June, 1919 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



n 



c 



ur 



a modern 



Robinson Cru- 

 soe should 

 find the advertis- 

 ing pages of a 

 current number 

 of any house- 

 hold magazine 

 on the beach of 

 his private island 



estate, he would not need the reasoning 

 powers of a Sherlock Holmes to deduce the 

 fact that American housekeepers have a 

 problem to solve. To prove my point, let me 

 make just a few quotations from the adver- 

 tising pages of a recent household publica- 

 tion: 



' ' Does a servant 's work. It is a veritable 

 servant in the kitchen. ' ' 



' ' A dependable servant. ' ' 



"In the house that has my cooker there is 

 110 servant problem." 



"A servant at three cents an hour." 



"It serves your home, saves your time." 



"It is the housekeeper's aid." 



' * Your laundry problem completely solv- 

 ed." 



' ' Makes ironing a pleasure and saves your 

 time." 



' ' Cleans your whole house thoroly clean. ' ' 



' ' Without scrubbing, without scouring, 

 without any of the old, laborious methods. ' ' 



' ' Does in a couple of hours the work that 

 used to take the best part of a day." 



The above quotations were in most cases 

 taken from full page advertisements with 

 elaborate illustrations of the labor-saving 

 devices described. 



In tlie same magazine are advertised at- 

 tractively illustrated prepared foods. There 

 are biscuits and cakes in packages, ready 

 to serve breakfast foods, self -rising pancake 

 flours, dried fruits and vegetables, combi- 

 nations of dried vegetables for soups, can- 

 ned meats, vegetables and soups, canned, 

 condensed soups, desserts requiring a mini- 

 mum of time in preparation, condensed, 

 evaporated and even dried and powdered 

 milk, especially manufactured pastry flours 

 and wonderful baking powders. Really I 

 haven't mentioned half the largely advertis- 

 ed foods. 



With many food advertisements there are 

 published recipes accompanied by most ap- 

 petizing-looking illustrations and the house- 

 keeper is often invited to send for a free 

 book of recipes. 



In cleaning and straightening some 

 shelves a few days ago I came upon an old 

 number of the same magazine from which 

 I made the above quotations. It was of the 

 year 1902, and it was interesting to note 

 the contrast between its advertising pages 

 and those of the current number. Seventeen 

 years ago advertising pages were not par- 

 ticularly attractive. Very few household 

 labor-saving devices were advertised and 

 almost no foods. Apparently the difficulty 

 of obtaining competent household help was 

 not nearly as great then as now, altho I well 



OUR FOOD PAGE 



Stancy J Puerden 



1 



lU 



371 



remelnber we 

 spoke of it as a 

 problem even 

 then. 



But it is not 

 alone in the ad- 

 vertising pages 

 that we find at- 

 tempts at a solu- 

 tion of the prob- 

 lem of help in the home. There are many 

 fine articles in the reading pages, interest- 

 ing, inspiring, and generally practical. But 

 occasionally articles appear which I cannot 

 help suspecting are written by men, by 

 women who have gained their knowledge 

 of cooking and kitchen work mostly at a 

 desk, or by women who have lived all their 

 lives in a large eastern city and cannot 

 comprehend that the majority of their read- 

 ers live amid conditions entirely different 

 with altogether different problems to solve. 

 One writer tells us that in the future we 

 must depend upon the eight-hour servant 

 who lives outside the home, and if we can- 

 not afford her eight hours a day at the pres- 

 ent high wages (I almost called it salary) 

 we can have her for a stated number of 

 hours and allow her to work in some other 

 home for the remainder of the time. That 

 would be quite ideal. I once had an oppor- 

 tunity to try the plan and liked it very 

 much on account of the greater privacy of 

 the family life. But in the average small 

 town I believe it is fully as difficult to se- 

 cure the eight-hour assistant as one who 

 lives in the house, while on the farm it is 

 jiractically impossible, and who needs help 

 more than the farmer's wife? 



Another writer informs us that the pri- 

 vate house of the future will have no kit- 

 chen, that instead of buying the raw food 

 it will all be cooked and delivered at our, 

 doors. This community kitchen plan has 

 been tried with more or less success in a 

 number of places, and its promoters are most 

 enthusiastic over it. However, so far I 

 believe it has never been carried out except 

 in large cities or suburbs where wealthy 

 people live. To me it sounds extremely like 

 boarding-house fare in the home, and I can- 

 not imagine your children or mine growing 

 enthusiastic over it. When that big college 

 boy comes home for a week end, would it 

 seem quite like home to him if he couldn 't 

 rummage in a cupboard stocked with his 

 favorite dishes, home-prepared? 



A recent interesting lecturer, a man, made 

 tlie assertion that the keynote of the fu- 

 ture would be co-operation instead of com- 

 petition, that the movement would extend 

 even into the homes. He agreed with the 

 last-mentioned writer that all cooking would 

 be done in central kitchens, just as our bak- 

 ing and washing are done in central bakeries 

 and laundries. I wanted to interview his 

 wife and find out if the bakeries and laun- 

 dries really relieve her of all baking and 

 washing. I imagine with the aid of her gas 

 oven she produces sundry toothsome dainties 



