Where water and light are thus fully socialised, why are we so shy of any similar progress in the supply of food? Food is no more a necessity than water. If we are willing to receive our water from an extra-domestic pipe--why not our food? The one being a simple element and the other a very complex combination makes a difference, of course; but even so we may mark great progress. Some foods, more or less specific, and of universal use, were early segregated, and the making of them became a trade, as in breadstuffs, cheese, and confectionery. Where this has been done we find great progress, and an even standard of excellence. In America, where the average standard of bread-making is very low, we regard "baker's bread" as a synonym for inferiority; but even here, if we consider the saleratus bread of the great middle west, and all the sour, heavy, uncertain productions of a million homes, the baker bears comparison with the domestic cook. It is the maintenance of the latter that keeps the former down; where the baker is the general dependence he makes better bread. Our American baker's bread has risen greatly in excellence as we make less and less at home. All the initial processes of the food supply have been professionalised. Our housewife does not go out crying, "Dilly-dilly! Dilly-dilly! You must come and be killed"--and then wring the poor duck's neck, pick and pluck it with her own hands; nor does the modern father himself slay the fatted calf--all this is done as a business. In recent years every article of food which will keep, every article which is in common demand, is prepared as a business. The home-blinded toiler has never climbed out of her hogshead to watch this rising tide, but it is nearly up to the rim, ready to pour in and float her out. Every delicate confection, every pickle, sauce, preserve, every species of biscuit and wafer, and all sublimated and differentiated to a degree we could never have dreamed of; all these are manufactured in scientific and business methods and delivered at our doors, or our dumb-waiters. Breakfast foods are the latest step in this direction; and the encroaching delicatessen shop with its list of allurements. Even the last and dearest stronghold, the very core and centre of domestic bliss--hot cooked food--is being served us by this irreverent professional man.