Until I find more material on the space amateur woodworkers had available for their workshops, I will simply use the Popular Homemcraft article linked below. although written in the later part of 1930, its gist -- especially its figure, 77,000 home workshops
-- necessarily implies that across America a large number of
homeworkshops existed. Moreover, throughout the 1920s, issues of the
annual Popular Mechanics Shopnotes give additional evidence of homeworkshops.
For full text of article, click here:
Document 41:
Popular Homecraft volume 1, number 1, 1930 "The Growing Popularity of
Homecraft Workshops"
Document 41 is a "first"
for a number of considerations:
1. It is in the first article
in a newly
launched periodical in America directed primarily toward home workshops, with considerable proportion of
its pages dedicated to woodworking.
2. This first article
celebrates a growing phenomenon, woodworking.
"Recent
figures indicate that more than 77,000 power-driven home-workshop outfits
are operated in the United
States alone, and the number is constantly growing."
3. And its gist gives us ample evidence that
electrical power has arrived in the homeworkshop.
"Today
he has an electric motor in his little shop and a complete outfit of
power-driven woodworking tools ... today,
manufacturers have made it possible to install such power-driven tools at very moderate cost."
4. The popularity of woodworking crosses class
lines.
"For
the fellowship of the homecrafter is broad and democratic. It embraces men
and women of all ages and of
all degrees of well being, from the very moderately affluent and
distinguished — all who have the creative and constructive instinct, who like to 'make
things' with their own hands."
