e speculated on land, raw material,
manufacture, sale, patents, and duties.

But emancipation from domestic toil will not be brought about by small
machines only. Households are emerging from their present state of
isolation; they begin to associate with other households to do in common
what they did separately.

In fact, in the future we shall not have a brushing machine, a machine
for washing up plates, a third for washing linen, and so on, in each
house. To the future, on the contrary, belongs the common heating
apparatus that sends heat into each room of a whole district and spares
the lighting of fires. It is already so in a few American cities. A
great central furnace supplies all houses and all rooms with hot water,
which circulates in pipes; and to regulate the temperature you need only
turn a tap. And should you care to have a blazing fire in any particular
room you can light the gas specially supplied for heating purposes from
a central reservoir. All the immense work of cleaning chimneys and
keeping up fires--and woman knows what time it takes--is disappearing.

Candles, lamps, and even gas have had their day. There are entire cities
in which it is sufficient to press a button for light to burst forth,
and, indeed, it is a simple question of economy and of knowledge to give
yourself the luxury of electric light. And lastly, also in America, they
speak of forming societies for the almost complete suppression of
household work. It would only be necessary to create a department for
every block of houses. A cart would come to each door and take the boots
to be blacked, the crockery to be washed up, the linen to be washed, the
small things to be mended (if it were worth while), the carpets to be
brushed, and the next morning would bring back the things entrusted to
it, all well cleaned. A few hours later your hot coffee and your eggs
done to a nicety would appear on your table. It is a fact that between
twelve and two o'clock there are more than twenty million Americans and
as many Englishmen who eat roast beef or mutton, boiled pork, potatoes
and a seasonable vegetable. And at the lowest figure eight million fires
burn during two or three hours to roast this meat and cook these
vegetables; eight million women spend their time preparing a meal which,
taking all households, represents at most a dozen different dishes.

"Fifty fires burn," wrote an American woman the other day, "where one
would suffice!" Dine at