The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader, 1894-1930

“The Woman of the Future,” Thomas A. Edison As Recorded in an Interview By Edward Marshall

258 “The Woman of the Future” Thomas A. Edison As recorded in an interview by Edward Marshall R Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931), the “wizard of Menlo Park” and author of the following article, patented over a thousand inventions, including the phonograph , the incandescent light bulb, and the motion picture. In 1911, Edison consolidated his business ventures into Thomas A. Edison, Inc., a larger, more diversified and streamlined company,with the goal of sustaining a market for his inventions rather than making new ones. Edison wrote for a number of periodicals , including the Scientific Review, the North American Review, the Independent,and Forum.In 1913,the readers of the Independent voted Edison the “most useful”man in the United States.1 Rodney F. Thomson (1878–1941), the illustrator of this article, was born in San Francisco, where he studied art; he later moved to New York City.2 See the introduction to the previous section, Anna de Koven’s “The Athletic Woman,”for information about Good Housekeeping. “She will in no sense be a drudge, but will be a household engineer, superintending wonderfully simplified electrical appliances in the conduct of her home. She will finally be able to ‘think straight,’ will achieve new capabilities, will take the place selfish man has for centuries denied her, and will become the mother of a race of mental prodigies.” That is the prophecy of Thomas A. Edison. “The housewife of the future will be neither a slave to servants nor herself a drudge. She will give less attention to the home, because the home will need less; she will be Good Housekeeping, Oct. 1912, 438–439, 436–444. consumer culture, leisure culture, technology 259 rather a domestic engineer than a domestic laborer, with the greatest of all handmaidens , electricity, at her service. This and other mechanical forces will so revolutionize the woman’s world that a large portion of the aggregate of woman’s energy will be conserved for use in broader, more constructive fields.” As we talked, Thomas A. Edison, doubtless the greatest inventor of all time, said some things which may offend the woman of now, but he said others so appreciative and inspiring that they surely will wipe offense away. He declared, without reserve, his concord with the suffrage workers; he explained that woman as she is, and speaking generally, is an undeveloped creature and—here is where the women’s wrath will rise at first—vastly man’s inferior. But he went on to say that anatomical investigation of the female brain has shown it to be finer and more capable of ultimate aesthetic development than man’s, and he explained that that development is undoubtedly, at last, well under way. “It may be a perfectly natural detail of the development of the race that the modern woman not only does not wish to be, but will not be, a servant,”Mr. Edison declared. “This has had its really unfortunate effect in that it has led, of late years, to general neglect of woman’s work, and has resulted in the refusal, or, at least, the failure, of many mothers to rightly teach their daughters. But good will ultimately come of it, for the necessities arising out of womankind’s unwillingness, have turned the minds of the inventors toward creation of mechanical devices to perform that work which woman used to do. The first requisite of such machinery was a power which could be easily and economically subdivided into small units. Such a power has been found in electricity, which is now not only available in the cities, where it can be obtained from the great electrical supply concerns, but is becoming constantly more easily available in the rural districts, through the development of the small dynamo and of the gasoline engine and the appreciation and utilization of small water-powers which are becoming general even on our farms.” Electricity in the Home of the Future “Electricity will do practically all of the manual work about the home. Just as it has largely supplanted the broom and dustpan, and even the carpet sweeper, by being harnessed to the vacuum cleaner, it will be applied to the hundreds of other littler drudgeries in the house and in the yard. Attached to various simple but entirely effective mechanical contrivances now everywhere upon the market,and many others soon to be there, it will eliminate the task of maintaining cleanliness in other ways as well as in cleaning...