104 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



the kitchen sink. The kitchen work table ought to be near the 

 stove and the sink, and it may well be a kitchen cabinet. If the 

 food must be kept in the cellar in the summer time to keep it cool, 

 a dumb waiter, with two or three shelves, run on pulleys between 

 the cellar and the kitchen, is a servant well worthy of her wages. 

 I wonder if you have ever stopped to count the number of times 

 your wife makes the trip down and up the cellar stairs struggling 

 with her skirt and a pan of milk, or with her skirt and a dish of 

 butter, and a plate of meat, or, still, with the inevitable skirt and the 

 vegetables or fruit. Are those stairs convenient stairs? Is there 

 any chance that the skirt may catch on anything and cause a serious 

 fall? Is there any danger of knocking her head? Are they light, 

 so that they can easily be kept clean? With a dumb waiter, one 

 trip to the cellar before a meal will be sufficient. If the vegetables 

 are needed sometime before the cream and butter, the dumb waiter 

 can be drawn up, the vegetables taken out and then the waiter let 

 down again until the other things are needed. Sometimes all the 

 food needed from the cellar in one day can be placed on the shelves 

 in the morning and no other trip be necessary that day. Of course, 

 an ice box on the ground floor would save all this effort. And a 

 large ice box in the cellar would help very much with the fresh 

 meat supply. As it is, most farmers have to depend on chickens 

 for the greater part of their fresh meat, and unless one is in the 

 poultry business, the care of chickens is another burden added to 

 the household. 



In cold weather there should be a pantry on the ground floor 

 in which the food is kept, and this pantry should be within walking 

 distance of the dining room and kitchen. If this is not possible, a 

 box can be turned on its side and fastened just outside the kitchen 

 window and the food kept in it. 



If your house has been built without care to step-saving in the 

 position of dining table, sinks and cupboards, a small table on 

 rollers, especially if its capacity is increased by a lower shelf, will 

 be found a great convenience. It can be used to advantage in set- 

 ting and clearing the table. It is also helpful to have near the sink 

 when the dishes are washed. They can be put on it and the table 

 then moved to the china closet and emptied. Many a woman who 

 is now tired of an evening would be fresh if she used a high stool 

 at the sink and work table. And many a man would have better 

 dinners if his kitchen floor was covered with linoleum instead of 

 being of unfinished wood. It takes considerable energy on one's 

 hands and knees with the scrubbing brush to extract the. dirt fronx 



