“ This modern so-called domestic industry has nothing, except the name, in common with the old-fashioned domestic industry, the existence of which presupposes independent urban handicrafts, independent peasant farming, and above all, a dwelling-house for the labourer and his family. ”

“ Under the domestic system of manufactures nearly all women spent part of their time in their own homes in spinning, weaving, and the making of various articles of food and clothing in connection with [11] their more active household duties. ”

“ In landholding and agriculture, as in manufacturing and trade, government has thus stepped in to prevent what would have been the effect of mere free competition, and to bring about a distribution and use of the land which have seemed more desirable.
75. Government Sanitary Control.—In the field of buying and selling the hand of government has been most felt in provisions for the health of the consumer of various articles. Laws against adulteration have been passed, and a code of supervision, registry, and enforcement constructed. ”

“ Still it was not more, perhaps, than I was fairly entitled to, as the profits arising from my large well cultivated farms enabled me to vie with men of five or six thousand a year, in my domestic establishment. ”

“ The study of domestic economy engages her attention from the moment she undertakes the varied duties in the inner department of a household, the proper management of which, is, to her, a congenial occupation, becoming her sex, her position, her habitude, her taste. ”

“ It is impossible to understand the condition of domestic service as it exists to-day without a cursory glance at the changes in household employments resulting from the inventions of the latter part of the eighteenth century. ”

“ They produced everything themselves, raised and prepared for use all their food supply, even the materials for clothing, the tools for their work, the furniture for their homes, and they provided within themselves all the essential services for the social and educational life of the home. ”

“ Social and Economic Changes in the Family.—The fundamental principles that govern the economic activities of the family are the same as they used to be. Industry, thrift, and co-operation are still the watchwords of prosperity. But with the development of civilization and the improvements in manufacture, communication, and transportation, the economic function of the family has changed. Instead of producing all the crops that he may need or the tools of his occupation, the farmer tends to produce the particular crops that he can best cultivate and that will bring him the largest returns. ”

“ The consumption of provisions increases the rent and value of the lands, and this raises the gentlemen's estates, and that again increases the employment of people, and consequently the numbers of them, as well those who are employed in the husbandry of land, breeding and feeding of cattle, &c, as of servants in the gentlemen's families, who, as their estates increase in value, so they increase their families and equipages. ”

“ Not until every family shall be provided with a commodious and comfortable habitation, and that habitation amply supplied with food and fuel not only, but with Clothing, Furniture, Books, Maps, Charts, Globes, Musical Instruments, and every other auxiliary to Moral and Intellectual growth as well as to Physical comfort, can we rationally talk of excessive Production. ”

“ The family of each man, whether estatesman or farmer, formerly had a twofold support; first, the produce of his lands and flocks; and, secondly, the profit drawn from the employment of the women and children, as manufacturers; spinning their own wool in their own houses (work chiefly done in the winter season) , and carrying it to market for sale. Hence, however numerous the children, the income of the family kept pace with its increase. ”

“ They stood for pure family life, for the Church and the school, and for farming, the true source of all legitimate national wealth of land-dwellers, for they were, most of them, either skilled workmen or tillers of the soil. ”

“ They add, that they direct them as a father governs his family, and that they collect and keep in the storehouses the products{278} of the harvests, not for private use, but to make a proper distribution to their children, who, incapable of provision, do not know how to preserve anything for the sustenance of their families. ”

“ The home, by consenting to use factory products and by employing outside help, has involved itself in the great labor problem; by educating its daughters to support themselves in occupations unconnected with its management it has complicated its original problem of household administration ”

“ Any study of the subject of domestic service must lead to the conclusion that household service and household employments do not occupy an isolated position; that while they may be indifferent to the political, industrial, and social changes constantly occurring, they cannot by virtue of this indifference remain unaffected by them; that the inventions of the past hundred years have revolutionized household employments, and that the present generation must adapt itself to these new conditions ”

“ Let every farmer, planter, iron-master, &c., therefore, encourage manufactures in his household, on his estate, and in his neighbourhood, as the surest method of making a profitable home demand, without the expense of transportation, for the fruits of his labour, and the natural productions of his forests, mines and quarries. We purposely avoid to urge forcing and protecting duties, referring only to those existing, which have been ordained principally for the purpose of raising the requisite public revenue. ”

“ The owner is pretty certain to prosper—that is, to get a good living (which is independence) , and lay aside a little yearly—if the work is done by himself and his family. And the peculiarity of the situation is that the farm or garden, whichever it is called, will give agreeable and most healthful occupation to all the boys and girls in the family all the days in the year that can be spared from the school. ”

“ The social institutions, under which the people of a certain historical period and of a certain country are living, are dependent on these two forms of production; partly on the development of labor, partly on that of the family. ”

“ In fact, the entire economy of the farm house, and its appendages, should be brought close under the eye of the household, to engage their care and watchfulness, and to interest them in all the little associations and endearments—and they are many, when properly studied out—which go to make agricultural life one of the most agreeable pursuits, if not altogether so, in which our lot in life may be cast. ”

“ The greater part of the people are employed in cultivating their own lands; the rest in handicraft and commerce. They are frugal in their manner of living. Plain tables, clothing, and furniture, prevail in their houses, and expensive appearances are avoided. ”

“ The existence of unenclosed commons and common fields had been accompanied by very poor farming, very thriftless and shiftless habits. The improvement of agriculture, the application of capital to that occupation, the disappearance of the domestic system of industry, and other changes made the enclosure of common land and the accompanying changes inevitable. ”

“ The multiplication of the human race had rendered agriculture necessary; the need of securing to the cultivator the fruit of his labor made permanent property necessary, and also laws for its protection. ”

“ Not only can economies in the use of the land be practiced, but protection and assistance for the women and children can be obtained, and there is the possibility of devices for convenient and collective performance of many tasks. ”

“ Concentration of the communal land proves to be the general basis of the economic welfare of the class under consideration. [117] Under the rule of the mir a large farm means a strong patriarchal family ”

“ The earth shall be planted, and the fruits reaped and carried into store-houses, by common assistance of every family. The riches of the store-houses shall be the common stock to every family. There shall be no idle person nor beggar in the land. ”

“ Great encouragement is likewise held out to them to purchase national property, which I am informed they do to an extent that may for some time be injurious to agriculture; for in their eagerness to acquire land, the deprive themselves of cultivating it. ”

“ The farmer economy in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual life had by the nineteenth century superseded the pioneer period, in which individual action and independent personal initiative were the prevailing mode.
The coming of the exploiter into the farm community brings a new set of ethical obligations concerning property and contracts. The farmer has perfected the individual standards of the pioneer but he is not yet endowed with social standards. ”

“ In that era our society was almost entirely rural and agricultural. In other words, most homes were farms. There were cities and some industry, of course, but where industries existed they were almost entirely home industries run by individual families. ”