Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/549

Rh We are all more or less familiar with the conditions of the trades affected most quickly by the industrial revolution. If we have not read the reports of the investigations undertaken by the distracted English Parliament, we have at least read the German poems and English stories concerning the misery of the displaced weavers who, upon the application of steam power to weaving, were obliged to leave their hand looms in the country and adjust themselves to the conditions of hastily-built towns. We know that there were painstaking, industrious and virtuous men among the weavers, who were too dull to seize upon the changed conditions of their trades, and who continued to work many hours a day at their hand looms until they and their families perished miserably. The possession of certain individual virtues did not make them of industrial value.

This breaking-up of long established industrial habits and occupations and the necessity for a difficult readjustment comes about constantly with changing conditions, and it is easy to believe that we are in the midst of one of these sweeping industrial changes now; in fact, that it has already come about in regard to many commodities formerly produced in the household which are now produced in factories; that it would naturally come about in regard to most of them, if women did not oppose it and fatuously believe that within these old methods is bound up the sanctity of family life. Most of us can remember the conscientious struggle with which our grandmothers slowly gave up homemade candles, and some of us may dimly recall homespun sheets. All of us know something of the conservative reserve with which our mothers, later, gave up the pleasures and economies of homemade soap in spite of the lively competition and seductive advertisements offered by the factory product

As industrial conditions have changed, the household has become simplified, from the mediæval affair of journeymen, apprentices and maidens who spun and brewed, to the family proper; to those who love each other and live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. Were this process complete, we should have no problem of household