Editing Putting-out system (section)

== Cottage industry ==

[[file:double carder.JPG|right|thumb|19th-century ox-powered double [[carding]] machine]]
[[file:Reine Berthe et les fileueses, 1888.jpg|thumb|[[Bertha of Swabia|Queen Bertha]] of Burgundy instructing girls to spin flax on [[Spindle (textiles)|spindles]] using distaffs]]

{{redirects|section=yes|Cottage Industry|the M&D EP|Cottage Industry (EP)}}

A '''cottage industry''' is an [[Industry (economics)|industry]]—primarily [[manufacturing]]—which includes many producers, working from their homes, and was often organized through the putting-out system. The biggest participants in this system were the merchant capitalist and the rural worker. The merchant would "put-out" basic materials to the cottage workers, who then prepared the materials in their own homes and returned the finished merchandise back to the merchant.<ref>[[Merry Wiesner-Hanks|Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E.]], McKay, John P., Perry, Joe., Crowston, Clare Haru. ''A History of Western Society'', Value Edition, Combined Volume. N.p.: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2019.</ref> The term originally referred to home workers who were engaged in a task such as [[sewing]], [[lace-making]], wall hangings, or household manufacturing. Some industries which are nowadays usually operated from large, centralized factories were cottage industries before the [[Industrial Revolution]]. Business operators would travel around the world, buying raw materials, delivering them to people who would work on them, and then collecting the finished goods to sell, or typically to ship to another market. One of the factors which allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place in Western Europe was the presence of these business people who had the ability to expand the scale of their operations.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}} In Russia, the ''Kustar'' were rural artisans engaged in cottage industries.<ref name="Russian Factory Tugan-Baranovsky">{{cite book |last1=Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky |title=[[The Russian Factory in the Nineteenth Century]] |date=1898 |location=St Petersburg |author1-link=Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky }}</ref> Such industries were very common at a time when much of the population was engaged in agriculture, because the farmers and their families often had both the time and the desire to earn additional income during the part of the year (winter) when there was little work to do farming or selling produce.