Our physical natures and our food are not so ignoble as some would have us think. We need only look at the thousand allusions to food in classic writings to realize that it is our attitude toward an object, not the thing itself, which makes it common and unclean.
Does it not seem strange that the art of cookery, which first distinguished man from beasts, has been so underrated and neglected?
"The art of cookery drew us gently forth
From the ferocious light, when, void of faith,
The Anthropophaginian ate his brother;
To cookery we owe well-ordered states,
Assembling men in dear society."
Surely no one better than a newspaper reporter, who must snatch a bite here and there of whatever is at hand, can appreciate the force of the words of an old physician: "The faculty the stomach has of communicating the impressions made by the various substances that are put into it is such that it seems more like a nervous expansion of the brain, than a mere receptacle for food."
Many a newspaper woman has found a safety-valve in doing her housekeeping with her own hands, the needed reaction after prolonged mental effort, and by the divine law of compensation has thus worked out with her hands something of which the brain alone was not capable. Michelet says that "A man always clears his head by doing something with his hands." Can we not all bear testimony that some of our brightest ideas have come when our hands were busy with rolling-pin or dish-pan?
The newspaper woman is expected to act as leader in many directions. Though not always competent to do special newspaper cookery in the best way, she may help mould public opinion in the right way on the great questions of temperance, domestic economy, coöperative housekeeping, and, above all, help to change the prevailing belief that work with the hands is degrading.
The great social questions of the day are largely dependent upon the food supply. Show the working men and women how to obtain attractive, palatable, and nourishing food at less cost than that which is unsatisfying, and their wages will really be doubled.
The temperance question is so closely connected with the food supply that it is astonishing that more attention has not been given to this side of it. We often ascribe the intemperance of the poor man to poor food; but are not the excesses of the rich also due to food, poor because it is too highly seasoned and improperly cooked?
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage has said: "The kitchen is the most important end of the household. If that goes wrong, the whole establishment is wrong. It decides the health of the household, and health settles almost everything."
May we all live to see the day when every town shall have a food experiment station, which shall do for the cook and the kitchen what the agricultural stations do for the farmer and farm. The cooking schools are a step in the right direction, but their work should be broadened and put upon a more scientific basis.