1476 
THE RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
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Taking Drudge Out of a Drudgery || 
Electricity and the Farm Women 
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A bolishing kerosene.—T he 
man’s part of the job of turning an 
old water-power cider-mill into an elec¬ 
tric light, heat and power plant, ends 
with putting up the wires and starting 
the water wheel. This done, he had 
turned over a priceless servant to the 
housewife. When I look hack over the 
two years our water wheel has been 
grinding out electricity instead of hard 
cider, I give thanks that the one thing 
it has accomplished above all others, is 
to lighten and make pleasant the arduous 
task of housework. It is a good thing 
for us men—lights the dark barnyard at 
night, does away with the dangerous 
dusky barn lantern, grinds our axes and 
scythes, turns the separator, and gives 
us bright, fresh, cool light by which 
to reach our newspapers and books even¬ 
ings. But what it does for us men is 
nothing to what it does for the farm 
wives. In the first place, there are no 
lamps to clean and fill and tip over any 
more. When my wife goes upstairs at 
night, she doesn’t stumble round in the 
dark feeling for a lamp to light. Before 
she enters that room, she touches a but¬ 
ton on the wall in the hall, and the room 
is bright with light before she gets there. 
When she puts the supper things away 
in the cellar, the mere act of opening the 
cellar door automatically turns a switch 
that turns on lights in the cellar, light¬ 
ing its farthest corner, something that 
never happened before. She doesn’t 
strike a dangerous match to see the in¬ 
side of a clothes closet. She carries a 
portable electric light in her hand, know¬ 
ing that even if she wants to hang it 
on a hook against her best mull dress, 
the dress won’t catch fire. Downstairs 
in the kitchen the lights hang from the 
ceiling, lighting the whole kitchen. She 
had a light on the wall right over the 
kitchen table; and it lets her see the 
inside of the oven. We have lights in 
all sorts of odd corners, to be turned 
on with the pressure of a finger—in odd 
corners which were unknown places at 
night, before we transformed our water 
wheel—places we couldn’t see into, with¬ 
out a lamp or a candle in our hands. 
Electric light has literally made over the 
inside of our house, for the women folks. 
Ironing By Wire. —Next to light, the 
best thing we have that is within the 
means of every farmer who owns a water 
wheel (or who has a neighbor who is 
willing to share one) is the electric iron. 
An electric iron costs from $2.50 to $4. 
It looks like another iron, except that it 
has a length of wire coming out from 
under the handle. This wire connects 
with any lamp socket, so my wife can use 
her iron any place in the house. Three 
minutes after attaching the wire to a 
lamp socket by the ironing board, the 
iron is hot, and it stays hot as long as 
the wire is attached. I don’t know how 
many miles a woman walks, hack and 
forth from the stove, on ironing day. 
And in addition to changing irons she 
has to tote wood and keep the stove 
hot. It is not the best job in the world, 
keeping the stove hot and blistering one’s 
hands with an old-fashioned iron, on a 
hot Summer’s day. With an electric 
iron, the housewife doesn’t have to tramp, 
have to stoke, doesn’t have any fire at 
all in the kitchen, to make her fret. If 
she wants a cup of tea, she turns the 
iron upside down and uses it for a stove. 
It boils water for tea, eggs, etc. Our 
neighbor used her iron in the bedroom 
last Fall, to heat milk for a sick child. 
The Lightning Stove. —When dinner 
time comes she “builds” the fire by turn¬ 
ing a button. The oven is hot in 10 min¬ 
utes; the griddles on top of the stove 
are hot instantly, for frying, boiling, 
toasting. This last Summer, our house¬ 
hold did its preserving on the electric 
stove. There are three degrees of heat, 
to be had by turning a button. When 
the preserves begin to boil under the 
first heat, the stove is changed to the 
"third” heat, which keeps them simmer- 
mering slowly all day. You wouldn’t 
know there is a fire in the room when the 
stove is going. It is a constant source 
of amazement to callers to see my wife 
open the oven of this cool stove one 
could sit on, without discomfort, and 
take out three or four loaves of beauti¬ 
fully browned bread, or a sponge cake 
baked with an evenness impossible with 
the uneven heat of wood or coal. 
Cost of Stove. —This stove costs 
money at first. I admit. New. it would 
cost about $85. But there the expense 
ends. As long as the water of our little 
river continues to run, and turn the 
water wheel, the man of the house 
doesn’t have to stoke on a hot day; 
doesn’t have to haul, buck and split fire¬ 
wood ; doesn’t have to stoke on a hot day; 
doesn’t have to take care of ashes. The 
wife doesn’t have to wait for her oven 
to get right, or fool with dampers. 
