The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1879-07-31

For the Farmer and Mechanic.
A New Departure.

= OOPoA CoA0s
Hardly five years ago, in an old fashioned
house, on an older street dating back to the
days of Dutch rule, in New York City, be-
gan a work SO unobtrusiv We and so little
heralded by any blowing of trumpets, that
the busy public who demand trumpets be-
fore they will stop to listen, passed by with
the slightest of recognitions. Doing the
work, being the necessity to the projectors
mind, and recognition being factor, which
could for a time be dispensed with, the work
was done, and the good seed as of old, made
its way silently to the surface, drawing in
there such forces as soon rendered it very
palpable to all on-lookers.
From a few scholars, in a training school
for working people, whose pitiful ignorance
of the simplest laws of life-these laws
meaning first and foremost, proper prepare
ton of proper food, has sprung the New
York Cooking School. Ten years ago it
would have been impracticatle. Blot came
to us, full of enthusiasm, and left us half
ruined and wholly hopeless of accomplishing
any real reform in the American cuisine.
Economy was a word utterly distasteful to
the average American. Money abOunded.
Our laborers Jared sumptuously every day,
and treated with a lofty scOrn any suggestion
to gather up the fragments that nothing be
lost. Then came the hard times the pres
sure, first of lowered wages-then Of no
wages. Starvation drew nearer the poor
mans home than at any time during this
generation, and the poor mans wife-at
best, a reckless and wasteful preparer of
provisions-faced the problem of evolving
from an insufficient supply-a savOry and
and n%ourishing meal, with a hopelessness
born of an absolutely appalling ignorance.
Even when the problem was partially solved,
in a little book-'Fifteen Cent Dinners
Miss Corson found herself between two
fires, some of the poor resenting the thought
that such a dinner could be either palatable
or possible, and the Communists, who took
the trouble to find out that it could be, VOW
ing vengeance upon a work which made
their own footing SO unsteady.
Miss CorsOn went her way undismayed.
The school grew till larger quarters must be
had, and is to-day, doing as representative
work as that at South kensingtOn in Eng
land. In fact, the South Kensington mana
gers, who had planned to send teachers to
this country found upon correspondence,
that American methods were even in add
vance of their own, and are following our
work interestedly, with a view of making
their own more perfect.
IIaU Sucn WOrk cOulU De maze a part OF
any school system, had, till very recently,
hardly been considered a possibility. The
manipulations and demonstrations were sup
posed to be unpleasant-offensiye to the
educated sense, and the young lady prided
herself on knowing the kitchen only by hear
say, and SO with her sisters and her cousins
and her aunts. That to cook perfectly de-
manded all knowledge, was a proposition SO
confounding in its character, that girls and
even the mothers of girls were breathless be-
fore it. Yet verify, that proposition is
proving its ground. Here and there, Cook
ing Schools are being opened, and Raleigh
has the distinction of inaugurating the first
one in the South. In another brief article
the question-what is a Cooking School? will
be answered in full, and the attempt made
to show that cooking-not as a mere tribute
to the stomach of the gourmand, but as the
builder up of the best life and thought-de-
serves and will have from all thinking men
and women, such place as it has never held,
but is to hold, for all the future before us.
III. G..