HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENTS
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. These changes, unlike many others, came apparently
without warning. At the middle of the last century steam was a plaything,
electricity a curiosity of the laboratory, and wind and water the only
known motive powers. From time immemorial the human hand unaided, except
by the simplest machinery, had clothed the world. Iron could be smelted
only with wood, and the English parliament had seriously discussed
the suppression of the iron trade as the only means of preserving
the forests. But during the last third of the century the brilliant
inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Cartwright had
made possible the revolutionizing of all forms of cotton and woollen
industries; Watt had given a new motive power to the world; the uses of
coal had been multiplied, and soon after its mining rendered safe; while
a thousand supplementary inventions had followed quickly in the train of
these. A new era of inventive genius had dawned, which was to rival in
importance that of the fifteenth century.
The immediate result of these inventions was seen in the rapid
transference of all the processes of cotton and woollen manufactures
from the home of the individual weaver and spinner to large industrial
centres, the centralization of important interests in the hands of a
few, and a division of labor that multiplied indefinitely the results
previously accomplished.
But the factory system of manufactures that superseded the domestic
system of previous generations has not been the product of inventions
alone. It has been pointed out by Mr. Carroll D. Wright[7] that while
these inventions have been the material forces through which the
change was accomplished, other agencies co-operated with them. These
co-operating influences have been physical, as illustrated in the
discoveries of Watt; philosophical, as seen in the works of Adam Smith;
commercial, or the industrial supremacy of England considered as a
result of the loss of the American colonies; and philanthropical, or
those connected with the work of the Wesleys, John Howard, Hannah More,
and Wilberforce. All these acting in conjunction with the material
force—invention—have operated on manufacturing industries to produce the
factory system of to-day. It is, indeed, because the factory system is
the resultant of so many forces working in the past that it touches in
the present nearly every great economic, social, political, moral, and
philanthropic question.
Although comparatively few of these inventions have been intended
primarily to lessen household labor, this era of inventive activity
has not been without its effects on household employments. A hundred
years ago the household occupations carried on in the average family
included, in addition to whatever is now ordinarily done, every form of
spinning and weaving cotton, wool and flax, carpet weaving and making,
upholstering, knitting, tailoring, the making of boots, shoes, hats,
gloves, collars, cuffs, men’s underclothing, quilts, comfortables,
mattresses, and pillows; also, the making of soap, starch, candles,
yeast, perfumes, medicines, liniments, crackers, cheese, coffee-browning,
the drying of fruits and vegetables, and salting and pickling meat.
Every article in this list, which might be lengthened, can now be made
or prepared for use out of the house of the consumer, not only better
but more cheaply by the concentration of capital and labor in large
industrial enterprises. Moreover, as a result of other forms of inventive
genius, the so-called modern improvements have taken out of the ordinary
household many forms of hard and disagreeable labor. The use of kerosene,
gas, natural gas, and electricity[8] for all purposes of lighting, and to
a certain extent for heating and cooking; the adoption of steam-cleaning
for furniture and wearing apparel; the invention of the sewing-machine
and other labor-saving contrivances; the improvement of city and village
water-works, plumbing, heat-supplying companies, city and village
sanitation measures, including the collection of ashes and garbage,—these
are all the results of modern business enterprise.
These facts are familiar, but the effects more easily escape notice.
The change from individual to collective enterprises, from the domestic
to the factory system, has released a vast amount of labor formerly done
within the house by women with three results: either this labour has
been diverted to other places, or into other channels, or has become
idle. The tendency at first was for labor thus released to be diverted
to other places. The home spinners and weavers became the spinners and
weavers in factories, and later the home workers in other lines became
the operatives in other large establishments. As machinery became more
simple, women were employed in larger numbers, until now, in several
places and in several occupations, their numbers exceed those of men
employees.[9] This fact has materially changed the condition of affairs
within the household. 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 their more active household duties. When women came
to be employed in factories, the division of labor made necessary a
readjustment of work so that housekeeping duties were performed by one
person giving all her time to them instead of by several persons each
giving a part of her time. The tendency of this was at first naturally to
decrease the number of women partially employed in household duties, and
to increase the demand for women giving all their time to domestic work.
