From Service to Sales: Home Economics in Light and Power, 1920–1940

Abstract

From Service to Sales: Home Economics in Light and Power, 1920-1940 CAROLYN M. GOLDSTEIN In 1917, the Public Service Electric and Gas Company of NewJer­ sey hired Ada Bessie Swann, a home economist, to develop a pro­ gram educating homemakers about the benefits of gas and electric­ ity. In less than a decade, Swann transformed a set ofsimple cooking demonstrations into a “home service department” offering instruc­ tion in all aspects of “modern housekeeping.” Aimed primarily at adult homemakers who did not have the opportunity to learn home economics in school, Swann’s program ranged from laundry, light­ ing, and cleaning, to food preservation, preparation, and serving. Formats included lecture demonstrations in department stores and before organized groups such as women’s and girls’ clubs, home management and cookery classes at the utility company facilities, and calls at customers’ homes. In addition, through radio programs and individual correspondence, Swann established the New Jersey utility company as a constant presence in the community, available and accessible to all customers and any questions. The large cadre of home economics-trained women she assembled on her staff helped ensure regular contact with homemakers throughout an extensive metropolitan area.1 Swann’s activities typify an emerging group of Dr. Goldstein is a curator in the exhibitions department at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. She thanks Anne Boylan, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Da­ vid Hounshell, Jan Jennings, Ronald Kline, Robin Leidner, Steven Lubar, Harold Platt, Susan Strasser, and Sarah Stage for comments on previous versions of this article. For assistance in refining and reshaping her argument, she is especially grate­ ful to Mark Rose, the Technology and Culture referees, and the editors of this special issue. Much of the writing was supported by a Fellowship in the History of Home Economics and Nutrition from the College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. ’By 1931, Swann had a staff of 1,200 home economists and a radio audience of 18,000 women. See Eloise Davison, “Home Economics Invades Business,” Indepen­ dent Woman 10 (March 1931): 127. On her career at the NewJersey utility, see Ada Bessie Swann, “Home Economics Work with Electric and Gas Utility Companies,” Home Economist and the American Food Journal 6 (November 1928): 317-18; “How NewJersey Electric Company Uses the ‘Home Electrical’ Section of‘Electrical Mer­ chandising’ to Reach the Women’s Clubs,” Electrical Merchandising (hereafter EM)© 1997 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/97/3801-0003$01.00 121 122 Carolyn M. Goldstein professional women who found a place in gas and electric utility companies teaching consumers about the new power sources and businesses about consumers.* 2 This case study of home economists’ role in the distribution of gas and electric power in the 1920s and 1930s opens a window on the complex gender-technology interactions at what Ruth Schwartz Cowan has called “the consumptionjunction.”3 It argues the impor­ tance ofconsidering production and consumption as part of a single process, one in which home economists occupied an important me­ diating location. It also refines historical understanding of the rela­ tionship between technological change and the notion of “separate spheres.” Generations of scholars associated the realms of produc­ tion and consumption with men and women, respectively. They in­ terpreted men as part of the public sphere and women as tied exclu­ sively to the private. Yet in recent years, historians of women have found so much evidence of men and women crossing these suppos­ edly rigid boundaries that they have called into question the entire “separate spheres” concept.4 As a group of female technical profes­ 29 (February 1923): 3094; and Swann, “What of the Future of Home Economics in Utilities,” 1927 speech, Folder: “Speeches, Annual Meetings, Etc.,” Home Econo­ mists in Business, Box 1, American Home Economics Association Archives, Alexan­ dria, Virginia (hereafter AHEA Archives). Active within the home economics profes­ sion, Swann also was a founding member of the Electrical Women’s Round Table, an organization ofwomen employed in the electrical industry which was established in 1923. In 1935 Swann left the Public Service Electric and Gas Company to head up the Home Service Center at Woman...