Domestic system

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The domestic system or putting-out system was a popular system of cloth production in Europe. It was also used in various other industries, including the manufacture of wrought iron ironware such as pins, pots, and pans for ironmongers.

It existed as early as the 1400s but was most prominent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It served as a way for entrepreneurs to bypass the guild system, which was thought to be cumbersome and inflexible. Workers would work from home, manufacturing individual articles from raw materials, then bring them to a central place of business, such as a marketplace or a larger town, to be assembled and sold. The raw materials were often provided by the merchant, who received the finished product, hence the synonymous term putting-out system. The advantages of this system were that workers involved could work at their own speed while at home or near their home and children working in the system were better treated than they would have been in the factory system, although the homes were polluted by the toxins from the raw materials. As the woman of a family usually worked at home, someone was often there to look after any children. The Domestic System is often cited as one of the causes of the rise of the nuclear family in Europe as the large amount of profits gained by common people made them less dependent on their family. These considerable sums of money also led to a much wealthier peasantry with more furniture, higher quality food, and better clothing than they had had before. However, it was mostly centralized in Western Europe and did not take a strong hold in Eastern Europe.

The development of this trend is often considered to be a form of proto-industrialization and remained prominent until the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century.

See also: Weaving, Spinning.