The It--onies ofHousehohl'JeehnowgiJ ft--om the Open Heat--th to the Miet--owave Winner of the 1984 Dexter Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology -RUTH SCHWARTZ COWAN ETHICS ETH·- BIB II II 111111 II II II llllllllllllll II 00100001648270 More Work for Mother MORE WORK FOR MOTHER The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave Ruth Schwartz Cowan • BasicBooks- A Division of HarperCollinsPub/ishen Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, 1941- More work for mother. Bibliography: p. 220 Includes index. 1. Horne economics-United States-History. 2. Household appliances-United States-History. 3. Housewives-United States-History I. Title. II. Title: Household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. TX23.C64 1983 640'.973 83-70759 ISBN 0-465-04731-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-465-04732-7 (paper) Copyright © 1983 by Basic Books, Inc. Printed in the United States of America Designed by Vincent Torre 10 9 8 7 For Betty Schwartz and Louis E. Schwartz with love Contents PICTURE ESSAYS ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI Chapter 1 An Introduction: Housework and Its Tools 3 Chapter 2 Housewifery: Household Work and Household Tools under Pre-Industrial Conditions 16 Housewifery and the Doctrine of Separate Spheres 18 Household Tools and Household Work 20 The Household Division of Labor 26 The Household and the Market Economy 31 Conclusion 3 7 Chapter 3 The Invention of Housework: The Early Stages of Industrialization 40 Milling Flour and Making Bread 46 The Evolution of the Stove 53 More Chores for Women, Fewer for Men 63 Chapter 4 Twentieth-Century Changes in Household Technology 69 The Shift from Production to Consumption 71 THE FOOD SYSTEM 71 THE CLOTHING SYSTEM 7 3 THE HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM 75 CONCLUSION 7 7 A Shift in the Other Direction: Transportation 79 The Household Utility Systems: Water 85 The Household Utility Systems: Gas, Electricity, and Oil 89 Conclusion 99 vii Contents Chapter 5 The Roads Not Taken: Alternative Social and Technical Approaches to Housework 102 Commercial Enterprises 103 THE COMMERCIAL LAUNDRY 105 THE BOARDING HOUSE AND THE APARTMENT HOTEL 108 THE FAILURE OF COMMERCIAL ALTERNATIVES 109 Cooperative Enterprises Ill The Domestic Servant 119 Failed Machines 127 THE REFRIGERATOR: GAS VERSUS ELECTRIC 128 THE PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE ALTERNATIVE MACHINE 143 Conclusion 145 Chapter 6 Household Technology and Household Work between 1900 and 1940 151 The Golden Years (1900-1920) 154 MATERIAL CONDITIONS FOR THOSE WHO LIVED COMFORTABLY 154 MATERIAL CONDITIONS FOR THOSE WHO WERE STRUGGLING TO MAKE ENDS MEET 160 Between the World Wars (1920-1940) 172 MATERIAL CONDITIONS FOR THOSE WHO WERE STILL LIVING COMFORTABLY 173 MATERIAL CONDITIONS FOR THOSE WHO WERE STILL STRUGGLING TO MAKE ENDS MEET 181 Conclusion 190 Chapter 7 The Postwar Years 192 The Diffusion of Affluence: The Changing Face of Poverty 193 The Diffusion of Amenities and Appliances 195 Homogenizing Housework 196 The "Working" Mother 201 WOMAN'S 11PLACE11 203 THE "BACKWARD SEARCH FOR FEMININITY11 205 THE ROLE OF THE MACHINE 208 Conclusion 210 Postscript: Less Work for Mother 217 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS 220 NOTES 234 INDEX 250 viii Picture Essays From Housewifery to Housework following page 46 The Transportation System following page 82 Washday following page 150 The Rich and the Poor following page 194 Acknowledgments I have always been puzzled by the convention that suggests that authors should leave their most heartfelt acknowledgment for last. Mine will come first, because that is where it belongs. During the past fifteen years, my husband, Neil M. Cowan, has treated my research and writing as if they were welcome and honored third and fourth parties to our marriage. He is the dictionary definition incarnate of the word helpmate, and I wish that I had words sufficient for thanks. All scholars hope to leave a legacy for the future; the ultimate inspiration for this book has been the three people who are my personal legacy to the future: Jennifer Rose, May Deborah, and Sarah Kiva Cowan. I would not have persisted as long as I have with the effort that this book required had I not been blessed with three marvelous daughters. I hope that, when they reach an age to make sense of such things, they will understand that my love for them inspired every page. Financial support from three different institutions freed me from my teaching obligations during a number of semesters, al­ lowed me to employ research assistants, and paid for some of the expenses normally encountered in historical research. The Na­ tional Science Foundation (under grants SOC-7602424A02 and SOC-7912968), the Research Foundation of the State University of New York (under its program of summer research grants to faculty members), and the American Council of Learned Societies have all underwritten this endeavor, and I am grateful for their support. Ronald Overmann, program officer