Ohio History Journal

VIRGINIA E. McCORMICK

 

Butter and Egg Business: Implications

From the Records of a Nineteenth-

Century Farm Wife

 

Few stereotypes have a clearer image or more persistent endurance

than that of the nineteenth-century married woman who devoted

herself to home and family and relied upon her husband as the

economic provider. This image produces the perspective that "a

dramatic increase has occurred in the labor force participation of

women of all income levels, including married women who traditionally

have felt no economic need to work,"¹ a viewpoint which permeates

twentieth-century public policy.

Researchers compiling statistics regarding women's earnings in the

nineteenth century have focused primarily on groups which contained

significant numbers. In 1900 experienced factory girls could earn five

to six dollars per week for a sixty-hour week, but domestic workers

earned as little as two to five dollars for a seventy-two hour week.² The

latter was a far more likely option for married women forced to seek

employment outside their home.

Historians acknowledge that women traditionally earned income by

taking in boarders, sewing or laundry. Julie Matthaei estimates that at

the turn of the century 42 percent of the employed women were earning

income in their own homes.³ Rural homemakers, who had fewer

options for earning at home, often sold butter and eggs, but little

research has examined the economic impact of this activity.

 

 

 

 

Virginia E. McCormick earned a Ph.D. in education at The Ohio State University and

has taught there, at Iowa State University, and at the Pennsylvania State University.

This article is adapted from Virginia E. McCormick, ed., Farm Wife: A Self-Portrait,

1886-1896. © 1990, Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa 50010.

 

1. Sandra L. Hofferth and Kristin A. Moore, "Women's Employment and Mar-

riage," in Ralph E. Smith ed., The Subtle Revolution (Washington, D.C., 1979), 99-124.

2. Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the American Family from the American

Revolution to the Present (Oxford, 1980), 382.

3. Julie Matthaei, An Economic History of Women in America (New York, 1982),

198-99.

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58                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Was the butter and egg business simply a vestige of an earlier era

when home production provided the goods necessary for family

consumption and trade in a barter economy, or does it offer clues for

contemporary workers seeking opportunities in self-employment or

home-based work? How did it rank among income producing oppor-

tunities for nineteenth-century women, and was the money it produced

supplemental or essential family income? Did the butter and egg

business of farm wives have significant impact on the local and national

economy, or was it simply "pin money" which did not merit inclusion

in income statistics?

These are questions which can be answered only through an under-

standing of the historical perspective of women's economic roles and

careful analysis of case studies which survive as farm and home

account records.

 

 

 

There is overwhelming evidence that the late nineteenth century was

a golden age of domesticity when management of home and family

achieved importance not seen earlier or later.⁴ As the industrial

revolution diverted much traditionally home-based production to fac-

tories, particularly in textiles and clothing, husbands and wives were

able to assume separate spheres of responsibility. Men were increas-

ingly associated with the role of economic provider and women with

the moral leadership of the family unit.5

Within these differentiated roles, historians acknowledge that women

have always shared responsibility for providing the basic necessities of

food, clothing, and shelter. Much of this contribution consisted of

unpaid labor related to food preservation and preparation, clothing con-

struction, and home management. Researchers such as Alice Kessler-

 

4. Glenna Mathews, Just a Housewife: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America

(New York, 1987). See also Annegret S. Ogden, The Great American Housewife

(Westport, Connecticut, 1986).

5. For eloquent individual records see Joy Day Buel, The Way of Duty: A Woman

and Her Family in Revolutionary America (New York, 1984); Claudia L. Bushman, A

Good Poor Man's Wife: Being a Chronicle of Harriet Hanson Robinson and Her Family

in 19th Century New England (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1981); and Harriet Beecher

Stowe, Household Papers and Stories (Boston, 1896). For varied analysis see John

Demos and Susan S. Boocock eds., Turning Points: Historical and Sociological Essays

on the Family (Chicago, 1978); Tamara K. Hareven ed., Transitions: The Family and the

Life Course in Historical Perspective (New York, 1978); Peter Laslett and Richard Wall

eds., Household and Family in Time Past (Cambridge, 1972); Michael Gordon, The

American Family in Social-Historical Perspective (New York, 1978); and Nancy F. Cott

and Elizabeth H. Pleck eds., A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of

American Women (New York, 1979).

