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Spinning and weaving had always been done by a relatively small portion of society. Hence by automating it you were not bringing time savings to the vast majori
by pixl97 1y ago
Spinning and weaving had always been done by a relatively small portion of society. Hence by automating it you were not bringing time savings to the vast majority of people.
Instead the opposite may have occurred, when cloth became cheaper and the amount of clothing increased greatly increasing the amount of washing the masses had to do.
- throwup238 1y ago> Spinning and weaving had always been done by a relatively small portion of society. This is very, very incorrect. Egregiously so. All evidence from antiquity to pre-modern Europe contradicts it. Up until the mechanization of textiles, spinning and weaving took up the majority of women’s work time. Even noblewomen were painted doing the act. Annual labor hours were comparable to unskilled men in agriculture, even after mechanical innovations. If you’d like I can give you academic citations but acoup.blog written by an actual historian just ran an entire series on this topic: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivd-spinning-plates/ https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-an... Subsistence for a small family meant nearly 1800 hours a year of work on just textiles, accounting for a single woman’s labor over an entire year. That’s just 200 hours short of a modern 9-5 work year. On just textiles.
- triceratops 1y agoAll women in a household spent their free time spinning, weaving, sewing, mending, and knitting. Even noblewomen. Clothing made by professionals was a niche product, probably only available to royalty.