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But the factory system of manufactures that superseded the domestic system of previous generations has not been the product of inventions alone.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.