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The Butter and Egg Business                                      59

 

Harris recognize, but find it difficult to quantify, the value of domestic

work and child care historically performed by women.⁶

Women have also historically performed socially useful work far

beyond that which is measurable in the marketplace. Elliot and Mary

Brownlee emphasize contributions in social welfare and health care

services, where women traditionally served their "extended family"

and also as community volunteers.⁷

Some of the most penetrating questions about the economic basis of

the nineteenth-century "cult of domesticity," which maintained that

married women did not need to work for pay, have been raised by Carl

Degler's contention that domesticity in the short range increased

women's power, status and self confidence, but in the long range weak-

ened their claim to the full range of human experience.⁸ A homemaker

might reign supreme within her home and be recognized for her

husband's status in the community, but a price was paid with severely

limited economic, educational, legal and political opportunities.

Recent research challenges the concept of a dramatic twentieth-

century increase in women's employment, on the basis that it ignores

changes in the census definition of employment and the locus of the

work. Because the 1900 census requested identification of one's

"primary occupation" and recorded most married women as house-

wives, Christine Bose contends statistics showing 20 percent of the

female population employed in 1900 and 54.5 percent employed in 1985

are an inaccurate comparison.⁹ In 1985 only 50.2 percent of employed

women worked full-time year-round, and demographers suspect that

large segments of the "underground economy" from child care to

piano lessons and garage sales are still under-reported. Bose contends

that employment definitions which included similar part-time and

home-based work in 1900 would have revealed from 48.5 percent to

56.7 percent of the female population was actually earning income.¹⁰

 

6. Alice Kessler-Harris, Women Have Always Worked (New York, 1981). See also

the Industrial Relations Research Association Series, Working Women: Past, Present,

Future (Washington, D.C., 1987).

7. W. Elliot Brownlee and Mary M. Brownlee, Women in the American Economy:

A Documentary History, 1675 to 1929 (New Haven, 1976), 1-39.

8. Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the American Family From the American

Revolution to the Present, 49, 306, 328, 344, and 375.

9. Christine E. Bose, "Devaluing Women's Work: The Undercount of Women's

Employment in 1900 and 1980," in Hidden Aspects of Women's Work (New York, 1987),

95-115.

10. For statistics on percentage of female population and percentage of married

women in the labor force from 1870 through 1940 see Women's Occupations Through

Seven Decades, U.S. Dept. of Labor, Women's Bureau Bulletin 218 (Washington, D.C.,

1947), 34, and Ray Marshall and Beth Paulin, "Employment and Earnings of Women:

Historical Perspective," in Working Women: Past, Present, Future, 1-36.

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60                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

Social science researchers recognize that the history of formal

employment for wages is only a minority theme in the history of

working women, and are now constructing research models which

attempt to identify where and how women actually worked.11 Recent

increases in self-employment and home-based work, by both men and

women, have encouraged a review of the existing historic perspective

of such work. Scholars are focusing on positive aspects such as

freedom of supervision and flexibility for family responsibilities, as

well as negative aspects of potential exploitation through low wages or

poor working conditions.¹²

Such analysis of home-based work focuses renewed attention on

"women's work" of generations past. In the nineteenth-century cult of

domesticity, a married woman's presence in the labor force was

usually perceived as a signal that her husband was unable to provide

adequate income. For women who wanted or needed to increase family

income but preserve their husband's reputation, there were alterna-

tives such as taking in boarders or working as a seamstress, which were

seen as non-threatening and socially acceptable "woman's work" if

done in one's spare time at home.¹³

In rural areas boarders were rarely available as a viable source of

income, but a widely accepted alternative was a farm wife's butter and

egg sales. 14 Such trade was carefully nurtured as a secure source of

income in the volatile uncertainty of the agricultural economy where

adverse weather or livestock disease could mean disaster.

