The Domestic System: How Textiles Were Made Before the Factories

The domestic system, also known as the putting-out system, was the dominant form of industrial organization in the textile industry before the Industrial Revolution. Under the domestic system, merchants supplied raw materials to workers who spun and wove in their own homes, and then collected the finished cloth for sale.

The Organization of the Domestic System

The domestic system was based on a network of relationships between merchants, who provided the capital, the raw materials, and the markets, and workers, who provided the labor. The merchant, often called a “putter-out” or a “manufacturer,” would deliver raw materials, such as raw wool or raw cotton, to the workers, who would spin and weave the materials in their own homes and then return the finished product to the merchant for payment.

The domestic system had several important features. First, the workers owned their own tools, and they worked in their own homes. Second, the workers were paid by the piece, and they were responsible for organizing their own time and pace of work. Third, the merchant exercised only limited control over the production process, and the workers had a high degree of autonomy.

The domestic system was well suited to the production of high-quality textiles, particularly woolen cloth, which required the skill of experienced weavers. The system allowed workers to combine their productive labor with other domestic activities, and it provided a high degree of flexibility in the production process.

The Geography of the Domestic System

The domestic system was concentrated in particular regions of Britain, with each region developing its own specialty. The West Riding of Yorkshire was the most important center of the woolen industry, with Leeds, Halifax, and Bradford as the main centers. The article on the wool industry describes the development of the British woolen industry in more detail.

Other important regions of the domestic system included the Cotswolds, with Stroud as a major center of fine woolen cloth; East Anglia, with Norwich as a center of the worsted industry; the Southwest, with the woolen industry of Wiltshire and Somerset; and the Scottish Highlands, with the linen industry of the region.

The domestic system was also important in continental Europe, particularly in the woolen regions of Flanders, northern France, and northern Italy, and in the silk regions of Lyon and other Italian cities. The system was widespread throughout pre-industrial Europe, and it was the basis of much of the world’s textile production.

The Decline of the Domestic System

The domestic system began to decline in the late eighteenth century, as the new machines and the new factories of the Industrial Revolution began to produce cloth more cheaply and in larger quantities. The first major blow to the domestic system was the invention of the spinning jenny, which allowed a single worker to spin multiple threads at once, and the water frame, which allowed the spinning of yarn to be done in a single workshop.

The second major blow was the invention of the power loom, which mechanized the weaving of cloth. The power loom, once it was perfected in the early nineteenth century, was much more productive than the handloom, and it gradually displaced the handloom weavers who had been the backbone of the domestic system.

The decline of the domestic system was a slow process, and it was not complete until the mid-nineteenth century. In the meantime, the domestic system and the factory system coexisted, and the workers who had been part of the domestic system gradually migrated to the new factories or to other occupations.

The Effects on the Workers

The decline of the domestic system had important effects on the workers who had been part of it. The handloom weavers, in particular, suffered severe economic distress as the power loom was adopted, and many were forced into poverty or into the new factories. The article on factory conditions describes the conditions in the mills in more detail.

The decline of the domestic system also had important effects on the family. The domestic system had allowed families to combine productive labor with domestic activities, and the women and children of the family had been important contributors to the household economy. The factory system, with its separation of work and home, undermined this traditional family economy and required women and children to make difficult choices about whether to work in the factories or to stay at home.

The article on women in textile mills describes the changing experience of women in the industrial economy.

The Legacy of the Domestic System

The handloom weavers of the West Riding and the Cotswolds, who had produced the most sophisticated woolen cloth in Europe for generations, saw their piece-rate earnings fall by half to two-thirds between 1795 and 1850, and many of them ended their working lives in the new steam-powered mills of Bradford, Leeds, and Stroud. The woolen industry did not collapse the way some hand trades did, but the domestic system of putting-out was replaced by the mill system, and the social map of the regions was redrawn in the process.

The legacy of the domestic system is still visible in many parts of Britain, particularly in the West Riding of Yorkshire and in the Cotswolds, where the old weavers’ cottages, the small workshops, and the distinctive landscapes of the domestic system are still preserved. The domestic system has also been a source of inspiration for the contemporary “maker” movement, which emphasizes the value of skilled handwork and small-scale production.

The Continuing Question

The interesting question about the domestic system is whether it was the idyllic early-modern form of work that Victorian social investigators like J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, in The Town Labourer (1917) and The Skilled Labourer (1919), contrasted with the brutalities of the factory, or whether it was already by 1780 a region of low wages, family labor exploitation, and merchant credit-dependence that was only marginally better than the mill. The revisionist answer, developed in the work of economic historian John Smail and in the cliometric literature, is closer to the second: piece-rate earnings of handloom weavers in the 1780s were already stagnant or falling, the putting-out merchant had substantial monopsony power in many local markets, and the typical “domestic” household of 1780-1800 included wife and children working 12-14 hours a day on spinning and winding. The interesting current question, raised in Maxine Berg’s The Age of Manufactures (1985) and in the comparative work of Sheilagh Ogilvie, is whether the domestic system of early modern Europe was actually a competitive form of industrial organization that the factory simply outproduced, or whether it was already a region of stagnant earnings and slow technical change that industrialization accelerated. The answer matters for the recent literature on global development, where the putting-out system is sometimes held up as a model for the early stages of industrial development in low-income countries today.

Selected Sources

Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures 1700–1820 (1985).
Norman J.G. Pounds, A History of the English Woollen Industry (1956).
Kenneth Ponting, The Woollen Industry of the West of England 1650–1800 (1956).
John Smail, Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Trade in the Eighteenth Century (1999).