Household industry

“ The Early Mediaeval Methods of Industry.—Outside of the tilling of the soil, the early industries were centred in the home, which gave rise to the well-known house system of {431} culture. "Housework" has primary relation to goods which are created for the needs of the household. Much of the early manufacturing industry was carried on within the household. Gradually this has disappeared to a large extent through the multiplication of industries outside the home, power manufacture, and the organization of labor and capital. ”

“ Knight, Madame, on treatment of servants in 1704, 28. Labor, division of, in women’s work, caused by factory system, 11; has resulted in unequal distribution of work, 13, 14; in household employments only partially accomplished, 15; characteristic of modern industry, 212; results in greater variety of products, 222. Labor of women more productive through specialization of household employments, 231, 232. Labor question, domestic service a part of, 129, 264. Laundresses, average wages, statistics, 89, 94-97. See also Cooks. Laundry work, better done out of the house, 222, 223 ”

“ She used to be the housewife working at home, with her daughters, at spindle or at loom, making tablecloths and napkins, bed furnishings, and carpets for use in her own family. Now the cabinet maker, having deserted his little shop, has moved up to town and become an employee in a great manufacturing establishment; and the housewife, having ceased entirely from producing, is trying to content herself with buying and with using. The producer of household stuff today is neither housewife nor village cabinet maker, but a factory “hand.” ”

“ But not only is the exchange directly and indirectly of value to producers, it is of equal importance to consumers. It simplifies many housekeeping problems in families where there is more work than can be performed by one domestic employee and not enough for two, by making it possible to purchase for the table and other [193] household purposes many articles made out of the house of the consumer. ”

“ 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 ”

“ So far home makers have carried on their affairs independently, each woman very largely by herself. Suppose a group of ten women, practical, experienced home makers, with sufficient business sense to recognize fair business dealing, were to decide to arrange for some of their home making work in partnership. A great deal of the household buying of coal, bread, flour, canned goods (when buying canned goods is advisable) , sugar, and other groceries, meat, poultry, butter, eggs, etc., might be carried on to great advantage in partnership. ”

“ ROADTOWN HOUSEKEEPING THOUGH it is true that some work, which in the past rested heavily upon the shoulders of women, has been taken into the factory, notably the spinning, weaving and clothes making trades, and on the farm the making of butter, still the bulk of labor of the women of the average household comes in that group of washing, ironing, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, making beds, cooking and dish-washing. ”

“ The marked feature of this period is the existence of domestic manufactures, engaging the head of the household and his family, one or two apprentices, and sometimes a journeyman or two. It was common, indeed all but universal, for the small master manufacturers to board and lodge their employees, as it was common for farmers to board and lodge their labourers. The larger households carried on at home many of the operations—baking, brewing, washing, jam-making—which have now passed to the factory. ”

“ This, again, is evident in the domestic department. The consumer is usually obliged to depend on the skill of a single cook or baker, while through the exchange the works of many producers are placed side by side in competition, and thus in the end the highest standard is secured. For both producer and consumer, therefore, the exchange is of advantage in thus affording an avenue for specialized work. It thus makes possible to a certain extent the division of labor which has been but partially accomplished in the household. ”

“ To allow household employees to live with their own families and among their own friends, as factory employees now do, would be to relegate more production to industrial centres administered on the factory system, and to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the household. ”

“ It is true, indeed, that cooking-classes are but indirectly connected with domestic service, but everything that breaks down artificial barriers, and permits the free industrial entrance of both men and women into whatever occupation they prefer, is a direct gain to every line of work. Any one whose attention has been turned in the direction of securing household employees must constantly come in contact with the fact that there is a considerable number of men engaged in household employments for remuneration. ”

“ The vast machinery of government, especially in the new activities of the Agricultural and Labor Departments applied to investigations and experiments into the questions of pure food, household economy and employments suited to woman, is now directed more than ever before to the uplifting of American homes and the assistance of the homemakers. These researches are at the call of every housewife. ”

“ Household manufacturing is confined almost entirely to the preparation of food, with a varying amount of dressmaking and millinery. In the towns and cities the needs of the family are even more completely supplied from without. Children are relieved of all responsibility, women's care are lightened by the stock of material in the shops, and the bakery and restaurant help to supply the table. Family life loses thereby much of its unity of effort and sympathy. The economic task falls mainly upon the male producer. ”

“ In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own, yet resembling it in this appreciation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Before this time all women shared in preparing and cooking food; they spun, wove, and made the clothing, and were domestic manufacturers in the sense that they changed the raw material into forms suitable for consumption. But modern inventions and the resulting change in the system of manufactures, as has been seen, necessarily affected household employments. The change has been the same in kind, though not in degree, as has come in the occupations of men. In the last analysis every man is a tiller of the soil, but division of labor has left only a small proportion of men in this employment. ”

