At the turn of the century, families with a comfortable income depended on servants, hired labor, and delivery men to support their day-to-day lives. The new technology available in the 1920s — combined with a diminishing supply of people willing to work as servants — caused more and more middle-class families to do their own housework. By 1926 80 percent of American homes with incomes more than $3,000 had vacuum cleaners and washing machines. These devices reduced the heavy labor involved in housework and made the tasks more acceptable to middle- and upper-class women. Electric washing machines in the 1920s had no automatic cycles and did not spin clothes semidry, but they eliminated the hauling of water and manual wringing that once made clothes-washing such a difficult chore. Early vacuum cleaners, though heavy and clumsy, cleaned more thoroughly than brooms and ended the grueling semiannual removal...