Home Economics

In the late nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization placed the American home in a state of flux. As the production of household items became centered in shops and factories, the economic function of the home shifted toward the buying of goods and the rendering of services. To guide homemakers through this transition, a group of middle-class women—and a few men—launched an educational reform movement. Widely known as “domestic scientists” in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, in 1899 they organized a meeting in Lake Placid, New York, to propose the term “home economics” for a new field of study that would enable homemakers to perform domestic work more efficiently and manage household budgets more economically.