DOMESTIC PRODUCTION 17 



produced more economically at home than they could 

 be bought factory made; 



that the average man and woman could earn 

 more by producing at home than by working for 

 money in an office or factory and that, therefore, the 

 less time they spent working away from home and the 

 more time they spent working at home, the better off 

 they would be; 



finally, that the home itself was still capable of 

 being made into a productive and creative institution 

 and that an investment in a homestead equipped with 

 efficient domestic machinery would yield larger re- 

 turns per dollar of investment than investments in 

 insurance, in mortgages, in stocks and bonds. 



The most modern and expensive domestic machin- 

 ery need not, therefore, be a luxury. It can be a pro- 

 ductive investment, in spite of the fact that most 

 manufacturers of appliances still sell their machines 

 on the basis of a luxury appeal. Even appliances like 

 vacuum cleaners can be made paying investments, if 

 the time they save is used productively in the garden, 

 the kitchen, the sewing and loom room. 



These discoveries led to our experimenting year 

 after year with domestic appliances and machines. 

 We began to experiment with the problem of bring- 

 ing back into the home, and thus under our own di- 

 rect control, the various machines which the textile- 

 mill, the cannery and packing house, the flour-mill, 

 the clothing and garment factory, had taken over 

 from the home during the past two hundred years. 



