56 
House & Garden. 
For altitude cleaning an extra tool is re¬ 
quired. These tools are made of aluminum 
steel and fibre and cost from $1 to $10 extra 
“T HA^'E seen ten vacuum cleaners at the 
X Electrical Show and every one, accord¬ 
ing to the salesman, is the best on the market! 
I want one, l)Ut which one shall I buy.'" It's 
most confusing!” 
'I'his was said to me no less than ten 
times. 
d’he answer is: that you must find out in 
the same way as you found out about your 
motor car before buying it. You didn’t bu}’ 
} our car liecause a salesman said it was a good 
car and because he made you sign a slip and 
because he promised you, as he departed, a 
quick delivery. 
No, indeed, you tried out the car first or last 
and you asked your friends, who had pur¬ 
chased the same make, how they liked it and 
>ou talked a lot about cost of up-keep, effic¬ 
iency, wear and economy and the service pos¬ 
sible to be had from the makers. Didn’t you? 
Y’ell, the same process is necessary in buying 
a vacuum cleaner or any other piece of ma- 
chiner}^ for the house and every Domiologist 
knows this to be a fact. 
“AH Is Not Gold, Etc.” 
All vacuum cleaners look charming and 
shiny and all seem very perfect in the slio])! 
And they all do their stunts beau¬ 
tifully as the skilled operator 
thrillingly draws designs in the 
Hour or bi-carbonate (clean, un¬ 
clinging dirt) on the patient car- 
})et. The operator talks glibly, 
often failing to give the failings 
of his machine l)ecause he doesn’t 
know them. So the only thing 
to do is to try it, in your own 
home, under your own special 
conditions, and see that it gets 
under your furniture, removes 
threads, lint, hair, dust, matches 
and. other substances with the 
least f)ossible noise (for noise 
wears on the operator’s nerves 
and raises a dislike for the 
cleaner) and the least possible 
effort. 
It must be light weight, easy 
to operate and economical and 
durable. I’here is nothing so 
hard to remove as ‘‘natural l)orn 
dust.” It Irecomes imbedded in 
the carpet and it takes force to 
remove it and the .sort of force 
that will not destrov. 
MAKING A CLEAN 
S’WEEP 
JFhat ,a Vacuum Cleaner Ought to Be 
Like and Do 
ETHEL R. PEYSER 
Dust becomes deeply imbedded in 
the fibre of rugs. Surface sweeping 
never removes this dirt. A vacuum 
cleaner does 
7 he thorough cleaning of upholstery and 
fabrics is made possible by vacuum, the dirt 
being sucked up from the roots of the nap 
Taking up tlie differences in the various 
machines, it is the Ijetter part of valor to know 
what the nature of our prey is before we start 
to hunt! So we will examine the animal-du.st 
in its hunting grounds. 
Dust's Hunting Grounds 
In our homes we have on the floor woolen 
or grass fabrics; rugs large and small, and 
carpets, grass rugs and mattings. The carpets 
or rugs may have a long nap loose!}’ woven 
(Chinese) Axminster, Wilton, Velvet Chenille 
or the pile in loops (Brussels) or just woven 
tlireads such as ingrain without any nap or 
pile. Grass rugs (Crex, etc.) and matting 
are of this kind. 
It is easily understood that, as the carpet 
or flooring is walked on, the dust becomes 
deeply imbedded and gets tangled up in the 
fibres, and that surface scveeping never can 
take out the dust and one has to send carpets 
each }’ear to the cleaners to restore their color, 
etc. 
Above the floors are, of course, the hangings, 
mattresses, books, pictures, moldings, ceilings 
and walls. As to the dust and the litter, such 
as matches, hair, lint, collects, 85%-90^ of it 
gathers on the floor, and 10%-1S% in the rest 
of the room. Therefore the clean¬ 
ing is reduced on the upper 
regions if the floor is kept really 
clean. 
Of all dirt, considering the 
surface dust not walked on that 
Ijlows in on our clothing, etc., 
litter, threads, hair, lint, and 
pieces of paper, imbedded dirt, 
grit tracked in and entangling it- 
.self in the carpet, the worst of 
these, of course, is the hair and 
lint and grit. These are hard to 
remove but they must be taken 
out, especially the grit, which is 
the destructive agent in dirt. In 
the Oriental regions, where the 
street shoes are left on the door¬ 
step, the vacuum cleaner might 
seem useless. 
The carpet doesn’t wear out so 
much from the top as it does b}’ 
being cut from the roots by the 
stam])ing in of the cutting grit. 
Therefore, the vacuum cleaner 
has Ijeen invented to save the car¬ 
pet, and not only to destroy the 
carpet destroying factors, but to 
The vacuum cleaner is not a highly complicated piece of mechanism, 
bjit it requires care. It should be oiled once a month, and the dust 
removed after each operation. The mechanical simplicity is shown 
in this example. Courtesy of the Hoover Co. 