When she turns the button, she knows 
her oven is right, can’t get too hot, or 
too cool. And what an advantage she 
has over her city sister, if she is fortu¬ 
nate enough to own a husband who owns 
an idle water wheel. Her city sister can¬ 
not afford this stove, because the com¬ 
mercial price of electricity in our cities 
is too high. The man I bought my stove 
from, at a knock-down price, gave it up 
because it cost his wife $2.50 to cook din¬ 
ner for four on it, at the commercial 
price of electricity. It doesn't cost us 
anything. The river, flowing ceaselessly 
through the water wheel, tends to all that. 
If there is a river, or a sizable brook 
near your house, why not put it to work 
cooking your dinner, ironing your clothes, 
doing the washing, lighting the house? 
If one can’t afford this more expensive 
stove, there are ways of getting around 
it. For instance, an oven that will 
bake two loaves of bread can be had for 
$10 or $12, and little portable stoves 
that boil and fry, like the top of a cook 
stove, can be had from $2 to $5. One 
of these little ovens, a hot griddle and a 
toaster, could be had for about $15 all 
told, and would be enough to take care 
of the cooking of a family of five or six. 
The Et.ectric Chafing Dish. —Elec¬ 
tric cooking with us goes still farther. 
For supper, nights, we save more steps 
for the housewife. We have a little 
electric stove, nickel-plated, that we can 
set on the tablecloth, like a chafing dish. 
It has a cord to attach to the lamp sock¬ 
et that hangs over the table. This little 
stove costs from $4 to $6, according to 
the fanciness. It makes the most beau¬ 
tiful toast in the world; and while it is 
making toast, or frying eggs or griddle 
cakes on the table, it is broiling three 
chops at once, in a little grill under¬ 
neath. This done, it boils water for tea; 
and later in the evening, when we are sit¬ 
ting in front of the log fire, we drop 
pop-corn on it, and watch the kernels 
magically puff up into beautifully white 
polls. My wife doesn’t have to leave the 
table during the meal. With electricity, 
she has brought her kitchen into the din¬ 
ing room with her. 
The Water Heater. —The next thing 
I have promised our kitchen, is an elec¬ 
tric water heater on the hot water boiler. 
It is about as big as a quart can and 
fits on to the feed pipe of the boiler. It 
costs about $10. It keeps the 40 gallons 
of water in the boiler at boiling point 
day and night, so when dish-washing 
time comes, steaming water gushes out 
of the faucets into the sink, heated by 
unseen hands. 
Motive Poaver. —Then there is the 
motor that runs the cream separator. 
This motor does more than its share of 
work. It turns the washing machine, 
grinds the wringer. It has an attachment 
on one end for sharpening knives, and 
polishing silver. Some days my wife 
takes it upstairs (it is a little thing 
about as big as a Hubbard squash) and 
it runs the sewing machine. There is 
another motor that runs the vacuum 
cleaner (I bought this whole outfit sec¬ 
ond-hand for $10) so there is no sweep¬ 
ing and dusting in our house, because we 
don’t have any dust. 
Bathroom Comforts. —Upstairs in the 
bath room we have a light burning all 
night, burning low, for they make elec¬ 
tric lights that can be turned up or down 
like a lamp wick. There is what my 
wife calls her “finger,” a nickel-plated 
arrangement that looks like a small bicy¬ 
cle pump. If she needs boiling water 
during the night, or when I need it for 
shaving, she attaches its cord to a sock¬ 
et, and in 10 seconds she has a tumbler¬ 
ful of water boiling. Then, among our 
extravagances, we have a vibrator, which 
is a little electric massage machine. If 
one has a stiff neck, a lame back, or a 
sore arm, if one has a headache, or a pain 
in the side, turn on the vibrator, and it 
massages the trouble away in a jiffy. 
This is plain arrant luxury, away off in 
the country. I suppose there are other 
things, but I cannot think of them, prob¬ 
ably because we have grown so used to 
them that we cease to think of them as 
wonderful. When I get my water-boiler 
attachment, and an electric pump to take 
the place of my hydraulic ram, and hot- 
water radiators heated by electricity in 
every room in the house, I shall begin 
to think that the little river that flows 
through our front yard is surely earn¬ 
ing its keep. 
