Why American Homes Are Full Of Gadgets

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 February 1947, Page 8

Why American Homes Are Full Of Gadgets

(By

ALISTAIR COOKE,

special correspondent in Washington for the

8.8. C.) Of the 2,500,000 women in the United States who worked in other people’s homes in 1940, a million or more went into other jobs and only one in seventy-odd of them has any intention of going back. The obvious answer is an increase in household gadgets, and in the past year the advertisers have been promising lhe post-war housewife —whenever the post-war comes— a future in which she will lie in the rpdio-controlled sunshine of her plastic kitchen and the raw materials of her pre-cooked diet will slide in exquisite colours along transparent cupboards and assemble themselves on the dining table.

But the American answer to the decline in the institution of domestic help is not only gadgets. However, there are some basic gadgets that during the past 10 or 15 years have become staples of American kitchens and they may be worth mentioning just to make clear what, for American housewives, constitutes the difference between a post-war promise and an already settled habit.

Living in America you get to take certain things for granted that long before the war amazed you by their absence, or rarity, in Europe. The refrigerator is an old story. But I am thinking of such things as beanslicers, the toasters that pop the toast up when it is done; and peelers with a floating blade that simply bear down on a potato or carrot and peel it; electric mixers into which you throw, say, milk, butter, flour, and raw vegetables and which in a few seconds produce a fine puree.

Nobody Satisfied

And the more recent godsend of mops made of cellulose sponge, which clean a. floor, the dishes, or a table, without your ever having to touch the mop end or worry over how wet it is, since it is fitted with a steel cradle that graduates the moisture. I should also not forget the deep freeze, in which a family, a farmer, or a whole community can preserve seasonal vegetables for months, and meat for as many years as they choose.

| Household gadgets may be a low | and material thing to talk about, and 11 have heard intellectuals bemoan what they take to be America’s preoccupation with labour-saving. If you, dear lady, have such a character in your home, I beg you to say to him: “Get thee into a kitchen, thou fancy man,” and see if he then feels so unconcerned about the difference between cleaning up in ten minutes and cleaning up in an hour. Whatever social changes the war may bring in its train, there is no doubt at all that in the United States nobody is satisfied that even a good American kitchen is good enough. And if any man steps up and announces that housework anyway is woman’s work, he is liable to be batted over the head with a brandnew mop. Obvious Answer I have gone into what I called the obvious answer, the increase of new and better gadgets, because the great majority of American women, as elsewhere, do their own work. But because those who used to have maids now have to do their own, there has been a noticeable quickening of invention and ingenuity in 'gadgets. However, with the vanishing of household help in its most comfortable form —namely another human to put the work on—there are several substitutes that look like becoming permanent additions to what you can truly call the social services. The sitter who comes of an evening to watch the children while the parents are out has in the last few years offered a regular chance for high

school girls to earn a little money on the side. In case the word “high school girl” throws you of! a little, let me explain as speedily as possible that the, phrase would signify to an American a girl of a certain age, not a girl of a certain type of education. High school—whatever building you are doing it in—is the last four years of your ordinary school life, those between the ages of 13 and 17. Proxy Parents During the war the sitter became an institution and a profession. There is an organisation in New York calling itself “Proxy Parents,” which will provide sitters for any time of the day or evening, and nurses for the sick, and women to take children' on outings. Many other similar outfits have sprung up around the country. And, as in Britain, in cities that expanded with war industries, and the swarming families that came to work there, there are State or city day nurseries. In New York you can get sitters from all sorts of sources: from hospitals, who sign up student nurses for free evenings; from universities; and from regular commercial agencies who have foreseen the trend away from servants and have worked out a whole series of household services. There are places that send men out to clean your carpets, and women out to do your darning. There are increasingly more restaurants that are invisible, so to speak, since their job is to cook and package dinners for people who want a rest from their own work. Moral To Story Now there are, I am aware, people —men especially—who will have followed me so far who will want me to add a moral to this story and label these changes in terms of social significance. If there are such, I suspect that they want me to defend them against an increasing share of domesticity by lamenting the drift towards mechanical civilisation, the impersonality of work and . other solemn conceptions. It seems to me that even simple, unpretentious men often talk a pretentious amount of nonsense on this score. There are, I know, exquisite sensations to be’ got from cooking a meal, and a lot of men really enjoy the baking of a favourite dish, provided somebody will clean up the ensuing mess. But however white your doorstep is, however much your brass may shine in the end, most housework is nothing but drudgery. Drudgery, even when it is done by the only woman in the world, is still impersonal and has nothing to do with the joy or respect of her person. You respect her personality in spite of the drudgery, unless you are a sadist. And, again, I say, it seems to me that a man who with some really intelligent gadget saves a woman a half-hour a day is a man who does more for the human soul than whole droves of statesmen, and all but a handful of painters and poets.