Working From Home Meant Something Different in the Early 1900s
This family works together to create artificial flowers. The woman sits side by side with three children as they create piles of the flowers. Although there weren’t sanitation concerns like the at-home nut shelling industry of the Marengin family, it still used the children as workers, their tiny hands perfect for the detailed piecework.
The record doesn’t indicate whether these children went to school or if they worked, but either way, they all pitched in, working long hours of repetitive work, to contribute to the family income. The image does reveal some attempts to create a home for the children; a decorative calendar hangs on the wall, as does a poster showing a landscape. A clean curtain hangs over the interior window, separating the workspace from other areas of the house.