An Economical System. —The beauty 
of it all is that it costs nothing, except 
for the instruments themselves. The cur¬ 
rent is free, something no city person 
could possibly enjoy. My wife looks 
clean and cool, and rested : and the maid 
December 19, 
who does the routine in the kitchen 
actually hates to come back to the city 
when we move in the Fall, because she 
has to give up all these conveniences. I 
came downstairs early one morning re¬ 
cently and found Mary ironing. Like 
all old colored women she talks to her¬ 
self, entertains herself with conversation. 
She was addressing the iron at this mo¬ 
ment “Iron,” she was saying, as I en¬ 
tered, “I suttingly hates to leave you 
behind!” So if you happen to own a hus¬ 
band who happens to own a waterfall; 
or if he happens to have a neighbor who 
is willing to share a waterfall, persuade 
him to invest some of his savings in an 
electric plant. It may cost him some 
money to start, but it will add a thou¬ 
sand dollars in value to his farm for 
every hundred dollars he spends. But 
best of all, it takes the drudge out of 
housework. If he argues that he hasn’t 
got the technical knowledge required to 
install such a plant, tell him that the 
readers of The R. N.-Y. constitute a 
happy family, among whom there are at 
least a few of us who can answer ques¬ 
tions and tell him how. Besides, all 
knowledge is bound in books, if one only 
takes the trouble to find the book. 
Massachusetts. F. I. A. 
Kitchen Electricity. —The Kansas 
Agricultural College suggests the follow¬ 
ing to housewives who dread the job of 
cleaning the family silver: 
Get a zinc pan. Place a wire mat on 
the bottom to prevent the silver from 
resting on the bottom of the pan. Fill 
the pan with water and add a teaspoon¬ 
ful of soda and a tablespoonful of salt 
to each quart of water. Allow the silver 
to soak in this mixture five minutes. 
Take out the silver, wash and dry it. 
Oxidized silver should never be cleaned 
with this method as it will remove the 
oxidized finish. In case you cannot get a 
zinc pan, an ordinary dish pan may be 
used. Place two strips of zinc on oppo¬ 
site sides of the pan. If you cannot get 
zinc strips use two rows of mason jar 
lids. Pour in the mixture of salt, soda 
and water, and then place the silver in 
the pan. being careful to place the silver 
so that one end rests on one zinc strip 
and the other on the second zinc strip. 
After the silver has been in the water 
five minutes, it should be taken out, 
washed and dried. The secret of this way 
of cleaning is that the salt, soda, and zinc 
form a weak battery and electricity does 
the rest. 
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If Household Conveniences ff 
Carpet Sweeper. —The vacuum clean¬ 
ing carpet sweepers are of course a great 
improvement over the ordinary kind as 
they take up a great deal more dirt. 
Price $S.25 to $9.50, according to size. 
Mop. —This is the regulation mop with 
a little wringing attachment on it. 
You simply turn a little handle (similar 
to the handle on an egg beater) just 
above where the cloth starts and it 
wrings out the cloth much dryer than 
could be done by hand, also much more 
quickly. The price is only 63 cents, and 
new cloths can be purchased for 15 cents 
each, although of course ordinary pieces 
of heavy cloth could be used just as well. 
This is a great improvement over the 
wringers attached to pails and is much 
less expensive. 
Washing Machines. —The best hand- 
run machine, to my way of thinking, was 
$6.50. Then there was one at $15 which 
was very good if you had the proper 
water pressure. It was run by a little 
water motor. All you had to do was to 
attach a small rubber host, (which came 
with the machine) to /.he cold water 
faucet, turn the water on and the round 
wooden disk with pegs attached which is 
in the middle of the tub turns around 
and washes the cloth s. The water that 
is necessary to turn the machine is after¬ 
wards utilized to rinse the clothes. 
Corner Protectors. —Last but not 
least are the corner protectors. These 
are three-sided brass things fastened with 
a nail in the centre which are put into 
corners to keep the dirt out, and until 
anyone has used them you will not real¬ 
ize how much time is saved when sweep¬ 
ing and dusting by not having to work 
at corners in rooms and on stairs to get 
the dust out. They are painted the same 
color as the woodwork so that you scarce¬ 
ly notice them. Price 35 cents for a box 
containing one gross. 
MRS. FLORENCE BELLE. 
Electric Cook Stove Bread Toaster 
ELECTRIC HOUSEHOLD DEVICES. 
