technical library.

a

From basement to roof the building is model, admirably adapted to illustrate the various ways in which electricity is now employed in general offices and public buildings as well as in the home.

The inventions for the utilization of electricity in the home that we are about to describe we witnessed in operation during our recent tour of investigation to which we have alluded. Nor is this all. Space renders it impossible to even briefly notice numbers of inventions to which our attention was called and which are also now in practical use in the homes of many users of electricity. We shall confine our attention to what seemed to us the principal inventions which greatly increase the comforts of home and those that reduce household drudgery to a minimum, often even making what has hitherto been irksome and burdensome a pleasant pastime.

III.

To bring before our readers a fair idea of what the electric home, as developed up to the present time, means, and what it will we believe mean to the millions within another generation, we will let our imagination carry us forward two or three decades, to the time when our children who are now little tots at our firesides, will be building homes of their own. We will enter the domicile

BREAKFAST-TABLE.

of a young couple starting in life and who possess fine, sturdy democratic ideals,-young people who have learned the joy of work and the dignity of honest toil. They wish to get all the happiness possible out of their little home. They have determined not to be forever haunted by the nightmare of the servant-girl problem, and yet they wish to avoid the drudgery and to enjoy the comforts of their home to the fullest degree.

We enter this house and begin our pilgrimage in the laundry. Here we find that the young housewife has placed her washing in the tubs to soak over

ELECTRICAL CARPET-SWEEPER.

night. The clothes are now lifted into the twentieth-century electric washer. A plug is inserted and the electricity is turned on. Instantly the washer, a marvel of mechanical simplicity and efficiency, commences to perform a labor that for generations has been one of the most arduous and irksome connected with housekeeping. In a short time the clothes are thoroughly cleansed and ready to be rinsed and wrung out. Now the wringing out of clothes has been another exhausting labor, and here again. electricity has come to the aid of the housewife. Another plug is inserted and the electricity is again turned on and the wringer commences to work. The clothes are quickly run through and are ready to be dried. From the electric washer and wringer we turn to the electric irons, something of special value in the summer and a wonderful promoter of comfort, as by simply attaching the iron to a wire an even heat is maintained throughout the entire ironing. The fact that the irons can be used at any time without making a fire, and wherever in the house it is most

convenient to do the necessary work, adds much to their usefulness.

Stepping from the laundry into the basement, we are shown an ingenious clock arrangement by which at any desired hour the drafts of the furnace are automatically opened. Thus, if set for six A. M., the drafts will open at that hour, so that by the time the family is ready to rise the house will be warm. Here also our attention is called to the electrical ice-cream freezer, by means of which ice-cream making is robbed of drudgery and waste of muscular strength.

Before entering the kitchen we are attracted to the ice-making and refrigerating machine, where ice may be made from any water preferred and a pure, dry refrigeration is insured. This machine, being automatic, can be run by any one by simply turning on the electric switch. The machine equals in refrigeration 250 pounds of ice per day.

Next we enter the kitchen, one of the most attractive spots in the electric home. The cooking and baking-table

is a delight to behold. No ashes, dust, smoke or odor, such as come from gas, coal or wood. The cooking in the oven and on the cookers is uniform and perfect. The specially manufactured coffee-percolator is a treasure to the coffee lover, insuring a most delightful cup of coffee; while the broiler is superior to any with which we are acquainted, as besides evenly broiling the meat, it conserves all the juices that usually occasion smoke and unpleasant odors. These juices run along grooves in the floor of the broiler and are emptied into a cup at the lower end.

Another thing that adds to the comfort of the electrical home is the ease with which a vessel can be heated in any room in the house, by disconnecting a lamp and attaching a cord connected with the electric stove or base of the cooker. By the aid of one of the two excellent baby-bottles now in use it is possible to heat milk for the baby in a few moments at night without the parent having to get up.

From the kitchen we pass to the dining-room, and here the young housewife proudly displays the electric chafingdish. She also shows how she often gets breakfast at the table, on which the coffee is made and the eggs boiled as she and her husband discuss the morning papers.

But she insists that it is not until we reach the bedrooms that the full value of electricity in the home is appreciated. En route to the chambers she pauses to call our attention to one of the most important and useful of all devices for the housekeeper, the electric carpetsweeper, which takes up all dust, dirt and small trash, like matches, pieces of paper, etc., and cleanses the carpet until it looks almost like new. A similar arrangement is used for cleaning the walls and furniture.