“ And at present there is little material for describing how brewing, jam and cake-making, biscuit-making, the making and the washing of clothes, the cleaning of furniture and carpets, &c., passed from the household to the factory and laundry. It is a process which has evidently been much quickened by the growth of town life, itself one of the most important effects of the industrial revolution. ”

“ When the average household was largely self-supporting, producing food for its own consumption, and linen for its own wearing, it gave employment to many more persons than can be employed in it to-day. The women's industries of a former date have, for the most part, been swallowed by the factory. ”

“ The home was the work-shop and the family was the working group. The conditions under which these early women workers plied their trades were the conditions of home and family life. Sometimes these domestic work-shops were quite extensive. In some households one could find the mother and her daughters and one or more hired women, all weaving cloth for sale. In the winter months, when the men of the family were released from labor in the fields, they, too, would help at the loom, and thus the entire household, by their combined efforts, could produce a considerable quantity of cloth. ”

“ The American worker enjoys his present high standard of living because modern business methods have been introduced into the manufacture of his food, his clothes, his household goods, his education, his recreation, even of his luxuries, and there is every reason why the same efficiency should apply in housing, which, next to food, is the largest item in the wage-earner's budget. ”

“ Above all things, the greatest economy, consistent with excellence, should be practised, and the price of everything which enters the kitchen correctly ascertained. The theory of this part of Household Management may appear trifling ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, the division of what was formerly the home into unproductive and productive departments, into domestic work and work outside the house, has been far less thorough and complete in the retail trade than in other spheres of labour. The factory, which has absorbed industry after industry formerly carried on in the house, is a comparatively modern institution ”

“ All these changes in the personnel of factory operatives have meant that while much labor has been taken out of the household, that which remained has been performed by fewer hands, and also that women of foreign nationalities have been pressed into household service. ”

“ The National Household Economic Association was organized in March, 1893, to promote a scientific knowledge of the care of children, and of the economic and hygienic value of food, fuel and clothing; to inculcate an intelligent knowledge of sanitary conditions in the home, and to urge the recognition of housekeeping as a business or trade which is worthy of highest thought and effort. This was the first organization to present Household Economics in a comprehensive form as an important and profound science. ”

“ Labor is an important item in the running of the house. The close connection of selecting and operating a home will be seen. Should the administrator divide the family income in such a way that little is left for operating, the little things of everyday life become a constant source of worry.
The questions of the number of rooms, and their care,326 relative expense of heating by furnace, steam, or hot water, the cost of regular service in wages per week in order to attain one’s ideals, the cost of extra service, the lighting by gas, oil, or electricity are all problems of operating. ”

“ A glance at our periodical literature does indeed show unusual interest in all questions affecting domestic life. Economists are asking why the wages paid for domestic service are higher than those paid the average woman in other occupations, and why, in spite of this, the demand for household workers is greater than the supply. ”

“ It is surprising to foreigners that in the application of the division of labor principle to domestic work, we are actually behind them, that we still permit such excess of work and excess of waste in our domestic arrangements. Cooking and sewing, the two leading branches of domestic industry, are with them to a very large degree trades, while nursing and laundry-work are trades in a far greater degree than with us. ”

“ Plate-glass windows and ribbon decorations in a shop and the large expense of rent on a fashionable street are all paid for by the consumer.
Relative cost of home and shop products.—When prepared food of any kind is purchased, one pays for raw material plus the cost of fuel and the labor involved in the cooking and the cleaning of apparatus and kitchen. For example, canned soup sold by one of the best manufacturers brings a good price because so much time and labor are used in a careful inspection of all material, and in keeping up a high standard of cleanliness. ”

“ Back of the factory system lies the household and neighborhood system. Those of us who are here today need go back only one, two, or at most three generations, to find a time when the household was practically the center in which were carried on, or about which were clustered, all the typical forms of industrial occupation. 23The clothing worn was for the most part not only made in the house, but the members of the household were usually familiar with the shearing of the sheep, the carding and spinning of the wool, and the plying of the loom. ”

“ In France, for example, no housekeeper counts either washing, ironing, or bread-making as part of her domestic cares. All the family washing goes out to a laundry, and being attended to by those who make that department of labor a specialty, it comes home in refreshingly beautiful order.
“We in America, though we pride ourselves on our Yankee thrift, are far behind the French in domestic economy. ”

“ As a result of these economic studies of the present century something has already been done to improve industrial conditions outside of the household. They have led to improved factory legislation, to better relations between employer and employee, to wide discussion of the principles on which business is conducted, but what has been accomplished has been brought about through an unrest and an agitation that have often brought disaster in their train. ”