The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-03

rarest and the choices: or fruits ana
 vegetables and animal meats and ilsh ana
 bird meats and mollusks, no matter
 where they may grow or breathe the breath of life.
 Some people marvel at the mechanism
 which makes it possible for the farmer to
 SOW and reap fields of wheat hundfeds
 and thousands of acres wide where thelr
 ancestors had only few acres 10 q
 farm. Iris true we must gaze in awe at
 the wonderful possibilities of the modern
 farm through the miracles of modern ma chnery. Last summer while riding
 through the country l saw a great ma chine going over the prairie where once the farmer went swinging his scythe' This marvellous machine was called combined harvester It was drawn ps thirty-two horses. driven chariot like, four abreast. That machine cut the wheat, l. thrashed the wheat, gathered the clean kernels into bags, sewed up the bags, threw them to one side and tossed the straw into heaps. All this happened while the farmer was out taking his pleasure ride behind his thirty-two horses. Mar velous, marvellous, wonderful wonderful "combined harvesterl" But the benefits
 which come to our table from "a com
 bined harvester are as nothing compared
 to those that come from the freight ear and from the steamer.
 Sources of Food.
 Have you ever stopped to consider from how many various sources our food
 comes? I am nearing the coast of Sydney, Australia. I see alongside the railroad track great numbers of rabbits strung up. There are thousands and tens of thou-
 sands of them. l see the hilsides of New
 South Wales covered wNh sheep. I go
 to the wharfs, and there 1 find the great steamers being loaded with them. What is the good of taking these thousands of | fp1RAr a,RI t4i.f ff .nah hnFap cnH fir the captain. It will take you at least three or four weeks to sail there. That meat will then be malodorous and stenchfui and sickening." NO, mo-" answers the captain. That meat is being stored in re- frigerators. By running liquod ammonia through the pipes and letting it evaporate
 we can make our own ice on shipboard. That meat will be sold in London markets
 as fresh as it is today. By the won
 derful cold storage system of freight car and of steamship we can today eat the choicest fruits of the east and the
 west and have the tenderest of meats carried through the Red sea and Suez canal. The New Yorker can banquet upon California fruits. and the inhabitants of San Francisco. watching the seals climb ing over Seals Rocks in the Cliff House restaurant, may order his oysters brought from Maryland bay. Wonderful, wonder ful food provider is machinery.
 Machinery may bring to us thanks giving dinner. with caviare shipped from Russia and mollusks gathered from Allan ltic seashore, and fish caught off Florida coast, and bread made from Dakota
 wheatfelds and Ohio turkey fattened on Michigan corn and stuffed with marvellous foreign dressings and potatoes planted in
 Illinois and pumpkins fsttened in New England, and mince pies concocted in New Jersey. and our coffee gathered In Java, and our bananas brought from Cen tral America and our almonds grown in Syria, and our oranges shipped from California and our olives sent from Italy, and our terrapin caught in Virginia, and our canvasback ducks shot in Chesapeake bay, and our cranberries grown near Kalamazoo. and our plum pudding and fruit cake, like the spices of the Egyptian mummies, gathered from everywhere and with their indigestible qualities ready to change us into mummies If we only give them big enough chance, while a cupola upon this many foored or many l coursed Manufacturing meal we lay on 1 the big thick layer of richly favored homemade ice cream from our own Jer- sev COW, without which our children con-
 sider no Thanksgiving dinner worthy the
 name.
 1 But must stop describing the many 1 different sources from which our Thanks | giving dinner comes, or else your hun l ger for material things will crowd out 1 your desire for a spiritual Thanksgiving. ] Suffice to say the railroad track and 1 the ocean greyhound as well as the
 wonderful modern reaper and mower of l the farm are spreading for us Thanks | giving banquet of which the Romans and 1 the Greeks and the Hebrews and even l our own ancestors of a hundred years i ago in widest flights of their imagina ton l could never conceive nor dream. No won 1 der all the menus or bills of fare of all
 1or ait roc ian r1tc n l a foreign language. Foreign lands con | tribute a great part to all American ban 1 uuets Thank God, Japan can furnish ! Massachusetts her rice as well as Lou
 isiana her sugar and China her tea.
 A Striking Picture.
 But as I go and study Byam Shaw s picture and watch that crowded room Of the British museum l see the men and ! women dressed in the most beautiful gar
 ments Of course these garments are not | in up to date fashions. They are dressed
 as people dressed thirty years ago. When
 we say thirty years ago we instinctvely
 know that the styles are old fashioned
 for when we realize that every winter
 our mothers. wives and daughters must
 have their clothes made over again com
 pletey or else they feel that they look
 rdiculously out of style, then we know
 that the garments of quarter or a
 century ago must be out of style in-
 deed If our wives wore big sleeves in
 their dresses last winter, then they must
 wear very small sleeves now. If small
 bonnets were their headgear last spring,
 then this fall their hats must be shaped
 like a Mexican sombrero, for thus de- crees Parisian style. And the avereage | woman would sooner wear convict 1 garb than be out of style
 l But. though Byam Shaws characters 1 were dressed in garments quarter oi
 a century old, yet, like our own clothes, | they were all machine made garments The linen came from the Belfast mills | The wools were woven, but by the looms l of the Manchester factory. The silks
 came from the silk mills, the kid gloves from the kid glove factories. The poke
 bonnets aristocrat feels that he is dress
 ed as a gentleman also came from the hat factory. And when we go through
 our own wardrobes we hear machinery humming one perpetual sentence: ''I made
 you made you. I made you. I made | the cloth of that coat. l made the cloth
 of that dress I made that underwear.
 made those shoes and those hats and
 those gloves. I made you. l made you
 And why has machinery made all our
 clothes? For two reasons-frst. because ! machinery can make our clothes much
 cheaper than the human hand can make
 them; reason the second, machinery can
 make those clothes much better and more
 suitable for comfort and ease
 | "Oh," says some cynic, "I do not see
 any benefit from machinery in regard to i clothes. True. the sewing machine is
 able to make six dresses for my wife