This readjustment of work in the home and in the factory brought also
certain other changes that have an important bearing. The first employees
were the daughters of farmers, tradesmen, teachers, and professional men
of limited means, women of sturdy, energetic New England character. They
were women who, in their own homes, had been the spinners and the weavers
for the family and who had sometimes eked out a slender income by doing
the same work in their homes for others disqualified for it. As machinery
was simplified, and new occupations more complex in character were opened
to women, their places were taken in factories by Irish immigrants as
these in turn have been displaced by the French Canadians. 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.
Another and later result of the change from the domestic to the factory
system was the diversion of much of the labor at first performed within
the household into entirely different channels. The anti-slavery
agitation beginning about 1830 enlisted the energies of many women, and
the discussions growing out of it were undoubtedly the occasion for the
opening of entirely new occupations to them. Oberlin College was founded
in 1833 and Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1837, thus forming the entering
wedge for the entrance of women into higher educational work. Medical
schools for women were organized and professional life made possible,
while business interests began to attract the attention of many.
Another part of the labor released by mechanical inventions and
labor-saving contrivances became in time idle labor. By idle labor is
meant not only absolute idleness, but labor which is unproductive and
adds neither to the comfort nor to the intelligence of society. Work that
had previously been performed within the home without money remuneration
came to be considered unworthy of the same women when performed for
persons outside their own household and for a fixed compensation. The era
of so-called fancy-work, which includes all forms of work in hair, wax,
leather, beads, rice, feathers, cardboard, and canvas, so offensive to
the artistic sense of to-day, was one product of this labor released from
necessary productive processes. It was a necessary result because some
outlet was needed for the energies of women, society as yet demanded that
this outlet should be within the household, and the mechanical instincts
were strong while the artistic sense had not been developed. It is an era
not to be looked upon with derision, but as an interesting phase in the
history of the evolution of woman’s occupation.[10]
Still another channel for this idle labor was found in what has been
called “intellectual fancy-work.” Literary clubs and classes sprang up
and multiplied, affording occupation to their members, but producing
nothing and giving at first only the semblance of education and culture.
Many of them became in time a stimulus for more thorough systematic
work, but in their origin they were often but a manifestation of aimless
activity, of labor released from productive channels.
The era of inventions and resulting business activity has therefore
changed materially the condition of affairs within the household.
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. So in the last analysis every
woman is a housekeeper who “does her own work,” but division of labor
has come into the household as well as into the field, though in a more
imperfect form. It has left many women in the upper and middle classes
unemployed, while many in the lower classes are too heavily burdened;
in three of the four great industries which absorb the energies of the
majority of women working for remuneration—manufacturing, work in shops,
and teaching—the supply of workers is greater than the demand, while in
the fourth—domestic service—the reverse is the case. But it cannot be
assumed that all of those in the first three classes have necessarily
been taken from the fourth class. It has been well said that “through the
introduction of machinery, ignorant labor is utilized, not created.” Many
who under the old order would have been able to live only under the most
primitive conditions, and whose labor can be used under the new order
only in the simplest forms of manufacturing, would be entirely unfit to
have the care of an ordinary household in its present complex form.
One more effect must be noted of this transference of many forms of
household labor to large centres through the operation of inventive
genius. It has been seen that many women have thus been left
comparatively free from the necessity of labor. The pernicious theory
has therefore grown up that women who are rich or well-to-do ought not
to work, at least for compensation, since by so doing they crowd out of
remunerative employment others who need it. It is a theory that overlooks
the historical fact that every person should be in the last analysis a
producer, it is based wholly on the assumption that work is a curse and
not a blessing, and it does not take into consideration the fact that
every woman who works without remuneration, or for less than the market
rates, thereby lowers the wages of every person who is a breadwinner. It
is a theory which if applied to men engaged in business occupations would
check all industrial progress. It is equally a hindrance when applied to
women.
This revolutionizing of manufacturing processes through the substitution
of the factory for the domestic system has thus rendered necessary a
shifting of all forms of household labor. The division of labor here is
but partially accomplished, and out of this fact arises a part of the
friction that is found in household service.
Household employers and employees may be indifferent to the changes
that the industrial revolutions of a century have brought, they may be
ignorant of them all, but they have not been unaffected by them, nor
can they remain unaffected by changes that may subsequently come in
the industrial system. The interdependence of all forms of industry is
so complete, that a change cannot revolutionize one without in time
revolutionizing all. The old industrial régime cannot be restored, nor
can household employments of to-day be put back to their condition of a
hundred years ago.