Modern Appliances in the Home 1861 



the woman who is born with a genius for home-making does not 

 prove that women with lesser talent may not be successful through 

 training, study and practice. ISTor can she, if she is to keep up 

 with the times, afford to be satisfied without adding to her natural 

 gift the continued study which shall enable her to meet new con- 

 ditions as they arise, instead of lamenting the passing of old ones. 



One of the greatest opportunities open to housekeepers today 

 lies in what the vast majority of them consider an unmixed 

 calamity. I refer to the difficulty, in town and country alike, of 

 finding help. Yet this passing of human helpers is opening the 

 way to perfecting mechanical helps in the household. In the days 

 when help of a sort was plentiful, it was a very natural thing to 

 say: "Yes, I have a helper in my kitchen, and I think I can 

 train her up to a certain point, but I am not going to get her 

 expensive utensils, or try to teach her new and better ways of 

 working, for she would not appreciate the value of either. It is 

 less trouble, on the whole, to let her go along in her old drudging, 

 unimaginative way than to try to lift her out of it." But today, 

 when in most households the wife — her own boss in her own 

 business — does the work, her intelligence and training should 

 very soon enable her to acquire the mechanical turn of mind which 

 is needed to bring successfully to her assistance the so-called 

 " labor saving devices." 



The use of machinery calls for brains and courage. You have 

 perhaps all had the experience of advising someone to get a bread- 

 mixer and have been pained, when you called a few days later, to 

 find that the bread-mixer had joined the things on that upper shelf 

 where people put hasty purchases which they wish to forget. In 

 answer to your question as to why the bread mixer was not in 

 use you have probably been told that it did not work just right 

 the first time and that the owner got discouraged and went back 

 to the old way. A machine will no more do its best work at the 

 first trial than will a human helper. It needs to " find itself." 

 It needs to be studied and understood ; and for this study and 

 understanding we need the mechanical turn of mind, which women 

 in general do not possess at present to the same degree as men, 

 simply because they have failed to cultivate it, but which an 

 intelligent woman can soon acquire. 



