Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/23

Rh readily be made in the food-supply of an average family. The customary ration is from three fourths of a pound to a pound; in the families of poor people, who depend very much upon bread, I suppose it is one pound. Now, wherever such a family is paying six cents a pound for wheat bread, not an uncommon price among the poor in Boston, a saving of two and one half cents a day can be made on bread only by making it in the family and baking it in this oven.

But, again, this possibility leads to another consideration. It is conceivable that all the bread may by and by be made in this way. Then what would become of all the bakers? They would for a time suffer for want of work; but you will observe that in this as in most of the actual improvements in the conditions of society, the art which would be displaced is one of the most onerous kinds of labor, requiring long hours of night-work; a greater abundance of bread would be furnished at less cost; and presently the bakers would be absorbed in other branches of work. How that happens, and how such adjustments are made, I suppose no one knows. There was formerly one branch of cotton-spinning, viz., the sizing of the warps, which was conducted under very uncomfortable if not unwholesome conditions. The old-fashioned dressing-machine, as it was called, on which all the warps of cotton goods were prepared with starch for weaving, was worked in a room at from 110° to 120° Fahr., the atmosphere being impregnated with the smell of sour starch; and in a given factory the work of eight men was required. In the year 1866 I was myself instrumental in importing two machines of a new kind from Great Britain; these machines were operated in a light, cool, and well-ventilated room; a man and a boy did the work of the eight men. What became of the other seven men? I never could trace them; they were merged in the great body of workmen. The new machine has wholly displaced the old one; and there is now no branch of work in the cotton-mill which is considered injurious, or subject to any great discomfort. In fact, when the final application of invention is made to the cotton-factory by using ice or other methods of cooling the air in summer, as we use fuel to heat the rooms in winter, the atmosphere of the cotton-mill will become about the most salubrious that can be obtained, for the reason that the exact degree of heat and humidity which is called for in the best work in spinning and weaving is consistent with the exact degree required for the health of the human body; and since electric lighting has displaced the noxious vapors of illuminating gas, it may soon become possible to secure workers in a cotton-mill on the ground that a cotton-mill is the best sanitarium.

I have given you these last few data, which are not immediately