principles renders the cooking and heating of food a most simple matter.
The sending of hot food to individual homes has in no case as far as can
be learned proved a success, but the delivery of all articles ready for
the final application of heat is possible through business enterprise and
scientific experiment.
This partial, although not entire, solution of the problem of domestic
service, by taking a large number of servants out of the house and by
having a large part of the work now done by them in the house done
elsewhere, is in direct line with the progress made in other occupations.
It was estimated by Mr. Gallatin in 1810[302] that two-thirds of
the clothing worn in the United States was the product of family
manufacturing—then in a flourishing state. During the twenty years
following, a part of this family weaving and spinning was transferred
to factories, and this transfer created the great factory industry. Its
rapid growth was due to the fact that the power loom and the factory took
the place of the hand loom and of home manufacturing. A similar change
has taken place in the manufacture of cheese. Until about 1830 all cheese
was made at home, and in 1860 not more than twenty cheese factories had
been built.[303] After that time factories multiplied rapidly, until
now practically all cheese is factory made. The demand for ready-made
clothing for men was a generation ago very small. It grew out of a demand
on the part of sailors, and was increased in large proportions at the
time of the Civil War; the manufacture of such articles is now so firmly
established in our industrial system that a return to the home system
of manufacturing, even in the most isolated and primitive communities,
would be as impossible as the revival of the spinning wheel. The demand
for ready-made clothing for women is nearly as great and is annually
increasing through the facilities offered by all large retail houses for
shopping by mail. The tailoress and the maker of shirts have disappeared
from the homes of their employers and have set up establishments of their
own, or have become responsible to large business houses; the dressmaker
and the seamstress are fast following in their footsteps, and the cook
must set her face in the same direction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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