the domestic system?

Question

1) what was the domestic stystem?
2) what was wrong with it in the means of making items

Answer 1

1. Before factories as we would identify them, all manufacture of products like textiles was done at home and on a small scale. Work was confined to a cottage with everybody doing their bit. Work done at home - hence the "domestic" in the title - was slow and laborious.

2. the production was very slow and the finished product was simply not enough to, in the case of textiles, cloth the fast growing population of the United Kingdom . A better and faster system of production was needed. the complete process of production was usually done in several cottages and time was lost as materials were taken from cottage to cottage as one stage progressed to the next. the power of water was being developed and small cottages could not possibly take advantage of this source of power. the image of nice quaint country cottages giving workers a quality lifestyle (if not well paid) simply is not a correct one. Defoe witnessed children as young as four working in the domestic system and the waste that gathered around country cottages which did not improve the standard ad quality of life for those who had to live near such waste.
With a growing population that needed feeding, clothing etc. a new way was needed to meet the demands that a growing population would make on Britain. This would lead to the new factories, large and deep coal mines, huge ship building ports and the growth of our industrial cities with all the problems they were to bring.