Domestic Service and Domestic Science in Progressive-Era Boston

Using quantitative analysis of census data and qualitative readings of archival sources, this paper explores the limitations of private and public attempts to transform the low-wage labor market, specifically domestic service, in Boston between 1880 and 1940. During this period, the percentage of working women employed as domestic workers dropped from 50% to 20%. Women who took up domestic work were typically the most impoverished or excluded from other jobs by the racism of employers, especially African Americans. Philanthropists and state actors decried the “servant problem” and pursued various reform strategies, including the regulation of employment agencies, promoting best practices, and above all, new forms of education. While attempts to attract working-class women to specialized domestic service education failed, these programs played a primary role in the expansion of home economics as a grade-school subject and an academic research discipline. Within the wealthy homes in which domestic workers toiled, however, the same informal and abusive practices persisted. I argue that the focus on educational services for domestic workers, and the public adoption and expansion of these services, perpetuated the notion that the problem of low-wage work could be solved through education rather than more direct forms of intervention into the labor market. This paper seeks to denaturalize the operation of the labor market by illuminating the politics and racial and gender hierarchies that shaped it, and in doing so contribute to a fuller understanding of the role of the state, race, and gender in the history of capitalism.