Putting-out System - European Cloth and Other Trades

European Cloth and Other Trades

The domestic 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 15th century but was most prominent in the 17th and 18th 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, 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 extended 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. It was mostly centralized in Western Europe and did not take a strong hold in Eastern Europe.

Of course, the acquisition of profit largely depended on which part of the putting-out system one was associated with. If one was a worker in the London textiles industry, for example, the cost of hiring sewing equipment and purchasing thread often precluded the worker from eating on a regular basis. Likewise the fourteen-hour days led to many untimely deaths.

Thomas Hood's poem The Song of the Shirt (1843) describes the wretched life of a woman in Lambeth labouring under such a system. It was written in honour of a Mrs. Biddell, a Lambeth widow and seamstress living in wretched conditions. In what was, at that time, common practice, Mrs. Biddell sewed trousers and shirts in her home using materials given to her by her employer for which she was forced to give a £2 deposit. In a desperate attempt to feed her starving infants, Mrs. Biddell pawned the clothing she had made, thus accruing a debt she could not pay. Mrs. Biddell, whose first name has not been recorded, was sent to a workhouse, and her ultimate fate is unknown; however, her story became a catalyst for those who actively opposed the wretched conditions of England’s working poor, who often spent seven days a week labouring under inhuman conditions, barely managing to survive and with no prospect for relief.

Anders Jonsson (1816-1890), was a famous Swedish entrepreneur who continued a putting-out business at Holsljunga. He contracted up to 200 domestic workers, who came to his house to get the raw material and returned after a couple of weeks with textiles, that local pedlars from the city of Borås then bought and went out to sell among other things around Sweden and Norway.