Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/10

 when we compare the task of the modern housekeeper—not of the idle woman surrounded by a troop of servants, but of the fairly comfortably situated workingman's wife in a modern flat—with the task of the colonial housekeeper. When the former arises in the morning and gets ready to prepare the breakfast, she strikes a match, turns on the gas-stove, and obtains a clear, clean flame, free from ashes, dirt and soot. Her colonial progenitor had no stove at all. She just had a large fireplace, with an oven for baking built in the chimney, and with the pots suspended from an iron crane over the open-grate fire. She had no matches either. To start a new fire meant the slow task of striking a spark with flint. Therefore the fire had to be maintained day and night, and when it became extinguished some member of the household had to go with a shovel to some neighboring house to beg a live coal or a smoldering log of wood. To fill her tea-kettle the modern housekeeper turns on a faucet in her kitchen. She washes her dishes in the sink, in hot water running right into her dish-pan from the pipe. The housekeeper of yore had to draw every drop of water from the spring or the well, and had to heat it in a kettle over the fire. The modern housekeeper buys milk by the quart in a bottle and butter by the pound. The colonial housekeeper had to milk the cow and churn the butter. The modern housekeeper buys eggs by the dozen and gets a loaf of bread from the bakery around the corner. The colonial housekeeper had to raise the chickens and gather the eggs and knead and bake every loaf of bread. The modern housekeeper serves prepared breakfast-food that requires no cooking at all. She serves canned soups, canned fruits, canned vegetables and preserved pickles and jams from the grocery store. The colonial housekeeper not only did all the cooking, but all the baking, pickling, preserving, salting and brewing as well. When wash-day comes around, the modern housekeeper buys her material from the grocer. The colonial housekeeper had to manufacture the material herself. Every cake of soap used in the colonial household was made in the domestic soap-vat by the thrifty housewife. In the evening, when her day's work is done, the modern housekeeper will light the gas or—better still—turn on the electric light, and settle down to read or sew in a