The prevailing social attitude about butter and eggs sales was

non-threatening. Many persons raised on farms remember these sales

as "pin money for the women, money never taken too seriously in the

days when bookkeeping was casual and accounting unknown."¹⁵ It

was income upon which farmwives relied well into the twentieth

century, sustaining many a family during the Great Depression of the

1930s. In memoirs of his rural boyhood, Curtis Stadtfeld was surprised

 

 

 

11. Patricia Bronca, "A New Perspective on Women's Work," Journal of Social

History, 9 (Winter, 1975), 129-53.

12. Eileen Boris and Cynthia R. Daniels eds., Homework: Historical and Contempo-

rary Perspectives in Paid Labor at Home (Chicago, 1989).

13. Julie Matthaei, An Economic History of Women in America, 120-21, 198-99.

14. One of the few researchers who has analyzed the income of rural homemakers is

Joan M. Jenson, "Cloth, Butter and Boarders: Women's Household Production for the

Market," Review of Political Economics, 12 (Summer, 1980), 14-24; and Loosening the

Bonds, Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850 (New Haven, 1986).

15. Henry C. Taylor, reflecting on his mother's exchange of butter and eggs for

simple grocery supplies and basic dry goods, in Tarpleywick: A Century of Iowa Farming

(Ames, Iowa, 1970), 119.

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The Butter and Egg Business                               61

 

that his father's 1935 account book showed the cash income from

poultry and eggs nearly equaled that for the farm dairy herd.16

The scarcity of contemporary records makes the 1886-1896 diaries

and farm accounts kept by Margaret Dow Gebby, a Logan County,

Ohio, farmwife worth analyzing. Her journals confirm widely accepted

images of farm wives exchanging butter and eggs for goods at the

general store, but they also provide surprising glimpses of a thriving

home business which contributed regularly and significantly to house-

hold expenses.¹⁷

Margaret taught school prior to her marriage to Jeremiah Morrow

Gebby, a successful grain and livestock farmer in northwestern Ohio.

With him she raised three sons and cared for her widowed mother-in-

law. Her sister Martha lived just up the road, and other siblings and

extended family resided at distances within which close relationships

could be maintained.

Margaret Gebby's decade of daily records of family activities, and

accounts of income and expenses for farm and household, invites

readers into the life of a late nineteenth-century midwestern farm

woman. Readers share the cycles of work, leisure and social interac-

tion experienced by rural midwestern women and their families a

century past.

The Gebbys lived in Logan County, just west of Bellefontaine, on a

286-acre grain and livestock farm. It was neither the largest nor the

most profitable farm in its neighborhood, but was well above average,

ranking in the top 10 percent for Ohio. In 1880 its land and buildings

were valued at $17,800, its equipment at $2500, and the agricultural

products produced at $4085. The farm included 28 acres of corn, 58

acres of wheat, an acre of potatoes, an orchard of 75 fruit trees, and the

remaining land in hay, pasture and woods for 74 cattle and 22 swine.18

Margaret Gebby's household through most of this period included

her husband, three teenage sons, and her widowed mother-in-law. Her

expenses regularly included payments to women in the neighborhood

for services rendered. During the early years she sent her washing out

each week to a neighbor and hired domestic help by the day during

spring cleaning. Later she hired a neighbor woman to live in and help

with the domestic work. To supplement the sewing and mending she

and her mother-in-law did, she hired neighbors or a seamstress in town.

 

 

16. Curtis K. Stadtfeld, From the Land and Back (New York, 1972), 120.

17. Virginia E. McCormick ed., Farm Wife: A Self-Portrait, 1886-1896 (Ames, Iowa,

1990).

18. Non Population Census Schedule, 1880 Products of Agriculture, Logan County,

Ohio, Harrison Township, ED 113, p. 12 #4 and p. 17 #4.

