Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-04-10
NO. S5.
Miseellameoms.
KITCHEN AIDS.

OF course every farmer must have q
mower and horse-rake, and all the
other labor-saving inventions, just az
rapidly as he can pay for them, even
though they are slowed away as dead
property the greater part of the year.
Such things are necessary, and the
wife, perhaps, gets along with a new
dress less, that the husband may have
labor-saving machine. But how about
labor-saving machines and inventions
indoors? A woman who has q sew
ing machine, a machine to do the
churning, and one servant as "help,"
is usually the most favored house.
keeper in the neighborhood. You
may look whole township through,
and in nine cases out of ten, the labor
saving affairs are brought to the help
of man first. 1t is no wonder that
good mothers are SO scarce, STEP
mothers SO common, and invalid wo-
men not rarity. "a woman's work
is never done" is true proverb, with
by far too many housewives.
So accustomed are women to doing
their work in the old-fashioned way
by the pure virtue of back and elbow
power-that they look askance at new
tangled things, and believe it is more
bother to use machinery than to do
work in the old way. The sauing of
physical strength seems an unheard or
unthought of thing. So long as a
woman can drag around she usually
does, although she arouses as many
aches and pains from their lairs as
there are window panes in the house.
Women do not begin to take one-quar-
ter the time for recuperation that men
do. Men sit around evenings, read,
smoke, play games, or gossip; while
the women of the house sew or knit,
darn stockings, crochet, tat, or are
busy in other ways. To snuggle down
into an easy chair before the fire, and
play with the tassel of her apron string.
or simply listen to some ones reading,
would seem to most farmers wives as
sheer laziness or wicked waste or time.
We do not believe women are so well
able to endure incessant labor as men
are And if it is not good for men,
how much more pernicious is it to the
physical health of women? So we ar
que that labor-saving machines should
come first to the housewife, because
she is the weaker, and because in her
health and comfort and happiness the
happiness of the whole household lies,
more than in that of any other men,
ber of it.
The way in which very many people
practice economy is quite like ones
eating more than he needs, for the
" sake of saving it," That which
saves health and time is economy.
That which conduces to human happi-
ness is Divine economy. That which
is saving in the end, even if an extra
expense at the beginning, is economy.
So household conveniences are econo-
mics of which the two paramount ones
are those of water and wood. We
feel the wrath in us wriggling itself to
pounce down upon those Gentiles who,
year after year, postpone the wood
house arrangement, or the cistern-
building, or bringing the water in the
we'll to civilized get-at-able state.
A man who allows his wife to be a
newer of wood and drawer of water
to an unaided extent, ought to be-
well, accommodated from his church
on Biblical grounds for ga man who
has failed to provide for his own house,
hold is worse than an infidel."
We knew a man once (he lives yet;
hope he will read this paragraph) who
prayed night and morning, preached
on Sundays, and was rich farmer be-
sides. His wife MIXED the cows in
all sorts of weather, cut most of the
wood, built the fires, churned, "econ-
mized," and died of consumption in
the prime of life. He put weed on
his hat, tried to resign himself to the
dispensation of Providence" when
he ought to have been tried for wo-
man-slaughter in the first degree, and
sentenced to chop wood and milk cows
in the rain all the rest of his life
Mary E. A. Wager, Rural Neac Yorker.