On the other hand it may be urged that, if women were upon the whole more actively engaged in industrial work during the seventeenth century than they were in the first decade of the twentieth century, men were much more occupied with domestic affairs then than they are now. Men in all classes gave time and care to the education of their children, and the young unmarried men who generally occupied positions as apprentices and servants were partly employed over domestic work. Therefore, though now it is taken for granted that domestic work will be done by women, a considerable proportion of it in former days fell to the share of men.
These circumstances have led to a different use of terms in this essay from that which has generally been adopted; a difference rendered necessary from the fact that other writers on industrial evolution have considered it only from the man’s point of view, whereas this investigation is concerned primarily with its effect upon the position of women.
To facilitate the enquiry, organisation for production is divided into three types:
(a) Domestic Industry.
(b) Family Industry.
(c) Capitalistic Industry, or Industrialism.
No hard-and-fast line exists in practice between these three systems, which merge imperceptibly into one another. In the seventeenth century all three existed side by side, often obtaining at the same time in the same industries, but the underlying principles are quite distinct and may be defined as follows:
(a) Domestic Industry is the form of production in which the goods produced are for the exclusive use of the family and are not therefore subject to an exchange or money value.
(b) Family Industry is the form in which the family becomes the unit for the production of goods to be sold or exchanged.
The family consisted of father, mother, children, household servants and apprentices; the apprentices and servants being children and young people of both sexes who earned their keep and in the latter case a nominal wage, but who did not expect to remain permanently as wage-earners, hoping on the contrary in due course to marry and set up in business on their own account. The profits of family industry belonged to the family and not to individual members of it. During his lifetime they were vested in the father who was regarded as the head of the family; he was expected to provide from them marriage portions for his children as they reached maturity, and on his death the mother succeeded to his position as head of the family, his right of bestowal by will being strictly limited by custom and public opinion.