From Domestic Servant to Electric Servant: an Essay on the Relationship Between Social Change and Technological Change after the Civil War until the 1930s

Abstract

What is the relationship between social change and technological change? According to the technological determinism, a technological change results in a social change, while the theory of social shaping of technology tells us a social change brings about a technological change. Housework has been treated as drudgery. While the industrialization after the Civil War had been propelled, domestic service became common in the middle-class families. Despite the increasing demand from the middle-class families and the increasing number of the domestic servants, since 1880s the ratio between domestic servant and family had been declined. At the nearly same time, the electrification in America had been spread. At some point, the electricity had been a part of everyday life; the domestic appliances such as electric iron, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, or refrigerator had been introduced to the American homes under the name ofelectric servant. They were advertised as the time-saving or labor-saving devices for the housework so that they could be expected to replace the domestic servants. In this article, we will trace the possibility of causality between the reduction of domestic servants and the increase of the domestic appliances