Abstract

"From Fields to Homes: Rural Farm Companies’ Offseason Gas-Powered Washing Machine Production in the United States and Canada, 1907-29"

Rebecca Giblon, Princeton University (rgiblon@princeton.edu)

This paper explores the early 20th century trend of rural farming machinery companies producing gas-powered washing machines during the off season. How did manufacturers produce an entire new category of appliance that gradually gained the status of near-essential for household use? Prior scholarship on the washing machine industry in North America has focused either on the invention of the earliest hand-powered washing machines, or the mass dissemination of electric washing machines into suburban and urban homes. This article portrays the rise of washing machines as part of a broader story of the spread of urban mass marketing and electrification. It shifts the lens to focus on technical innovation and the spread of consumer culture in rural regions through the case studies of Dexter and Maytag (Iowa) and Beatty Bros. (Ontario).

This paper will argue that these rural companies played a pivotal role in the development of the washing machine industry. Although gas-powered washing machines had largely died out by the 1930s, the companies that produced them generated a large amount of technical innovation that created the circumstances allowing the industry as a whole to thrive. Case studies of Dexter, Maytag, and Beatty challenge our standard understanding of both consumption and production patterns, refocusing on rural innovation and capitalism. These companies mass-marketed by word of mouth and rural mailers, largely to their existing agricultural customer base; they initially made sales by convincing existing customers that they needed a new category of good, rather than by expanding into newly electrified markets. They expanded from rural markets to suburban and urban markets. More broadly, they complicate the existing framework of the rise of American consumer culture within a suburban and urban context.