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62                                         OHIO HISTORY

Margaret's own source of income came from sales of her butter and eggs. She regularly milked three cows and cared for her poultry each morning and evening, producing enough to provide both for family consumption and for sale. Of course butter production peaked in the spring as cows calved and increased their milk production, but it is astonishing to note that butter prices could fluctuate as much as 80 percent during a single year, from 12 to 22 cents per pound in 1888. Farm wives had no choice but to adjust their spending patterns to seasonal fluctuations in the prices they received, for they were forced to accept what the market offered for their perishable commodities. Like other farmwives, Margaret Gebby traded at one general store and usually matched the total price of her purchases to the value of the produce she brought to sell. Rarely did she leave a small balance on her account, take part of her sales in money, or as she phrased it, "lift" a little credit against her store account. Butter was priced by the pound and eggs by the dozen, but odd amounts were regularly sold. Both sales and purchases could be precisely controlled since clerks weighed or measured everything to order.

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The Butter and Egg Business                                      63

 

A number of entries from her 1888 diary furnish examples of how she

did business.

 

5 Jan.-Grandma & I went to town had 11 1/2 lbs of butter $2.10, got blue calico

dress, tea, baking powder, peaches, oil cloth, braid for Grandma's dress &c

$2.12 ... 13 Jan.-was at Boals store had 11 lbs 3 oz of butter $2.01 got table

linen 21/2 yds at 45 cts pr yd 6 yd toweling 2 yd at 11 ct, 4 yd at 10 cts pr yd,

coffee 28 cts ... 26 Jan.-Had 7 lbs 10 oz butter $1.52, got sugar $1.00 coffee

28 cts peaches 32 cts, apricots 19 cts, Oysters 70 cts ... 12 May-Baked bread,

pies and cookies, churned, went to town this afternoon, had 17 lbs of butter at

18 cts 9 doz eggs 89 cts = $3.06 got coffee, baking powder, cornstarch, beans,

peaches, 2 cans apricots, scrim, lamp & chimney &c $2.95 Jerry got fish 63,

Century 35, Harpers 10, Lemons 20, Bananas ... 2 June-Went to town this

afternoon, had 22 lbs 14 oz of butter 12 cts pr lb, got coffee, tea, bluing, muslin,

candy, fish $1.61, left a balance of $1.13 ... 4 Aug.-Baked bread and pies and

apple dumplings for dinner, went to town had four lbs of butter 60 cts and 4 doz

eggs 56 got a calico meat platter 60 cts. screen wire 35 cts rivets 25 cts . . . 25

Aug.-sold 15 lbs of butter this week $2.25 got corn starch, cinnamon, under

vest, buttons, stocking $1.16 ... 13 Sept.-churned this morning, went to town

this afternoon had 12 lbs of butter, 3 doz eggs $2.25 got Elmer overalls, collars,

copperas, cinnamon & pepper, mustard seed. 19

 

As a farm wife selling butter and eggs, Margaret Gebby represented

labor and management, production and marketing, and long-range

planner and chief of daily operations all at one time. She coped with

cows which went dry before she expected, illnesses which interrupted

her work, and decisions about whether eggs were to be sold or set to

hatch. She was also concerned with increasing production, and upgrad-

ed her stock with Jersey cows and White Leghorn chickens as it

became possible.

 

2 Feb. 88-I began churning this morning before eight Oclock and churned till

two, and still did not get butter ... 9 Feb. 88-churned but failed to get butter,

quit milking Daisy ... 21 Mar. 88-I have a very bad cold, Orra milked for me

this evening ... 14 Apr. 92-Set a hen under a gooseberry bush, one between

the houses, one in George's boat ... 24 Apr 93-Set a hen in the old house on

the shelves, one in the calf stable manger, found one setting in the briar patch

on 30 eggs ... 10 Aug. 96-I exchanged 2 sitting of Eggs with Mr George

Ebrite, his were White Leghorns ... 26 May 92-advertised for a good Jersey

cow in the want column of the Republican

 

Margaret Gebby kept meticulous daily and monthly accounts of her

transactions, but did not record farm and family expenses separately.

