KILLING HOUSEHOLD TASKS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 12, 8 February 1907, Page 6

KILLING HOUSEHOLD TASKS.

Energy Spent by Farmer*' Wives That Might Be Saved by Proper Provisions. Although the United States is preeminently the paradise of labor saving devices for women, Rev. E. P. Pressey of Massachusetts, is of the opinion tha, not nearly enough has been done in th way of easing domestic conditions for them. As an illustration of what can and should be done, says the New York Tribune, he hopes to establish a model farmhouse with labor saving devices for the prevention of what he terms "mothercide." Mr. Pressey considers that the farmhouse kitchen has not improved in convenience for 50 years, and that the fact that some things are done as they must have been done at the first advent of the race, at a loss of from 50 to 500 per cent, of energy in fruitless and uninteresting drudgery, is largely accountable for the number of country women in the insane asylums. "It is easy to draw mechanical examples of waste of mother," sayß Mr. Pressey, writing to the Woman's Journal of his project, "and, strange to say, almost as easy to point out the mechanical corrections of it. For example, how many farmhouse kitchens have a pump on one side, or even in the yard, and a cooking stove in a recess corner, and how often mother either lifts her pots and kettles over the intervening space and back, or, worse, transfers water by the two quart or even quart dipperful. Five hundred per cent, waste of mechanical energy, to say the least, when running water and a faucet handily placed, with a slight hose attachment, are always attainable In time on the poorest farm. "Take another even leas excusable example of even greater and more noticeable waste and more palpable drudgery—the dishwashing and dishwiplng. In a large family literally hours of the day are consumed in a back-breaking process that legitimately should take only a few minutes at the moßt, say, for a family of 15. There are devices, very simple and inexpensive, for not merely cleaning dishes, but even sterilizing them, so thorough and efficient are they. "In tho average kitchen, but for tht presence of a cook stove and things getting ready to eat, the room might as well be a shed or a parlor, for all its being built for dispatch of business Parings and waste are brought in tc necessitate constant sweeping, and othei litter, and especially wood, la totec across to a misplaced woodbox with an 111 devised approach through the kitchen, and almost generally even thrown by carelew boys against a plaster ceiled and papered wall as the box overflows; whereas, no wood should enter the kitchen except through a trap from the woodahed into a closed box. "Too frequently cupboards are misplaced, 111 planned and remote. Only rarely are tools and utensils arranged about the table or workbench for the swift convenience of the hand, but are hung on nails and hooks, with the main idea of getting them out of the way of other things, or, stupidity of stupidities! when washed, heaped together on a dean Shftlf in the back of the pantry, whither mother hastens 50 times a day to select her tool as need arises 20 feet away by the sink, stove or kitchen table. Again and again things that belong on open shelves at the stove or sink are put behind awkward swing doors. "Practically nothing has been made in the farmhouse of the simple device of stone weight elevators, and mother's back breaks in the lugging of boxes and palls and baskets up and down, from cellar to garret"