48 MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 



to give it to u3 witliout adulteration. Since honesty is the best 

 policy with milk dealers, it may yet be with many other traders in 

 articles iiahle to be adulterated. Bread making is a chemical pro- 

 cess, requiring much skill and time, and yet while we have a trade 

 for making it, we still have to bake our .bread in separate panfulls, 

 if we would have it, either cheap or good. It is to be hoped that 

 Burdan's patent oven, which manufactures eight barrels of flour as 

 cheaply as one is done in the ordinary way, will enable us at least 

 to equal the Brazilians in this line. All kinds of pies and cakes 

 ought to be made cheaper and better in large establishments than 

 in our own houses. Nor when we consider the ingenuity which con- 

 trived the refrigerator to banish all the discomfort of heat from our 

 summer fare, do we despair of yet seeing some patent boiler that shall 

 traverse the streets, and wash dishes for the year, by contract ! A 

 patent sweeper and duster to make its periodical visits to our houses, 

 may yet be forthcoming from the Yankee brain ! The enormous 

 difference between the economy of a good American housekeeper,' 

 and the ordinary servant obtainable, makes it a matter of individual 

 and national interest to devise a system which shall bring the waste 

 and expense iviihhi the complete control of the owner of the house 

 and table. Now, this is quite impossible where a servant is kept ; 

 and gentlemen of moderate families, and means, often say that they 

 think their bills are double with a hired girl from the amount which 

 they reach under their wife's management. All will say that the 

 wages of a girl are less than her waste, when the kitchen is left to 

 her; and thus another nation might be fed by ours, if our system of 

 housekeeping could avoid this. 



Many improvements which might be devised, must be commenced 

 in the city, and gradually work their way into villages and farm.ing 

 towns ; but it is in the latter, that the experiment of the Joint Stock 

 Dairy must commence. A well considered place for collecting the 

 milk from different farms ; making it into butter, cheese and pork, 

 and then dividing the proceeds, according to the milk contributed, 

 might prove worthy of the best pi'emium which the Maine Agricul- 

 tural Society will give next year. 



The tendency of the times is towards association and division of 

 labor. Tlie loom and spinning wheel have left the household, and 

 mammoth factories clothe us cheaper and better than the old. way 



