Definition of "cottage industry" []

• A usually small-scale industry carried on at home by family members using their own equipment. (noun)
• A small, loosely organized, yet flourishing complex of activity or industry: "The study of Gandhi has become a virtual cottage industry in the last 30 years, producing schools, museums, foundations and more than 400 biographies” ( Jean Strouse). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A charge leveled by Hillary Rodham Clinton at her husband’s nattering, battering cottage industry of vilifiers makes it into the political lexicon."
• "A cottage industry grew within conservative think tanks, arguing not only that cultural pathologies-rather than racism or structural inequalities built into our economy-were responsible for black poverty but also that government programs like welfare, coupled with liberal judges who coddled criminals, actually made these pathologies worse."
• "In any other country, Alan Wolfelt’s cottage industry wouldn’t exist."