250 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. 



super? If I were to make a device for emp- 

 tying the T super, I believe I should make 

 one something as follows : Get a plain 

 board, I inch thick, and just wide enough 

 and long enough to slip down easily through 

 your T super. I should, of course, notch it 

 out as you do yours. I should next make a 

 plain box, withoiit top or bottom, 5 inches 

 deep and i inch smaller in the outside di- 

 mensions around than the bearing-board. 

 Now, under the side of the latter I would 

 nail two cleats. The length of each would 

 be equal to the inside width of the box. 

 These cleats should be nailed on this bear- 

 ing-board, so that it will set on top of the 

 box, leaving it projecting i inch all around. 

 Now, to empty the super I would place it on 

 top of the bearing-board, being careful to 

 get it squarely over. I should then empty 

 the sections by crowding down the shell of 

 the super as you do. This plan for empty- 

 ing the super, I offer as a suggestion, and 

 our leaders can decide for themselves. You 

 will notice that the only practical difference 

 between emptying the T super as described 

 by you and as I describe it above, is that I 

 would dispense with the hive-cover. Per- 

 haps the use of the latter embodies other ad- 

 vantages aside from the one I have men- 

 tioned. Ernest. 



ECONOMY IN LITTLE THINGS. 



ESPECIALLY ECONOMY IN LABOR. 



prices 

 help. 



HE one thing that confronts us just 

 ^ now in this age of progress is the ex- 

 pense of the labor required to do 

 what we want to do. The farmer 

 says he can not raise crops at the 

 offered, and afford to keep hired 

 If his boys will stay and woi'k on the 

 farm, he can afford to keep on farming ; but 

 when it comes to employing the average 

 hired man, he can not do it. We meet this 

 at every step. Many women piefer to do 

 their own housework, because they can not 

 afford to pay the prices for competent help, 

 and so we are absolutely obliged to continu- 

 ally come back to the problem of making a 

 little strength do a large amount of work. 

 Just now I have one thing in this line, in 

 mind. It is a thing I have spoken of over 

 and over again ; but I have been thinking 

 this morning, a little despondingly, that, 

 even if I keep on talking of it all the' days of 

 my life, there will be almost as much need 

 of it when I get through as when I began. 

 It is a sort of heedlessness that seems to 

 cling to almost everybody. I do not know 

 but careful housewives who do their own 

 work have learned somewhat of it by sad 

 experience; but the people I employ seem 

 to be, a great part of them, a good deal 

 alike in this matter. It is in preparing 

 things convenient at hand, when we start 

 out to do any work. The printers here in 

 the type-room have been obliged to study 

 this matter, for they work largely by the 

 piece; and printers' cases have been plan- 

 ned with much thought and ingenuity, to 

 save having the hand travel over even an 

 inch of space uselessly. Go and watch a 

 type-setter. See how close he gets to the 



letters he is obliged to pick up. Now, after 

 you have watched the type-setter, go down 

 to the garden and see" the boy trimming 

 onions for the market. Two large piles of 

 onions lie before him. It is early in the 

 spring, and they are small, so tliere is a 

 great deal of handling necessary. Well, you 

 will be almost sure to Hnd him with each 

 pile so arranged that he must change ends 

 for each onion he picks up ; and then when 

 it is cut and peeled he must change ends 

 with the same onion again l)efore he lays 

 it down. This reaching and twisting of the 

 wrist so many times tires him, and makes 

 his back ache, besides taking more than 

 twice the amount of time needed to do the 

 work. Now, it is not a big job to turn the 

 whole pile the other end to, because he has 

 them on a light wooden tray , and the tray could 

 be swung around in an instant, or he could 

 walk around and sit on the other side, then 

 there would hardly be any need of picking 

 up the onions at all. He can cut off the 

 roots, peel off the outside covering, and just 

 push them into tlie next pile, leaving the 

 tops almost unmoved. 



The girls who are picking over the beans, 

 of course want three dishes— -one to hold the 

 raw material, one for the bad beans, and one 

 for the good ones. Well, unless I get my 

 eye right on them when they start out they 

 will have something a great deal too large to 

 be handy, to hold their beans— may be a 

 half-bushel measure or a bushel-box. Then 

 they will get these three receptacles arrang- 

 ed so their hands must travel a longdistance 

 to get them out of one box and put them in 

 another. The consequence is, they are a 

 great while longer in doing the work than is 

 necessary ; and when tired out because of 

 these waste motions of the hands, they do 

 not know what tired them. It is true, the 

 one who has charge of them, and sets tliem 

 at work, should fix their boxes so that the 

 beans will have to be moved only a few 

 inches instead of feet (just like the types 

 in the printers' hands). But I have some- 

 times felt as if mankind in general objected 

 to these easy short cuts in doing work. A 

 woman who does her own housework, and 

 has the care of three or four children, learns 

 these short cuts because she is absolutely 

 driven to it. I tell you, ray friends, it is a 

 good thing for us to be novs^ and then where 

 we are obliged to economize. 



All over the factory and over the grounds, 

 I continually find people doing work in the 

 same way. One hand will be writing the 

 name of a certain article on the outside of a 

 package, over and over again, when the 

 printers in the next room would print it 

 ten times where she could write it once, 

 Somebody who is putting goods upon 

 shelves will get up and down for each single 

 article, when elevating the box or basket up 

 to a level with the shelf would enable him 

 to do the work quickly, safely, and nicely. 

 Farmers often do the same tiling in carry- 

 ing water down hill to their stock, where 

 some sort of a cheap wooden spout could be 

 made in an hour so as to let the water run 

 itself. Other people will carry h'eavy bur- 

 densV long distances, when a little fore- 

 thought might have had the commodity de- 