 

 

19. Margaret Dow Gebby Diaries, MSS 964, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus,

Ohio. Subsequent entries from this collection are cited by year and are quoted with

spelling, punctuation and capitalization as it appears in diary entries.

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64                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

It is possible, however, to separate household expenses for a year and

determine the portion which were met through butter and egg sales. In

1888, a representative year when the household contained the six

persons mentioned above and the economy was relatively stable, total

cash expenses for family living were $615.51. Of this total, Margaret's

dairy and poultry operation provided $130.41, or 21 percent.²⁰

At that time, one of the highest status and best paying positions

available to women in Logan County was that of schoolteacher. A

woman teaching full-time in the county's one-room schools earned an

average of $182 annually.²1 If the teacher worked at least forty hours

per week during the twenty-nine week term and Margaret worked

about ten hours per week year-round, the butter and egg business

provided more income per hour.²²

Recent statistics report all working wives, both part and full-time, on

average contributed about 26 percent of the total family income. Those

working full-time year-round contributed 38 percent.²³ Even by current

standards Margaret Gebby's butter and egg business earned substantial

income for a part-time business.

Of course, the Gebbys kept the produce they needed for home

consumption. Margaret's butter records for 1888 show that she sold

496 of the 612 pounds produced. At the average sales price of 18 cents

per pound, the 116 pounds used at home would have yielded an

additional $24.88. Between March and September she sold 83 and 1/2

dozen eggs, and her baking and cooking suggests the use of more than

that at home. The family often had chicken for dinner, drank butter-

milk, ate cottage cheese, and used cream liberally when they made ice

cream. It does not seem farfetched to assume that the cash value of the

dairy and poultry products this family consumed exceeded that of

those sold. Some of this value would have been offset by the costs of

 

 

20. Arguments could be made that items such as a $20 watch for a son, or $27 for a

suit and topcoat for the husband, served many years and should not be included as

"annual" family living expenses. Some might credit the butter and egg income with

providing as much as 25 to 30 percent of the family's annual expenses.

21. John Hancock, Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Common

Schools, [Year Ending 31 August 1888] (Columbus, 1889), 49. Wages for primary

teachers averaged $36 per month for males and $26 for females for a 29-week term in

Logan County. This was slightly above the Ohio average of $37 and $27 monthly for a

30-week term.

22. Twenty-nine weeks times forty hours equals 1080 hours. Fifty-two weeks times

ten hours equals 520 hours. One hundred eighty-two dollars divided by 1080 hours is

approximately 17 cents per hour, while $130.41 divided by 520 is slightly over 24 cents

per hour. These are, of course, estimates rather than actual figures regarding hours

worked.

23. Ralph E. Smith, The Subtle Revolution, 12.

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The Butter and Egg Business                                     65

 

the buildings which housed cows and chickens and the farm produce

they consumed as feed.

Margaret's profits are also lowered by regular donations of butter

and cottage cheese to the church bazaar, much like current church or

school groups rely on donations from local businesses. One of the most

significant revelations of these diary records is that the business

aspects of a farm wife's butter and egg business were recognized

throughout the community. When Margaret made sales directly to

relatives or neighbors, as she often did, everyone carefully paid the

same price being offered at the general store.

 

22 Mar. 94-Went to town this afternoon had 18-12 of butter 3 doz of eggs =

3.43 got lemons, oranges, ginger snaps, bananas, mustard, gingham & thread,

pepper, & peaches & $1.20 in money, took 3 lbs of butter and 4 doz eggs to D.

Dows for the Easter supper tomorrow evening ... 20 Sept. 89-Grandma & I

went to town got coffee, sugar, Flower pot, three spools of thread, a box to

pack eggs in for winter use, had 9 lbs 4 oz of butter, took Mrs Wright 50 cts

worth of butter . . . 4 June 92-Martha Krouse [neighbor] got a lb of butter 12

cts, Lyman [brother] got 6 lbs 75 cts, Boals [store] got 9-4 $1.13, got 2 pr silk

mitts 50 cts, 1 can apricots, 2 cans corn, Raddish seed, & Bananas 15 cts ...

