THE ART OF COOKING. n 



tion of the food question. I suppose that there is no kind of meat 

 which is consumed so generally or in such large quantity as pork ; 

 yet, according to the chemical and physiological data, the conver- 

 sion of Indian corn into pork, at the rate of one thousand pounds 

 of corn to two hundred pounds of pork, results in a waste of prac- 

 tically all the protein and nearly all the starch, and gives a re- 

 siduum of fat of which most people get too much in the other 

 kinds of food which they consume. Yet it would be useless to try 

 to abolish pork from the common dietary. I sometimes wonder if 

 the Hebrew lawgivers were not good economists when they con- 

 demned the use of pork, or whether they were guided wholly by 

 sanitary considerations. 



Again, the present crop of wheat calls for fifty thousand tons of 

 twine for binding it upon the self -binding harvester ; the cost of 

 binding wheat by hand was five to six cents per bushel, and it 

 required a small army of agricultural tramps who charged almost 

 any price when needed to do this work. The self-binder reduced 

 this charge to not exceeding one cent and a half per bushel. 

 This reduction, which finally took effect two or three years before 

 the resumption of specie payments in this country in 1879, was 

 one of the principal factors in enabling us to export wheat profit- 

 ably and vastly in excess of anything previously known ; and it 

 was upon the margin of exports over imports, consisting wholly 

 of wheat, that we were enabled to import gold in sufficient meas- 

 ure to resume specie payment. Yet this all turned on tying a 

 knot by the machine instead of by hand. 



Again, I will present to you my diagram of the loaf of bread, 

 which I have frequently used in other ways. You will observe 

 that, with wheat at about the present price, bread can be made and 

 can be sold in a very large way at three to three and one half cents 

 per pound ; but if the bread is distributed in the customary man- 

 ner by way of small shops or by delivery on the part of the bakers 

 themselves, you will find that the price of bread ranges from five 

 to eight cents a pound, according to the quality. 



Now, in this oven made of paper, any person of ordinary intel- 

 ligence who is willing to devote twenty minutes to kneading bread 

 which requires more muscle than it does mind then placing it 

 in the bread-raiser, following a certain rule, taking it out at a given 

 time and putting it in this oven over this lamp, can make better 

 bread at three to three and one half cents per pound than any 

 baker's bread which can be purchased. Here are samples of the 

 bread ; you can taste it for yourselves. I devoted two evenings to 

 learning how to make bread ; and I baked these loaves, some of 

 which I made myself, by the heat of the evening lamp which 

 lighted my library table while I was reading my evening paper. 



I have said that a saving of five cents per day per capita might 



