“cult of
efficiency" "efficiency craze."
Teddy Roosevelt 1901-08,
conservation program for land, forest, water.
19thC idea of
"separate
spheres", man's role public & woman's private.
1700s & early
1800s division
of labor.
Later 1800s –
industrialization, commercialization;
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- alternatives to traditional housework;
1914 NY Feminist
Alliance - "Feminist Apartment House", 170 kitchenless
apartments.
1880s NY, Boston
cooked-food
delivery services.
early 1900s ideal of
“domestic
science” or “domestic engineering”;
new group of
experts.
Ellen Swallow Richards
(1842-1911) –
MIT "special
student" 1873.
Woman's Laboratory at
MIT;
MIT sanitation lab.
1873 "science to
teach people how to live",
annual conferences at
Lake Placid
1908 American Home
Eeconomics Association.
women "call in the
help of the experts".
home ec would help
reduce "infant mortality, contagious diseases, divorce, insanity, &
competition of labor between the sexes."
late 1800s,
bacteriologists germ theory of disease.
"Contagion from the
Telephone", "Disease from Public Laundries", "Do
Cockroaches Cause Cancer?".
AN Medical Assn.:
"establish
a sanitary regime in every room in the home." Otherwise, it "will be
reckoned akin to murder".
Lysol, "Even the
doorknobs threaten children with disease."
"one best way"
to design kitchen;
Ladies Home Journal
1912, Christine Frederick;
"if a woman
undertakes homemaking as her occupation, she should make that her
business,
and use the time gained from effic to further prepare herself".
1916, 20% public high
schools courses in home ec.
Iowa State College,
Cornell,
Wisc., Illinois, Calif. - 1916, over 250 college & univ programs in
home ec.
- Iowa State women admitted 1869 – trustees,
"essential that young women should be educated in a manner that will
qualify them to properly understand & discharge their duties as wives of
farmers & mechanics. We must
teach the girls... through our Agric College to acquire by practice a thorough
knowledge of the art of conducting a well-regulated household."
Mary Welch, new
curriculum –
"experimental
problems in foods", "scrub lab". home management houses.
Equipment
study.
Toys of the Machine
Age:
airplane models,
chemistry set, Erector set;
radio show, "real
engineers and their hair-raising adventures,"
model kitchens, sewing
machines;
1920s 25% boys wanted to
be engineers.
idea of the electric
house –
domestic technology big
business;
1917 20% homes
electrified; 1940, 90% (FDR’s Rural Electrification Administration).
1919-1929, annual
production of washing machines doubled, 66% urban population.
1920s General
Electric railroad
tour;
1939 New York World's
Fair - "The World of Tomorrow"
Shape of household
technology
not inevitable – refrigerator design; gas vs. electric;
labor-saving?
physically easier;
1924 surveys 52
hours/week on housework; 1965 55 hours.
appliances mass
produced, affordable;
Commercial canning -
1880s
Heinz & Campbell;
1930s frozen foods -
Clarence Birdseye.
Late 1800s almost 2000
patents filed for washing machines;
1914 first electric
washing machine for home use.
automatic fillers &
drains 1930s;
1940s, Levittown.
raised
expectations.
Work saved - man's share
of housework – electric stove;
New chores –
bathroom;
Less household
help;
"more work for
mother."
auto – family
chauffeur;