THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



possible the manufacture of cloth in wholesale quan- 

 tities; and the nineteenth century was well under way 

 before the household production of cloth had been 

 entirely supplanted by factory production. It is noth- 

 ing less than pitiful to contemplate in imagination 

 our great-great-grandmothers and all their forebears 

 of the long centuries drudging away day after day, 

 year in and year out, at the ceaseless task of spinning 

 and weaving only to produce, as the output of a life- 

 time of labor, a quantity of cloth equivalent perhaps 

 to what our perfected machine, driven by steam, and 

 manipulated by a factory girl, produces each working 

 hour of every day. Similarly, carpets and quilts were 

 of home manufacture; so were coats and dresses; and 

 shoes were at most the product of the local shoemaker 

 around the corner. 



In the kitchen, food was cooked over the coals of 

 a great fireplace or in the brick oven connected with 

 that fireplace. Meat was supplied from a neigh- 

 boring farm; eggs were the product of the house- 

 wife's own poultry yard; the son or daughter of the 

 farmer milked the cow and drove her to and from the 

 pasture; the milk was "set" in pans in the cellar on 

 a swinging shelf, preferably, to make it inaccessible to 

 the rats; and twice a week the cream was made into 

 butter in a primitive churn, the dasher of which was 

 operated by the vigorous arm of the housewife herself, 

 or by the unwilling arms of some one of her numerous 

 progeny. 



To give variety to the dietary, fruits grown in the 

 local garden or orchard were preserved, each in its 



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