The fundamental needs which demand mechanical power in place of brawn can be classified into the following:

But before such machines could be developed to a point of usefulness, some source of power had to be found which could be used by the average family. This to-day is electricity. If the house cannot tap in on some public generating plant, then it is not at all too costly a proposition to install a private generating plant run by a gasolene-engine. The rapid spread of public-service wires throughout the country and the increasing demand for private generating plants is evidence that, where money permits, the people are ready to take advantage of the power of electricity to reduce the labor of keeping house. This electric energy which is being more widely distributed has called forth invention after invention of labor-saving machinery. It would not be hard to compile a list of some five hundred or more such machines, good, bad, and indifferent. Pick up any magazine and glance through the advertisements, and a fairly comprehensive list of housekeeping machines can be made, or look through some one of the popular scientific magazines and page after page will be found devoted to new inventions along this line. For example, in the latter, this is a small list made from a page of one of these magazines: A combined electric toaster and heater, a special brush on a long wire handle for cleaning the drain-pipe of the refrigerator, an electric clothes-wringer which has rollers soft enough not to break the buttons, a combined crib and wardrobe, the latter being under the mattress, a dust-pan which is held in position by the foot, a counterbalanced electric light that can be hung over the back of a chair and an electric water-heater to fasten to the faucet.

Machines for Cleaning

Under this classification ought to be included machines which reduce the need of cleaning, for they accomplish the same results, but in a negative way.

One of the dirtiest and meanest jobs about the house is the sifting and shovelling of ashes from the furnace. The light ashes are bound to be tracked through the house on the feet, or float in the rising warm air to the rooms above, while the sifting process is going on. The continued need of removing ashes and putting more coal in the furnace to make more ashes often disgusts the housekeeper so much that the apartment-house looks very attractive, for here this dirty work is done by the janitor.

Now the modern oil-burner, suitable to heat the furnace of a small house, represents a real labor-saving device, because it eliminates this problem of the ashes, but it requires electric power to make it practical, since a mechanical movement is necessary to properly atomize the oil for burning. Looking impartially at the latest inventions along this line that are now on the market, one cannot help but admit that they are highly desirable from the labor-saving point of view, if not always from an economical one. The easy control of the fire of one of these oil-burners is admirable. In mild weather the flame can be turned down quite low, burning perhaps only twelve gallons of oil in twenty-four hours, but if the weather suddenly becomes cold the flame is easily advanced to meet the conditions. No extra shovelling of coal is required in cold weather, and the worry of banking the fire in the evening is eliminated.

But one must not forget the various improvements which have been made in coal-burning furnaces to eliminate the ash-and-coal-shovelling labor as much as possible. There is the self-feeding boiler, which has a large magazine of coal which can be filled once a day and which automatically supplies the fire with fuel as it burns up. Then, too, there is the large ash-pit in which the ashes may accumulate for some time before removal is necessary, or the revolving ash-collector sunk into the floor below the furnace into which the ashes may be dropped and taken out in cans.

THE PORTABLE VACUUM CLEANER