“In the early twentieth century, midwestern farm life was full of taxing physical work for women. On a typical day, women cooked meals and cleaned with primitive equipment. They tended gardens, raised chickens, milked cows, churned butter, and cleaned the dairy equipment. They also pumped and hauled many gallons of water in and out of the house on a daily basis. Laundry was probably the most dreaded chore, as it took all day and plenty of muscle power. Women sometimes helped in the fields, but more often, when not working inside the house, they worked in the barnyard. In those same years, the new technology of the internal combustion engine appeared in the barnyards of midwestern farms. Within a few years, automobiles would begin to revolutionize farm life; a decade or so later, tractors would do the same. But before automobiles appeared on farms, thousands of farmers bought stationary (and portable) gasoline farm engines for barnyard chores. These early “hit-and-miss” engines were heavy, had large flywheels, and were difficult to start. But many rural men fell in love with them and developed considerable expertise in handling them.
Farm women were also exposed to this technology, and by all indications women were less enamored of the machines than were men. Nevertheless, producers intended the engines to lighten the load on both men and women. Farm magazines, even before 1900, advertised gasoline engines as tools that women could operate for pumping water and running butter churns. Soon, companies were promoting gas engines for use with washing machines. In fall 1906, the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog ran a twelve-page spread on the gasoline engine and pictured applications for washing machines, cream separators, and barrel churns. In 1908, the twenty-horsepower Ford Model T could be purchased for $850, but a less-than-two-horsepower engine—sold by Sears for under $50—sufficed for pumping water and running a washing machine in the barnyard.”
To read Carrie Meyer’s complete article, go to https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/30746.
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