Labor Saving Equipment in the Home

Last fall I spent a half day at an auction sale. Perhaps I had better say that I spent several days, as I have a weakness for auction sales. There is no better place to meet your neighbours and have a friendly chat. On the particular afternoon in question, however, I went more out of curiosity than of any other reason. The man who was selling out and moving to town was rated one of the best farmers in the neighbourhood. I had known him for years, and the thing about him that I had always liked was his enthusiasm for his job. He would talk farming by the hour. He was a great reader of agricultural literature. As he was in the best of health and still in his prime, I could not make out just why he was selling. I had not been at the sale long till I got my friend in a corner and popped the question, “Why are you doing it?”

“We can’t get help in the house,” was the immediate reply. “It has been hard enough to get help for farm-work, but by buying more machinery we have gotten along not so badly. This last season we have been able to get plenty of good help. But domestic help! That is our unsolved problem. The wife can’t look after the kiddies and her house alone, and it is on her account that we are quitting.”

This has become an old story in our community, and, I suppose, in all others. The lack of domestic help has driven many a family to town. But I am convinced that my neighbour could have solved the domestic problem in the very same way that he solved his farm problems. He did not seem to be aware that inventive ingenuity has devised just about as many labor-saving devices for the home as for the farm. I know that in his house there is not a single modern device to lighten labor unless a cistern pump at the kitchen sink be so classed. And the strangest part of the story is that this man does not expect that his wife will hire help in town. She will be expected to find her work lighter because of the greater convince of her new home.

I cannot but contrast this case with another farm home that we visited during a 22-mile motor trip that my wife and I took between seeding and hay harvest last summer. In this house the policy had been followed of bringing city conveniences to the country. The farm was was one of the best equipped that we had ever visited. The farmer himself is something of a mechanical genius and his son goes for him one better. The home had kept pace with the farm. The central convenience is an electric light plant. All the buildings are lighted with electricity. There is no smoky lamps or lanterns to clean, and this, my wife tells me, is a very considerable saving. The electric current also makes possible ironing by electricity - less than one-half as much work as ironing over a hot stove. Electricity is also the source of household power. A small motor pumped the water to an overhead tank that supplied running water in bathroom, kitchen, and laundry. The same motor runs the washing-machine and wringer. The later application of power has made washday a pleasure. In fact, on the occasion of our visit a very large washing had been “put through” in the morning, but our hostess was fresh and bright to entertain visitors in the afternoon.

In this home the laundry is in the basement. When the electric motor has run the machine till the clothes are so clean that the scrub-board is never needed, a lever is pressed, the power connected with the wringer and the clothes are run through into the rinse water. The wringer is then swung around between the rinsing and blueing tubs and then through into the basket ready for the line. Please notice that this whole operation is accomplished without lifting a single pail of water. A short piece of hose carries the hot and cold water from taps to the machine and tubs, and the latter are drained through faucets soldered in the bottom. The water runs away on the cement floor to a trap to the cesspool. The vacuum-cleaner is another piece of equipment that adds to the convenience of this home. The lady of the house is no stronger, naturally, than my neighbour’s wife who is going to town, and her responsibilities are equally great. But the one woman is enjoying life while the other was breaking under the strain.

There are points in construction and furnishing that lighten labor. All floors should be of hardwood or linoleum. There should be none of the continuous floor scrubbing that was necessary to keep grandmother’s floors so white and attractive. My wife votes for linoleum in the kitchen, pantry and bathroom and hardwood in other rooms downstairs. Upstairs the floors may be finished with any stain or paint to please the eye and covered with a couple of coats of good varnish. All that will be needed to keep such floors clean will be a dust mop. If the house is now carpeted, do what we did - make the carpets into rugs.

But our neighbour did not think of these things, if they entered his mind at all he probably dismissed them as too costly. But a few hundred dollars invested in the farm home would have enabled him to stay at the work that he loves. It would have made his wife a satisfied woman. A couple of batches of hogs or a few surplus cows would have paid for the most of the conveniences that I have mentioned. My neighbour as probably found by now that when he purchased his house in town he paid just as much for all its conveniences as they would have cost him on the farm.

I don’t know why farm women should not have as good equipment for their work as farm men have for theirs. My better half has just read this last sentence over my shoulder and she says, “Hear, hear!” - Tom Alfalfa.