Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/35

 We shall not much longer do most of our cooking by such a wasteful and unwholesome method as boiling, whereby the important soluble salts of nearly all food are callously thrown away. As, for reasons to be developed hereafter, it is quite certain that animal food will have been wholly abandoned before the end of this century, the débris of the kitchen will be much more manageable than at present, and the kitchen sink will cease to be, during a great part of the day, a place of unapproachable loathsomeness. On the other hand, its conveniences will have been greatly increased, It is difficult to understand how the old-world fashion of (for instance) "washing up" plates and dishes can have endured so long. Of course, in the new age, these utensils will be simply dropped one by one into an automatic receptacle; swilled clean by water delivered with force and charged with nascent oxygen; dried by electric heat; and polished by electric force; being finally oxygen-bathed as a superfluous act of sanitary cleanliness before being sent to table again, And all that has come off the plates will drop through the scullery floor into the destructor beneath to be oxygenated and made away with.

Here we have most of the distasteful elements of domestic service got rid of. Naturally lifts of various kinds, driven by the same force (whatever it is) which lights and