for the history and philosophy of science at the National Science Foundation, was especially helpful over several years, and I hope that he under­ stands how much not only I but all historians and philosophers of science owe to him. XI Acknowledgments My resume is dotted with governmental acronyms because I have been supported, at least in part, with public funds from the time that I graduated from high school until the present. When I was only sixteen years old, I held a New York State Regents Scholarship; this was followed a few years later by an NSF Un­ dergraduate Summer Fellowship, and then by National Defense Education Act graduate fellowships, by various grants and fel­ lowships from other federal agencies, and by fifteen years of employment at a tax-supported university. I must, therefore, ac­ knowledge that all the tax-paying citizens of the United States, and most especially those who also pay taxes in New York State, have-however unwittingly-made it possible for me to write this book. I hope that at least a few of them will decide that the investment paid off. My academic training was in the discipline called the "history of science." When I began this project I knew almost nothing about the history of technology, social history, women's history, or, for that matter, American history. As a consequence I have depended, repeatedly, on the encouragement, support, advice, and good counsel that I received from practitioners of these latter disciplines whom I am pleased now to count among my col­ leagues and friends. For countless conversations, critical readings, gentle nudgings, research clues, relevant citations, and supportive letters, my thanks go to: Riva Berleant-Schiller, Rose Coser, Eu­ gene Ferguson, Dolores Hayden, Thomas Parke Hughes, Melvin Kranzberg, Eric Lampard, Ned Landsman, Gene Lebovics, Gloria Main, Carroll Pursell, Mark Rose, Joel Rosenthal, Naomi Rosen­ thal, Fred Weinstein, George Wise and Bob Young. I fear that some of the people on this list may be angered by some of the views that I express in this book, and may wish that they had never proffered their assistance, but I am grateful for it nonethe­ less and hopeful that we will remain friends and colleagues how­ ever the historiographic chips may fall. Similarly, I knew almost nothing about what is involved in publishing a book when I began converting my research into a manuscript, but the good offices of Alice Fahs made it possible for me to meet Jane Isay, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to finish xii Acknowledgments the manuscript, and Phoebe Hoss, whose critical acumen saved me from more embarrassments than I care to recall. Many current and former graduate students in the History Department of the State University of New York at Stony Brook have worked with me on this project. In some instances, their contributions are acknowledged in the text; but in other in­ stances, I could not do so without awkwardness because the material that they located, or the data that they accumulated, or the books that they summarized, were never specifically cited. Hence I want to take this opportunity to tell each of them that, even if the projects on which they worked so assiduously do not emerge clearly on these pages, my understanding of what I was doing would have been profoundly constricted without their help. With apologies for my more than occasional incoherence and disorganization, I extend my thanks to: Dominick Cavallo, Evelyn Foundos, David McDonald, Nancy Marr, Valerie Parks, Timothy Patterson, David Schmitz, Susan Strasser, and, most especially, to Virginia Quiroga whose enthusiasm and patience made the last two hectic years so pleasurable. In addition, I want to pay special tribute to Richard Grant, who, as an undergraduate at Stony Brook, helped me for more than a year, without com­ pensation, simply for the joy of doing research. Between 1978 and 1980, I had the good fortune to participate in an unusual educational experiment: The Federated Learning Communities Program on Technology, Values and Society. The Federated Learning Communities was the brainchild of Patrick Hill, then a faculty member at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; and the Program on Technology, Values and Society, which he directed, encouraged eight members of the faculty to share their views on those subjects through interdisci­ plinary teaching and weekly seminars. Every chapter of this book benefited, in some way, from the insights that I acquired during those years, and I am pleased to acknowledge my debt to the seven people who struggled through them with me: Ted Gold­ farb, Don Ihde, Jack Ludwig, Juliet Papadakos, Chick Perrow, Marshall Spector, and John Truxal. Every scholarly work depends upon the goodwill and the la- Xttt Acknowledgments bors of people who either remain anonymous or are too numer­ ous to mention: those who type successive drafts of a manuscript, who assemble and catalogue archives, who supervise reference desks and interlibrary loan services, who prepare indexes or index abstracts.