During the early Christian ages, a tradition was gradually formed concerning woman’s place in industry, or rather three traditions were formed.  The working woman of the lower classes was to be the housekeeper, which meant that she was to care for food, cook, spin, weave, sew and mend, scrub and wash, bear children and nurse and tend them.  If she were of the middle class, she was to be a mother, to supervise this range of work, look after dependents, conserve social conditions and be the lady bountiful of her district.  The second ideal was the woman of religion, who was to subdue her passions, observe set prayers and other religious exercises, and do the menial work of the convent.  The third ideal was the lady of chivalry, who appeared after the tenth century.  She was to be cared for and protected from work or anxiety; menials were to prepare her food, clothes and ornaments; gallants were to await her orders and do her bidding.

With the rise of Protestantism, and later with the rise of modern democracy, these ideals were blended, and women found themselves, not indeed slaves and subject to sale, but serfs, entangled in a mass of feudal obligations and bound to the house.  Practically, most men still hold this threefold conception of woman’s place in the social organism.  She is to be a combination of housekeeper, nun and lady.  It is the kitchen, church and children ideal of the German Emperor.

Meantime forces were set at work which were to change the economic foundations of the family and enable the woman to emerge from serfdom into some new form of industrial relationship.  From the rise of the European cities in the twelfth century, certain industries have tended, especially in the Netherlands and in England, to segregate themselves in farm-houses and towns.  Women naturally participated in these activities, generally taking the least desirable parts.  With the freeing of the mind, which followed the democratic revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century, inventions blossomed out and perfected steam engines, cotton gins, spinning jennies, and a thousand other machines driven by steam or water power, which have changed the civilization of Europe and America.  Miss Edith Abbott has shown us how this change, involving increasing segregation and specialization, came into America even in the pre-Revolutionary time.[35]

[35] EDITH ABBOTT, Women in Industry:  A Study in American Economic History, New York:  D. Appleton & Co., 1910.

Spinning and weaving industries led the way in this movement, but its full force was not felt until the late eighteenth century.  Since then, one industry after another has left the home for the factory until to-day, in all large communities, even the preparation of food increasingly goes to the packing-house, the canning establishment, the bakery and the delicatessen-store.  These industries needed hands, and so the women followed them to the factories.