16 



THE ILLINOIS FAEJVIEE. 



Jaist. 



acler and vicious in practice. We shall put the 

 value ialo onr pnpers, and make thevi the attrac- 

 tion, inst;'ai.l ot biting people to take them, by the 

 offer of silly pus:ar plums. We are down on all 

 shams, and this practice is becoming one of the 

 greatest bhams of the age. 



Rejiaiucs. — We most cordially indorse 

 tlie above. Wo. like to see things rest on 

 their nieri!?. Now and then a person makes 

 out we'll ia canvassing for subscribers on 

 that f an, but to the mass of such the 

 offers are deceptive. It is but a remove from 

 the bogus j^^welry draws of the thousand 

 and one poculttors. This whole gift sys- 

 tem is an outra::eous swindle, whether pa- 

 raded in barrooms or churches.. If the 

 good sense of tiie community does not step 

 in to arrest its progress, it is to be hoped 

 that the courts will do so. Many of the 

 gifts ofiercd ly our cotemporaries are in 

 themselves valuable, and io" many cases 

 they must greatly reduce the profit of the 

 publishers, yet we think the system a vicious 

 one, as they have to go but one step further 

 and deul in less valuable ware. This bogus 

 gold jewelrj" costs some fifteen dollars the 

 hundicd pie es at wholesale, and is rated 

 from liftv cents to five dollars at retail, 

 when seut out as gifts. The bookseller who 

 makes the gift at the cost of fifteen cents, 

 and sells his book for fifty cents more, pock- 

 ets a profit of thirty-five cents, at the same 

 time the spoony thinks he has made from 

 fifty cents to five dollars. We hope to see 

 the agiiculturul press give up the system of 

 gifts and garden seeds, and leave a measure 

 of such dtubtful utility to others. — Ed. 



Bread Making by Machinery. 



lit is well known that in the cities and 

 vill.gfs a large part of the bread is 

 made by bikers, who also supply no small 

 amount of cakes and pies. This, in the 

 domestic economy of the household labor, 

 is no sniuU item, and especially when we 

 take into eonsidoration that bread makin • 

 is a laborious effort, and that to have good 

 pies and cakes, skill is necessary. To those 

 who can avail the:aselves of these assistants 

 of housewifery will have relieved themselves 



of a large part of the drudgery of the 

 kitchen, thus lessenicg their domestic help, 

 or giving them time to attend to other more 

 desirable duties. Wh-n in Chicago a few 

 days since, we spent a couple of hours in 

 locking through the gn^at Steam Mechani- 

 cal Bakery on Clinton street, near Eandolph, 

 under the superintendance of II C. Childs. 

 Mr. Childs was absent at the time of our 

 visit, but the foreman, Mr. W P. Dutton, 

 very kindly did tho honors of the house. 

 We first went to the fourth floor, where the 

 sponges are set for the bread, and here the 

 mixing is performed. The flour is all sifted 

 before it is worked, taking out all luirps, 

 strings and spbnters of wood that accident 

 hatj mixed witn it. The dou-h is delivered 

 on the third floor and put in larr'o trouf^hs 

 to rise, these are covered tightly and the 

 room kept warm. On one part of this floor 

 is the pie department, in which three male 

 and three female pie makers are at work. 

 Here the utmost neatness is observed, as in 

 fact it does throughout the sev.?ral depart- 

 ments. The p"es are all made by hand, 

 and sent below to be baked, in the base- 

 ment, in a mammoth brick oven, as done 

 by other bakers. 



Thedou h is cut, weighed and made into 

 loaves by hand. The cracker room is also 

 on this floor, and the machine fov rolling 

 out the dough, preparing and cutting, is 

 directly in front of the oven, which, having 

 its foundation in the basement, comes up to 

 this floor and receives the loaves, and slowly 

 cairies them down into its heated portals, 

 and again returning them to the same floor 

 ready converted into bread. The oven is 

 the most remarkable part of the establish- 

 ment. Unlike ail other ovens, it is kept 

 constantly hot with a supply of hard coal, 

 which is spread over the bottom, away down 

 in the basement, the gasses and smoke pass- 

 ing through the flues in the side of the 

 ^great furnace, while the heat ascei^ds up the 

 crater to do the baking. The crackers or 

 bread are placed on cars, some four by five 

 feet, with a sheet iron bottom. A door 