In the sewing-room we see something that means more than most men realize to women who have considerable work to do on sewing-machines. It is the electric device which runs the machine,

so that all the operator has to do is to guide the fabric and start or stop the machine.

In the bedroom there is a number of inventions that contribute very much to the comfort of the sleepers. Thus, for example, the lamp at the head of the bed that can be lighted or turned out by merely raising the arm. Below Below the lamp is a key that connects with the comfort-promoting electric heating-pad. Turn the key half around, and this pad throws off a gentle and delightful heat. It can be placed at the feet or wherever desired. If greater warmth is desired, for the purpose of breaking up congestion or for any other reason, all that is necessary is to turn the key completely around. Another key within easy reach communiciates with an electric radiator. Ten or fifteen minutes after this is turned on the room will be warm. Elsewhere is a device for generating a breeze and giving comfort during sultry days in summer. Indeed, turn in any direction, and we find inventions that add to the comfort and convenience of the homebuilders and which so reduce the drudgery and irksome parts of housework that it now becomes as never before a joy to labor and make beautiful the dearest and most hallowed spot in all the world, the home.

And all these things are comingsurely, swiftly coming. True, we may not all live to enjoy them, but if we are faithful and true to the trust democracy imposes upon us, our children or the little loved ones at the firesides of our friends will rejoice in the fuller life they will render possible. Everything that contributes to the comfort of the home helps civilization in its most vital center. True, the first and most needful thing is that education that teaches the husband and wife the holy and sacred character of the home life; teaches them the high meaning of love and how much their deepest and truest happiness and that of their children is bound up in their making the interest and happiness of each other a master consideration. But after this come the important environing conditions that contribute in so large a way to making the ideal home of love a radiant, happy, comfort-diffusing center. The true home is the vital dynamic center of civilization. That which tends to further make it the joy and everdrawing magnet for husband, wife and child helps to bulwark civilization and develop that full-orbed manhood and womanhood that under the compulsion of moral idealism is the hope of democracy.

Boston, Mass..

B. O. FLOWER.

Is

S THERE unrest in India? Is it of dimensions vast enough to be worthy of engaging the attention of the thinking world? If so what is its genesis, what its trend? These are pertinent questions which, intelligently answered, doubtless will shed light upon a vital topic of the day.

The present paper is an attempt at a free and frank discussion of these queries. It neither is an animated appreciation of East-Indian genius from the pen of a strongly biased partisan; nor a vicious denunciation of British character by a disappointed candidate for India House honors. The writer, by parentage, birth and education is an East-Indian. His chief claim consists of the fact: That he does not belong to either of the EastIndian races the Hindus and Mohammedans, which are said to have crosspurposes and constantly to be warring with each other. Having voluntarily expatriated himself and chosen another continent for future residence, he is able to get a dispassionate focus on presentday affairs in Hindostan.

News narratives of the unrest in India which so far have found entree into the American press are woefully insufficient and in many instances one-sided and conflicting. The enterprising daily papers in large American cities have printed brief and somewhat distorted snatches, deplorably shorn of details and vaguely suggestive of tense and chaotic conditions in Hindostan. How deep and widespread is the uneasiness that prevails in India, India, the cable despatches and the supplementary special articles that hitherto have found their way into American periodicals have failed to definitely specify.

Current literature from across the ocean leaves the reader in a similar predicament. English accounts of Indian unrest are calculated to impress one that a magnitudinous rebellion against the constituted authority of Great Britain in India, something on the order of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, only on a much larger and fiercer scale, was perilously imminent.

To study the details of this bogey of an armed revolt is interesting. English newspapers are wildly enthusiastic over their compatriots in India, who, in time, detected the conspiracy and sounded the alarm; and are profuse in praising the farsight and bold statesmanship of the Britishers at the helm of Indian affairs in England who, by a decisive and sagacious coup-by deporting seditionists, jailing agitators and censoring newspapers-nipped the plot in the bud.

English statements regarding this fancied insurrection in India betray a frenzied fright. British panegyrics on the sagacity and intrepidity in dealing with it follow these nervous reports with a rapidity that invests the whole performance with a comic interest. It shows the British officials in the rôle of a fragile, weak-minded woman suffering from hysterics-nervous tremors followed by convulsive fits of laughter.

Native newspapers in India blandly smile over this tempest in a teapot. Even those native editors and publicists who are being persecuted by panicstricken British officials take this viewpoint.

A term in the penitentiary under no circumstances is a pleasure which one would look forward to with delig What a sentence in an Indian jail me