Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Civil War civilian surgeon who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service.
Artist and entrepreneur, Esther Howland (1828–1904) was the first person to mass produce Valentine’s Day cards. Her work had intricate designs and created high demand for her products. Although long forgotten, Howland’s New England Valentine Company was a thriving entity and the forerunner of modern card companies.
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Ladies Home Journal, Sept. 1922, pg. 180
With the advent of a large consumer culture, advertisers of the 1920s maximized their potential market by inventing “a new kind of advertisement which appealed to the consumer’s subjective desires and fears as opposed to his or her rational judgments.”[1] This Dr. Denton Sleeping Garment marketing campaign evidenced this urge to mothers to reckon with their child’s health based on clothing. Ruth Cowan’s research supports this guilt-based business which enticed women to purchase their products. [2]
[1] Marilyn Ferris Motz and Pat Browne, eds., Making the American Home: Middle-Class Women & Domestic Material Culture 1840-1940 (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), 41.
[2]Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century” in Technology and Culture 17 (1976) 489.
20th Century technological innovation transformed the private sphere for women. Machinery aided in the daily household tasks. Yet, historian Ruth Cowan argued that “housewives with conveniences were spending just as much time on household duties as were housewives without them.”[1] The quandary of mechanizing the domestic sphere meant that rather than “Blue Monday” laundry day being reserved for single day, the washing machine allowed a women to expand this into a daily task.
[1] Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century” in Technology and Culture 17 (1976) 489.
