Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History
About this collection
HEARTH – Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, History – contains digital reproductions of a core collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles published between 1850 and 1950 were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their historical importance. The collection was built by a project team at Mann Library at Cornell University that included librarians, copyright specialists, preservation experts, and developers; an advisory board that included colleagues at land-grant institutions across the US; and a number of faculty reviewers and subject matter experts from around the country.
Historical context
The discipline of home economics (now human ecology, or consumer and family studies) strongly influenced the growth of women's professions, the role of women in the community, public health and nutrition policy, and gender roles, among others. Although the term "home economics" did not come into wide usage until the early twentieth century, efforts to formalize and teach principles of domesticity go back to the mid-1800s. Increases in literacy and in the availability of printed materials during the nineteenth century made possible the emergence of a literature on homemaking.
The passage of the Morrill Act in 1862 led to the establishment of land-grant colleges in each state. Until that time, American higher education had focused largely on teaching the classics and on preparing young men for white-collar professions such as medicine, law, and the ministry. The Morrill Act mandated a wider mission for the institutions it funded, covering not only the traditional curriculum, but also research and instruction in practical areas of endeavor. These included what were called the "mechanic arts," but the major emphasis was on agriculture, given that the United States was at that time still a predominantly agrarian society. Unlike most private colleges, the land-grant schools were open to women, and, over time, a belief emerged that farmers' wives were also in need of scientific training in order to carry out what was then understood to be their role in rural life: management of the household. Activities such as cooking, housecleaning, sewing, laundry, care of the sick, and sanitation were all to be transformed and modernized through the application of scientific theories and techniques. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the land-grant schools, along with a few private institutions, established courses of instruction in what was generally called "domestic science."
Ellen Richards (1842-1911) was one of the major figures in the emergence of home economics as a profession. At the first Lake Placid Conference in 1899, organized by Richards, Melvin Dewey, and other educators and activities, participants agreed on the term "home economics," which was held to be sufficiently broad to cover a wide range of concerns, and they began promoting the teaching of home economics in secondary schools and in colleges and universities. In 1908, conference participants formed the American Home Economics Association, which effectively lobbied federal and state governments to provide funding for home economics research and teaching, including adult education work through agricultural extension services, leading to the rapid expansion of educational programs. Over the following decades, home economists worked as homemakers and parents and also played significant roles in diverse areas of public life. Many pursued careers in business, including the food industry, textiles and clothing, hotel and restaurant management, and interior design. Home economists also often found jobs in public-sector and nonprofit organizations in such fields as public health, institutional management, social work, housing, and, of course, education. In addition, home economists contributed heavily to public debate on a variety of policy issues, including social welfare, nutrition, child development, housing, consumer protection and advocacy, and standardization of textiles and other consumer products.
Using the collection
Users may engage with the collection, browsing by title or year, or viewing a list of journal titles, by using the following canned searches:
For questions about this collection, please contact mann-ref@cornell.edu.
More information
- Collection steward
- Michael Cook, Environmental Studies Curator
- Metadata creation
- Cornell University Library
- Funding
- Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2001-2003, “Preserving the Core Historical Literature of Home Economics Before 1950”; Hatch Fund
- Credits
- This collection overview was adapted from the original webpage developed for this collection and was last reviewed in 2025.