25 Mr. 93-Went to town this afternoon. Boals got 15-4 1/2 of butter $3.36 got

Apricots, Plums, corn, Beans, Raisins, coffee, braid, buttons, mustard,

Oranges, & yarn $2.37, called at Fathers, he got 3 lbs of butter 66 cts, Mrs

Parker 2 1/4 50 cts.

When the Gebby farm installed a windmill to pump water for

livestock in 1889, the family kitchen was remodeled to include an inside

pump for water and a creamer to store milk and separate the cream.

Margaret does not specifically describe her churn, but in 1893 she

purchased a new one which she noted in her diary completed her

churning in eighteen minutes.²⁴ Box and cylinder churns had been on

the market some twenty years, a time span between invention and

adoption by this homemaker which is particularly revealing when one

realizes that such a labor-saving piece of equipment cost about the

equivalent of two week's butter sales.

 

22 Feb. 93-Jerry & I went to town looked for a churn to suit us, we liked a

Sidney churn quite well, ordered one ... 27 Feb.-Jerry got the churn I

ordered last week ... 28 Feb.-Churned with my new churn, had nice butter

but was a long time in churning, think I had the cream too cold ... I

Mar.-Paid for the churn $4.50, churned again this morning in about 18 min.

 

24. The Sidney churn was apparently a local model of a box, cylinder or barrel style,

all advertised in the Sears and Roebuck catalog at a comparable price. Margaret's diaries

imply that she had been using the older dasher style churn which normally required forty

to sixty minutes to produce butter.

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66                                         OHIO HISTORY

The butter and egg business portrayed in Margaret Gebby's diaries was probably typical of her operation for more than thirty years as a farm wife, and her sisters and a significant number of neighbors had similar operations. In 1902 the county history noted 600,000 pounds of butter were marketed, and that "does not include creamers but simply the product of the farm and household."25 Such operations were widespread in rural areas throughout the country and reflect an economic contribution by women which has been largely ignored. The significant difference between the butter and egg business described in Margaret Gebby's diaries and a modern business such as a catering service run by a housewife from her home is not the work done or the income produced, but society's perception of the two businesses. Nineteenth-century farmwives considered themselves, and reported themselves in the census, as housewives. Income in a cash economy is extremely difficult to estimate accurately, but the time farmwives committed to the butter and egg business, the percentage of family living expenses which they earned, and their decision-making     25. Robert P. Kennedy, Historical Review of Logan County, Ohio (Chicago, 1903), 154.

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The Butter and Egg Business                               67

 

responsibilities are remarkably similar to a twentieth-century home-

maker operating a part-time business from her home.

An intriguing revelation from these diaries is the reference to other

women regularly earning money by doing laundry, sewing, houseclean-

ing, and wallpapering. In a rural community where many full-time

housewives earned cash income, the butter and egg business was

apparently at the peak of the economic hierarchy, conducted by

upper-middle-class farm wives who could afford to own more than one

family milk cow. Margaret often sold butter to neighbors, apparently

when their own cow was dry.

The butter and egg business clearly reflects significant economic

activity which has not been accurately reported. Records such as

Margaret Gebby's suggest a particular need to reassess the historic

economic contribution of married rural women, even those of the

upper-middle-class.

As a case study, these diaries suggest that the butter and egg

business was both a vestige of earlier eras when home production

provided the goods necessary for family consumption and for trade in

a barter economy, and a home-based business remarkably similar to

those currently conducted by many self-employed workers. Even

though the Gebby farm was above average, Margaret's butter and egg

income was not purchasing luxuries but routine supplies for family

living.

If dairy and poultry operations like the one described in these diaries

contributed approximately $100,000 to the economy of a typical mid-

western rural county at the turn of the century,²⁶ a national figure for

such business would clearly reveal a significant economic contribution

by married women which deserves to be recognized.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26. The 600.000 pounds reported for 1902 in the county history would produce

$100,000 if the price averaged sixteen and seventeen cents per pound, which is less than

the eighteen cents computed from Margaret's accounts for 1888.

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