Labor saving

Robert Levine ( Geography of Time ) notes that “recent research indicates that farm wives in the 1920’s, who were without electricity, spend significantly less time at housework than did suburban women, with all their modern machinery, in the latter half of the century. One reason for this is that almost every technical advance seems to be accompanied by a rise in expectations. For example, when cheap window glass was introduced in Holland at the end of the seventeenth century it became impossible to ignore the dirt that accumulated indoors. Today’s vacuum cleaners and other products have raised peoples’ cleanliness standards even higher; in so doing, they demand that people invest the time needed to propel these products against the suddenly defeatable household grit and bacteria. So much for better living through Westinghouse.”