With the introduction of machinery the paternal attitude of the master toward the employee disappeared. Since the workman at this time had no political rights the decline of the spirit of paternalism exposed him to easy industrial exploitation.
Under the domestic system of industry the entire family was engaged under one roof in the spinning or weaving of cloth. The spinning was done by the women and children, and the weaving by the men. Often it took as many as six spinners to keep one weaver busy, thus necessitating the employment of the women in the neighborhood when there were not sufficient spinners in the household.[31]
This system of industry was revolutionized by the invention of the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, and the self-acting mule, and the application of the steam engine to cotton manufacture. With the introduction of these inventions into the cotton industry the modern factory system arose. Those employers who could not compete with the new methods were forced to give up their small domestic factories and seek employment in the towns. In 1811 the agricultural population of England was 35 per cent of the whole, and within twenty years it had declined to 28 per cent.[32]
Before the introduction of machinery, industrial occupations kept pace with increasing wants, but so little progress was made from one generation to the other as to give the impression of a static condition. Class lines were sharply drawn, and all authority rested with those whose property holdings were sufficient to place them with the privileged classes. Their political power increased with their material prosperity but neither political power nor material prosperity fell to the laboring classes. “Except as a member of a mob, the labourer had not a shred of political influence. The power of making laws was concentrated in the hands of the land owners, the great merchant princes, and a small knot of capitalists, manufacturers who wielded that power?—was it not natural in the interests of their class, rather than for the good of the people.”[33]
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century little change was effected in the home life of the people. Many of the houses had “but a single great fireplace.” At the beginning of the nineteenth century came many improvements in household affairs. “The common use of the friction matches after 1830 saved an infinitude of pains to the cook, the workman, and the smoker; instead of the iron pots and Dutch ovens came the air-tight cook stove, an unspeakable good friend to the housewife; for the open fire was substituted the wood-stove, and then the coal-stove, which leaked gas but saved toil and trouble; for the labor of the needle which has kept feminine fingers employed from the time of Penelope, came the sewing-machine, rude enough at first, which revolutionized the making of clothing.”[34]
History shows from the earliest times the employment of women of the higher social classes within doors. Although the women of the laboring classes are employed extensively in the fields there is always an apparent tendency for them to center their activities about the hearth. The performance of out-door tasks among women is determined as much by their class status as sex status. The outdoor work of women resulted less from the tyranny of one sex over another than from the tyranny of one class over another. Whatever the lot of the women field laborers, the lot of their husbands and brothers was little better.
The difference between the status of men and women is estimated by the nature of their work when engaged in the same general occupation as agriculture. Women seem to be deprived of the element of choice in their work since they perform the most monotonous and uninteresting tasks, and the men perform the work allowing for the greatest play of individuality and skill. How much this division of work is due to differences of authority, and how much to the difference in the assumption of responsibility, is difficult to say. It is certainly more convenient for women not to assume responsibilities for out-door work when they have to care for small children; and what may be attributed to an exercise of authority of men over women, may be due to custom having its basis in convenience. It is interesting to note that in practically all civilized societies women are the first to profit by any change doing away with the necessity of all the members of the family being employed in the field. This fact alone would indicate a common recognition of the necessity of protecting women from the severest work for the good of the race. It may have its basis, too, in the inherent chivalry of man toward woman.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 53.
[14] Hobhouse, Evolution of Morals, I, p. 189.